Former separatist president of Catalonia tries to stop the rise of a socialist candidate

▲ Salvador Illa, from the Socialist Party of Catalonia, announced that he has the necessary support for his candidacy.Afp Photo

Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 4, 2024, p. 19

Madrid. Carles Puigdemont, former president of Catalonia and leader of the pro-independence party Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), announced his intention to return to Spain, where My arrest is a real possibility in a few dayswhich could jeopardize the investiture agreement signed between the other major Catalan separatist party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC), which will make its leader, Salvador Illa, the future president of the Generalitat (autonomous government of Catalonia).

Puigdemont’s movement is concerned about this agreement, as it would mean the definitive end of the secession process that began in 2012 and reached its peak in October 2017, when they unilaterally and unsuccessfully declared independence. This led to the arrest of some of its leaders and the departure of the other half, who moved to Belgium, Switzerland and Great Britain.

After confirming that the ERC supported in a vote the proposal of its leadership to support the investiture of the socialist Illa who, in exchange and with the connivance of the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, promised that Catalonia would become an independent autonomy in fiscal matters, with its own revenues and without having to redistribute its wealth with the rest of the Spanish autonomous communities, as is the case now. According to Sánchez, it is about building the federalization from Spain.

Carles Puigdemont, who ran in the elections on May 12 to return to the seat of president of the Generalitat but came in second place – far behind the socialist Illa – has tried to manoeuvre to promote his own candidacy. During the electoral campaign he promised that if he was not re-elected regional president, he would definitively abandon his political career. Hence the message he sent to his followers on social networks, in which he warns that “the decision of the ERC membership to invest the socialist candidate as president of the Generalitat makes arrest a real possibility within a few days. I have always been aware of this risk, but I have preferred to wait to publish this text after learning of the decision of the republican militants so that I would not be accused of emotional blackmail.

If I get arrested, it won’t be the first time. says Puigdemont. I have been in a German prison and in another one in Italy; I have been arrested in a Belgian police station and I have been summoned by the French anti-terrorist police. All this, of course, by order of the Spanish judicial apparatus.. He also criticises the Spanish president’s lack of resolve to enforce the general amnesty law, created ad hoc for him and the rest of the Catalan leaders who moved to live in other countries to avoid being tried by Spanish courts.

The truly important fact will be the evidence that in Spain amnesties do not amnesty, that there are judges willing to disobey the law and that the Spanish government observes it with the indolence of the resigned. And there is more fuss about the indictment of his wife (in reference to Begoña Gómez, Sánchez’s wife and accused of the crimes of influence peddling and corruption in business) than when the Supreme Court refuses to apply the only law that has been approved in this legislature, and the only amnesty law approved since the Constitution came into force. Whoever thinks that this will have no consequences is mistaken.

Meanwhile, the socialist Illa has already started moves to carry out his investiture in the parliamentary plenary session, by informing the president of the autonomous Chamber, Josep Rull, former advisor to the Puigdemont government, that he already has the necessary support to carry it out, so he would only be waiting for a date to be set.

Illa also confirmed that his intention is to strictly comply with the agreement with ERC, despite the numerous critical voices that have emerged in the ranks of his party in other regions, who see the pact as a radical transformation of the current autonomous model.