Junts will not give in to the PSOE even if an electoral repetition means losing 3 deputies

The fugitive Carles Puigdemont has given orders to Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) to resist counting all the attempts of the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez to negotiate a hypothetical support for his investiture after the results of 23-J. There will be no green light for a PSOE government with Sumar nor a hypothetical abstention to allow a left-wing government in Madrid. “There are two red lines that cannot be crossed: referendum and amnesty. Without these two concessions, there will be no green light, ”sources from the Junts leadership explained to El Confidencial.

In the executive that the post-convergent party held this Monday afternoon, an attempt was made to camouflage the bad result of these elections with parliamentary arithmetic. Aware that these are the worst results in history, including the Convergència era, the defeat is sweetened by the fact that numerically Puigdemont's formation could be crucial to form a government and, if he votes against either of the two options (right block or left block), Spain may be doomed to repeat elections, as happened in 2019..

In the party they are aware that the 392,634 votes obtained by Junts this 23-J are far from the 483,488 obtained by the Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) in 2016. Until now, those had been the worst results in all of history.. In all the other electoral events, the formation, especially when it had not opted for independence, always exceeded 500,000 votes and in 2011 it exceeded one million votes.. The reflection made by some post-convergent circles is that ERC, despite the sharp drop from 874,859 votes in November 2019 to the current 462,883 votes, had already obtained worse results in other electoral events.. Therefore, the hit of JxCat is worse than that of ERC, despite the fact that both have tied seats on 23-J.

In some post-convergent sectors, it is warned that, in the event of going to new elections, the party could lose many more votes and leave half of its deputies along the way, but that is a price that Puigdemont and his closest circle are willing to pay.. “What has to be lost? We have lost more by not negotiating the councils of Barcelona, Lleida and Tarragona with the Socialists. Therefore, the seats that we can leave in Congress are hardly important. Actually, not much is lost, only two or three seats. But we gained vote loyalty and, above all, it leaves the party prepared for the ravages of the European and regional elections next year”, explain the sources consulted by El Confidencial. In other words, Puigdemont prefers to go to the immolation in Congress and then recover ground in the autonomous.

A medium term strategy

The strategy takes into account the premise that the two or three deputies that it may lose in new legislation will later be largely amortized with the regional and European elections of 2024. The intention is to present itself to the electorate next year as the only party that is clearly pro-independence, non-pactist and that keeps what it promises, regardless of the consequences: in this case, it will assume the blockade of State institutions despite exposing itself to reducing its seats.

The maneuver has another hidden reason: to mark its own profile and launch a missile at the waterline of ERC, which it presents as a “submissive” party and subservient to the powers of Madrid. In summary, the accounts of the Junts leadership are that the three or four seats that they may lose in Madrid due to the repetition of the 23-J elections would later be offset by an increase in representatives in the European and regional elections, possibly recovering the first place in the independence spectrum, which is currently in the hands of ERC. It is, therefore, a strategy designed to bear fruit in the medium term.

That is why the slogan is to toughen the line of action. A letter distributed this Monday afternoon in the party bears a significant title: The price: self-determination and amnesty. In it, an allusion is made to Esquerra and they distance themselves from the Republicans, betting on their own confrontational and radical strategy that denies bridges with Madrid and rejects pacts with the Socialists.. “The disappearance of the four PDeCAT deputies confirms that this was the line to follow. Despite the correct decision to leave the Government of the Generalitat, the last municipal campaign was excessively soft from a national point of view. Only the refusal to agree with the PSC in the councils has redirected the path that in these general elections seems to have been consolidated with a much clearer message to the electorate. If Gabriel Rufián represents the symbol of demobilization due to his policy of pacts in Madrid (budgets, trap-reforms, dialogue table), Junts should stay as far away as possible. The results clearly demonstrate this.”.

Defend the First of October

After the crash of this month of July, according to the aforementioned text distributed this Monday, “perhaps a greater firmness would be necessary to defend the political derivatives of October 1st”. This commitment to hardening the proposals also aims to corner ERC in the spectrum of sovereignty, presenting Junts as the quintessential patriotic party and once again dominating the pro-independence discourse, retaking control of the situation.

Remember the letter that the head of the list in these elections, Míriam Nogueras, said this Sunday, after knowing the results, that “we have indeed understood the electoral result”. Therefore, “now is the time to prove it and Junts will be subject to all possible pressure from those who say they want to 'save Spain'. let them do. It is our duty to show, in the words of President Puigdemont, 'a high degree of responsibility, coherence and fidelity'. If we want to be coherent with the people of Catalonia, with ourselves and with what we have affirmed in this campaign, there is no other price than self-determination and amnesty.”.

Puigdemont's formation will try to take advantage of the situation and attract again civic entities and platforms that demand unilateralism. The allusion to October 1 in the text addressed to the party cadres is what they recognize as “a reflection on the current situation of the Movement, beyond the partisan realities of each one”. The 'Movement' is nothing other than the 'procés' or, in a broader term, the road to independence. For this reason, the text ends with an almost warlike harangue: “Now is our moment. General Patton said that it was the enemy who had to hold the position, because his troops only had the objective of advancing.