Puigdemont’s return to Catalonia threatens agreement between ERC and PSC

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 imminently, where “my arrest is a real possibility in a few days” and which could jeopardize the investiture agreement signed by 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. Puigdemont’s move could jeopardize this agreement, which his party views with concern since it would mean, according to them, the definitive end of the secession process that they began in 2012 and which reached its peak in October 2017, when they declared unilateral independence, which failed and which in turn led to the arrest of some of its leaders and the departure of the other half from the country, who moved to live in Belgium, Switzerland and Great Britain.

After it was confirmed that ERC members decided to support the decision of their leadership to support the investiture of the socialist Illa, who in exchange, 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 had happened until now. According to President Sánchez, it is about building the “federalization” of Spain.

Following the agreement, former president Puigdemont, who ran in the elections on May 12 to return to the seat of president of the Generalitat and came second, far behind the socialist Illa, has tried to maneuver to promote his own candidacy, despite the fact that it is very difficult for him to gather the necessary support. Even more so when during the electoral campaign he promised that if he was not re-elected as regional president he would definitively abandon his political career.

Hence the message he sent to his followers on social media, in which he warned that “the decision of the ERC militants to appoint 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 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.”

In a three-page text, Puigdemont also points out that “if I am arrested, it will not be the first time. I have been in a German prison and in another 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.” And he criticises the lack of resolution of the Spanish president in enforcing the general amnesty law, which was created ad hoc for him and the rest of the Catalan leaders who moved to live in other countries to avoid being judged 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. Anyone who thinks that this will not have consequences is mistaken.

Meanwhile, the socialist Illa has already begun his moves to carry out the parliamentary plenary session for his investiture, by informing the president of the regional chamber, Josep Rull, former councillor in Puigdemont’s government, that he already had the necessary support to push it through, so he would only be waiting for a date to be set. In addition, Illa confirmed that his intention is to strictly comply with the agreement with ERC, despite the numerous critical voices that have arisen in the ranks of his party in other regions, who see in the pact the radical transformation of the current regional model.