The Together for Catalonia (JxCat) candidate for the Catalan presidency, Laura Borràs, has asserted this Tuesday that the elections to the Catalan parliament should be held on 14th February as planned, despite the serious situation of the coronavirus pandemic.
"We continue to work under the assumption that the elections will be held [on the scheduled date]. The country needs elections, it needs a change of government," she argued, just hours before the start of the ten-day municipal confinement of Catalonia declared by the government, which begins at midnight as Wednesday becomes Thursday.
The Catalan executive has proposed nine scenarios to the party committee - representing all parties currently represented in the Catalan chamber - to decide whether or not to maintain the election date, based on the speed of transmission of the disease and the level of hospital admissions. Under this proposal, if there were severe restrictions on activities or another full stay-home lockdown, the elections would be postponed.
The first assessment of the viability of the 14th February date is scheduled for January 15th, and the situation will be reviewed weekly to decide whether or not to maintain the date.
Agreement with Left Movement
Borràs made these statements at a press conference at which she presented JxCat's electoral agreement with Moviment d'Esquerres (Left Movement), the party that emerged from a split in the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and which in the previous elections to the Catalan Parliament ran with the Republican Left (ERC). Last week, JxCat presented a similar agreement with Democrates, which also ran with ERC in the 2017 elections.
The representatives of the Left Movement, Josep Serra and Jordi Serra, in addition to emphasizing the "transversality" of JxCat, argued the decision to stand with the party led from exile by Carles Puigdemont in the next elections due to the "need to show the unity" of pro-independence political forces in the face of state repression, and not just as a strategic unit but as an "electoral unit."
JxCat selected Laura Borràs as its effective candidate to preside the government of the Generalitat in November. However, party leader Puigdemont is the symbolic number one name on the list for the Barcelona constituency, with Borràs as number two.
Laura Borràs with Josep Serra and Jordi Serra of Moviment d'Esquerres,
In the same press appearance, the JxCat candidate also reported the party's overwhelming success in collecting the voter endorsements required to run in the elections. Despite the existence of JxCat as an electoral alliance since 2017, it was only formed as a party in July 2020, and had no electoral rights. Thus the signatures were necessary.