The former president of Congress and PSC candidate in the last general elections on July 23, Meritxell Batet, announced yesterday that she is resigning from her seat in Congress and that she will abandon active politics. In her farewell on social networks, the socialist leader did not explain the reasons for a decision that was already feared in the Catalan party and that responds "100%" to a personal question, without any political derivative.
Batet, as she herself explained, considers that this "is the best moment to leave active politics with the satisfaction of the work done and the duty fulfilled." It is therefore a decision "thought for a long time", as recognized in the PSC, where for the moment she will maintain the organic position of deputy first secretary of the area of improvement of self-government and programs. She, too, has not transcended her next professional destination, already outside of politics.
Coincidence or not, his decision was issued hours after the reform of the regulation for the use of all official languages in the Lower House was registered in Congress.
Batet leaves behind 19 "intense" years, as she described, as a deputy, minister of the socialist government (of Territorial Policy and Public Function) and president of Congress in the last legislature. It is precisely the intensity of that political career that has led her to make a decision framed in the personal sphere, but which is surprising due to the good results she reaped at the polls as a PSC candidate in the general elections in July –19 seats, 13 more than those achieved by the PP and 12 more than the seven achieved by Junts and ERC, respectively.
It was the second time in a row that she had run as a PSC candidate for general elections, with which she has put an end to a political career that began in the PSC at the hands of Narcís Serra, when he was the party's first secretary, but which gave a jump with José Montilla, who offered her to go to Congress in 2004, as a deputy, coinciding with the victory of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
In the 2014 primaries for the leadership of the PSOE, Batet supported Eduardo Madina, but the winner of those internal elections, Pedro Sánchez, incorporated her into his team and took her number two for Madrid in 2015. Such was the confidence that received from the president that after the motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy, Sánchez thought of her as Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Function, with the aim of starting the political thaw with the Generalitat after the application of article 155 in Catalonia. In her mandate, Batet recovered the Generalitat-State bilateral commission after seven years of inactivity.
Born in Barcelona (1973), of humble origins and a lover of dance, she studied Law with scholarships and became a professor of Administrative Law and Constitutional Law at Pompeu Fabra University.
He leaves "with the pride of having served a collective project that seeks, above all, to improve people's lives and transform society", a project to which he assures that he has "given himself body and soul, and to which I will continue serving wherever I go”, he promises. In addition, she is convinced that "soon there will be a new government of progress" led by Sánchez that "will continue with the advances and reforms that Spanish society needs."
In his farewell, Batet proclaimed the "honor" and "privilege" of having served the cause of the progressive government and expressed his "special" thanks to Sánchez and the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa.
