The Catalan MP and La Seu d'Urgell deputy mayor Jordi Fàbrega will be the new vice-president of Junts in place of Francesc de Dalmases who left the position after the report by the lawyer Magda Oranich confirmed that he had shown an incorrect attitude with a Catalan public telelision journalist at the end of an interview with the president of the party, Laura Borràs.
The proposal for the new leadership appointment was made by the president of Junts in agreement with the general secretary, Jordi Turull, and will now have to be ratified by the membership. This was all the information that Junts provided this Friday about the Dalmases affair after the meeting of the party's executive that was held yesterday. The spokesperson for the party, Josep Rius, limited himself to insisting that Junts had closed the controversy with his dismissal as vice-president of the party and noted that the executive meeting did not address this issue again, or the new allegations that have become known or situations such as the appearance of a fake social media account to attack members of the party management, which was later shown to be in the hands of a member of the party close to Borràs. On Thursday, the Catalan parliamentary committee on MPs rules met to begin addressing the issue of whether Dalmases had breached the MPs' code of conduct. At the same time, new allegations surfaced in the newspaper El Periódico from five women who denounced that the Junts MEP had committed "abuses of power" in professional and personal relationships.
This Friday, Rius limited himself to talking about Dalmases' replacement to explain that with the addition of the vice mayor of La Seu, Junts sought to underline the strong local government profile of the party and "reinforce the importance of the territorial distribution of its leadership, in particular, the importance of the Pyrenees counties".
Negotiating the budget
As well, the spokesperson explained that the budget meeting held on Wednesday between Junts and the Catalan government was used to address the major budget figures and did not go into the details of the different items. "We don't know the specific figures, what we do know is that this is not the budget of [former Junts minister] Giró", said Rius who once again stressed that it was up to the Catalan executive to explain what support it had to move the budget project forward. Junts will soon present a set of around ten budget proposals that will include social policies, fiscal measures and economic incentives.
This coming Monday in Brussels, Junts members in the Catalan Parliament and the Spanish Congress are to meet the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, to address the Pegasus espionage investigation, the reform of the crime of sedition that the Spanish government is studying, and other issues. With regard to this latter question, Rius reiterated that his party demands the elimination of the crime, not its reduction.
The party's spokesperson also used his press appearance to rail against the report that Spain's Central Electoral Commission made public yesterday in which it again denied that Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Jordi Solé had assumed the status of MEPs because they had never sworn on the Spanish Constitution.