The Pandora's box which has been opened by the Oranich report and its conclusions on the incorrect actions by the parliamentary deputy Francesc de Dalmases with a TV3 journalist had its first consequences this Tuesday. Dalmases has resigned as vice-president of Together for Catalonia (Junts), member of the party executive and also as member of the parliamentary committee for the Catalan public broadcasting corporation. The executive unanimously accepted his resignation after a heated three-hour meeting in which many of its members demanded that he leave his leadership role and which began with a request from the party president, Laura Borràs, requesting a cancellation because Dalmases was in hospital after an anxiety attack. The request was not accepted and in a charged atmosphere, with significant silences from those aligned with the laurista current of Junts, the suspended speaker of the Catalan Parliament lost her right-hand man.
It is, therefore, a very significant blow for Borràs, since he was a key element in her hard core and, in fact, it is not easy to find photos in which they are not together at parliamentary or party events or those around the territory. Dalmases has served, in the shadows, as her main court advisor on all kinds of issues and it was the party president who proposed him as her key person of confidence in the negotiation with Jordi Turull to agree on the Junts vice-presidencies in the party congress held this past June in Argelers. All this has made him, for some time, a major target in the internal struggle that the party is experiencing, subjected to a permanent stress test, between, on the one hand, the leaders who not even 20 days ago advocated leaving the government, and those who argued that it was better to work from within the executive to correct the course traced out by Pere Aragonès.
It is one of the paradoxes, between comic and tragic, of that abrupt departure from the government, that one of the accusations which supporters of remaining within the Catalan executive had to put up with was that they did it for the salaries they were receiving and that now this same recrimination has turned around like a boomerang to collide with Dalmases for having resigned from the organic positions within the party yet maintaining, for now at least, his seat as a deputy. A situation whose permanence we can only wait and watch, because the parliamentary parties have already asked the president of the deputies committee on the Statute of Autonomy - Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, also a laurista - to call a meeting it to analyze if his intimidation of the TV3 journalist is in accordance with the ethical code of a parliamentarian and, if not, what are the consequences? The chances of this initiative prospering are uncertain, although, at least, the parliamentary majority to produce a critical report exists, but it is not so evident that it could a force a resignation or dismissal as a deputy.
In any case, the erosion that the party founded by president Puigdemont is suffering is not minor, since it is in a negative vortex from which it does not seem to know how to extricate itself and which concerns a significant part of its electoral base. No one is unaware that the two opposing sectors maintain a rivalry that emerges every time there is a vote, a controversy, a discussion, an election. The general secretary, Jordi Turull, is making efforts to rebuild the unity, but it could be that he is attempting to mix oil and water: an impossible mission. If you take into account that Junts has already experienced a full-on internal war in the form of the consultation of the party membership on its departure from the Catalan government, the fact that a little more than two weeks later it has been sucked into a tornado as powerful as that of the Dalmases affair should be cause for reflection.
Because, with so much noise enveloping it, the only thing that can happen to Junts is to fail to find its way and remain trapped in its labyrinth.