Politics is an appropriate arena for making a virtue out of necessity, and this is what junts and ERC are preparing for after the fiasco when they managed to govern in Barcelona city council. The appointment of 23-J is still here and there is no time for more. From the initial shock – “That they all screw you up,” said a concerned (and unattached) Xavier Trias – both formations begin to embrace the common idea as the way the unwritten agreement is shared between PSC and PP not only represents them, but it is May water for an election campaign in which everyone offers themselves as a “useful vote” for independence. The notion, widely repeated by Junts and ERC, that the final decision on the Consistory was made in Madrid and not in the Catalan capital, and in doing so they seek to upgrade the most traditional independence discourse.
Although the pro-independence movement enjoyed less support than the Social Democrats and among the general public, it discredited the agreement. “This is a state sewer operation against Barcelona,” Esquerra leader Oriol Junqueras assured on Twitter. “The only ones who can prevent these acts of shame that we went through now, but also four years ago.” [cuando los votos de Manuel Valls a Ada Colau impidieron a Ernest Maragall ser alcalde], the citizenry as a whole is with their votes,” he added. Trias, without an organic position in junts, participated this Sunday in the National Council that validated the electoral lists and follows the same path as ERC: “We must tell them that enough is enough.” We are not willing to humiliate ourselves and abused and made more dependent every day,” he explained.
We are seeing a new pact of shame, a pact to prevent independence from ruling our country’s capital, with Ja van Fer fa evading the post of mayor for four years@ernestmaragall.
A new Operation d’Estat coming that cannot leave us indifferent. Vote for Catalonia on 23J! https://t.co/4UbWmy7HFu
— Oriol Junqueras 🎗️ (@junqueras) June 17, 2023
In the ranks of the two parties, the exit of the mayoralty of Barcelona, which has been held since Saturday by the socialist Jaume Collboni, was painfully witnessed. The PSC has claimed the majority of 23 councilors of the sum of PSC, Barcelona en Comú and PP compared to the 16 held by Junts and ERC. The grief is shared, although the intentions of both were very different. If Trias’ sole decision to run in Barcelona was a great beacon of hope for the widest possible wing of the Junts, despite hiding the party’s initials on the campaign trail and lowering the volume of calls for independence, then his victory had been all in Carles’s Puigdemont formed formation and covered their poor result. In the ERC, the pact with the former mayor was fundamental to rounding out the turn that favored pacts with secessionists after 28-M and a departure from a pacist policy with the PSC, which Republicans see as the root of their ills.
In Barcelona, the two formations turned off the war for the pacts with the socialists that was being waged in other communities and destroyed the alleged attempt to rebuild bridges between the independence fighters after 28-M. For example, in Roses (Alt Empordà), ERC was the list with the most votes, but sociovergence led by PSC prevailed. In Tortosa (Baix Ebre) the opposite was the case and Junts were expelled. Battles that took place fleetingly in the capital, an island where the idea of an Entente was wanted to be conveyed, even considering the general elections. All that remains of the Geneva meeting is the conviction that movements and sacrifices must be made to mobilize the demobilized secessionist voter (the ERC alone lost 300,000 votes in May).
On Saturday, both parties voted in favor of the government pact, although the mathematical specter of another majority always lingered. Despite having different intentions, the two parties now share the status of victims of what a veteran Junts MP, citing the meaning of the quote, calls an “unworthy step” (in a historical nod to Jordi Pujol and the prosecutors’ complaint) . office in the case of Catalan Banking). The sum of PSC, PP and Barcelona en Comú allows the revival of such concepts. Trias revealed in his speech this Sunday that Collboni offered him a share in the mayoralty, showing that the struggle to portray the Socialists as unreliable people with fickle principles is worthy.
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“Yesterday the state intervened in Barcelona and applied de facto 155. The question of stopping the Triassic independence movement was the pretext, what they do not admit is the possibility of a city that decides it is a triumph of docility to hand Barcelona over to the state,” assured Maragall in an interview with RAC – 1.
“It is clear that we are the only reliable and safe option in front of a PP-Vox government,” says a prominent voice in the Republican leadership, smashing the slogan Junqueras and his supporters have been repeating since the day of the election lead known. . It’s not just a reiteration of propaganda, because now the phrase is also an arrow for the common people. “Will the citizens now say they are the useful voice?” said this leader wryly.
“For years we have seen more closeness and cooperation with someone from Unidas Podemos in Zamora than with someone from the lower house of Barcelona,” laments a Republican MP. The confrontation in the campaign with the Socialists for the general elections was clear, but what happened allowed the Independents, but especially the Republicans, to really distance themselves from the Catalan wing of Yolanda Díaz’s project.
Neither Junts nor ERC accept that the situation in Barcelona is even remotely comparable to that of Girona, where a pact of losers also brought the second most elected force – the CUP – to the post of mayor. Therefore, they do not consider it incoherent to resort to an outspokenly victimist discourse denouncing a Barcelona Pact (according to Junqueras, “Collboni embodies the sewers”). There are those in the ERC who believe that a vigorous sanitation barrier should be set up with “those of the 155”. Indeed, at the moment there is no movement in the pacts with the PSC that would allow the ERC to govern in the deputations of Tarragona and Lleida. Or both reject any agreement in Barcelona.
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