Catalonia feels that political pressures are trying to spread everywhere. On the one hand, opinion polls in Catalonia predict a rise in the far-right Independence of the Catalan Alliance, which could tie with Carles Puigdemont’s party for third place in some hypothetical elections. On the other hand, his main role in Congress, with 7 deputies allowing them to liquidate the majority, finds himself at a crossroads to continue supporting the government of Pedro Sánchez despite violating the inauguration agreement he concluded with the Socialists or to join the siege of the Popular and Vox parties to impose a motion of no confidence. Later, popular leader Alberto Núñez Viejo visited Catalan business owner Foment del Tribal and was vocal in demanding that Catalan businessmen persuade Juntes to help them build the coalition government. Last Saturday, the Secretary General of the Junts, Jordi Turol, wanted to remove the major prisons in the party’s National Council, and returned the message to Feijóo: “I had the courage to come to Catalonia and ask the businessmen for help. The businessmen should not have asked for help, but forgive me, for the systematic mistreatment to which they were subjected during the years they were in government.”
During his intervention, Turol insisted on the need for the party to avoid succumbing to pressures, whether internal from the voters leading the Catalan Alliance, or external from the position expected from Juntes in Congress. Turol bet on change to maintain a clear direction, and presented the party as the real alternative to Salvador’s socialist governor Illa: “There is pressure, and the media is increasing. We want to have coups, but we are the alternative, not from the ringing of the bell since the proposal.”
Turull first signaled the break with the PSOE, which materialized at the end of October when Carles Puigdemont’s party did not lead to support an alternative like Figo. “After several warnings from the Socialist Workers’ Party, we consider the Brussels agreement to have been completed. It was an opportunity but with international mediation, the Socialist Workers’ Party did not take it seriously. We have no profession to be a crutch for the club or to be part of anyone’s bloc. Stability will depend on progress, and if not, we consider the agreement to have been finalized,” Turull said. But she is not even against the government, which she sees as “fragile, without a mayor, and involved in judicial cases with many doses of lying.” Law war“It is the same thing that denied its presence in Catalonia.”
Read the blame motion
The alternative to siding with the government would be to support a hypothetical proposal for censorship if the factory workers gained popularity, but Turol undermined that possibility by filing a complaint with Figo who asked for clemency from the businessmen, enumerating the reasons: facilitating socialists’ access to Barcelona’s city council, boycotting Catalan products and the language, due to a lack of investment in infrastructure, and, ultimately, because of the “mistreatment” the PP government has subjected Catalonia and its companies to over the years, according to Turol. Businessmen remained calm and predictable scenarios, and for the first time, the head of the Catalan employer, Josep Sánchez Libre, when Gontz broke with the PSOE, went to visit Puigdemont in Brussels.
Joining the Junts into the blockade of PP and Vox would be one of those guiding strikes that was needed from the beginning. But there is another stroke of the wheel that threatens them even more, from within, and that is what to do before the tests, “which contain moments that cause confusion, but describe a very complex moment, on the ground for together and for everyone,” says Turull. The Secretary-General defined the Catalan Alliance, which he did not name directly, as “the most liberal populism that offers easy solutions to deep problems.”
“Catalonia cannot fall into an exclusive project that bases its proposal on hatred, fear and division,” says Turol, although Silvia Orioles’ party presidency has forced Juntes to adjust his rhetoric to make it more attractive to those voters lured by the far right. Turul said: “Together in the homeland, no to ostracism, no to division, no to hatred. Together in the homeland to build, and to plant a national and social project on the margins of fashion and noise, with a look to the future. Our future is positive independence.”
The Secretary-General has committed to avoiding “distractions” and focusing on proposals, predicting that a leader who proposes opinion polls – the latest chief executive suggests that Carles Puigdemont will lose between 15 and 16 deputies – will not be effective when the moment of truth comes. “Catalan politics has proven many times that today’s polls do not represent tomorrow’s reality. Together they have a power that many want to ignore, and they resurface when the country needs them. We never accept, and we will never have it today, that Catalonia’s future has been dictated to us since its departure.”