With JxCat's presidential candidate Laura Borràs in Madrid to participate in Congress and also connecting with her colleagues in Catalonia by videoconference, this evening's JxCat campaign meeting in Terrassa focused on the broken promises of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez and on criticism of Socialist candidate Salvador Illa and - by extension - on the effects of a hypothetical tripartite government in Catalonia.
"There is only one real option, which is JxCat with Laura Borràs as president, to stop them - Mrs Albiach, Mr Illa - from doing in Catalonia what they are doing in the city of Barcelona. I don't want to see our nation decline like that," said party president Carles Puigdemont.
He was referring to the situation in the 2019 Barcelona municipal elections when ERC's Ernest Maragall finished first in the election but lost the mayoralty to Ada Colau after a Comuns and Socialists coalition accepted three right-wing investiture votes which were offered purely to prevent a pro-independence government.
VIDEO | Carles Puigdemont joins this evening's JxCat meeting by video link.
To wake up Pedro Sánchez
The head of the JxCat list, without mentioning the ERC party by name, addressed "those people who may intend to vote for other forces or other political spaces thinking that such a thing cannot happen" and he warned them that "it can happen and is happening in Barcelona", where, he recalled, current mayor Ada Colau did not even win the elections.
Puigdemont called for the vote of Catalans on 14th February to get the Pedro Sánchez government to wake up from its mirage of thinking that 1st October is past history. "Let's make reality explode in his face, so that on the night of February 14th they are aware of that once again," he claimed.
Lluís Puig, moved
The meeting in Terrassa was particularly emotional, with the participation of exile Lluís Puig from Brussels, visibly moved, and prisoner Josep Rull, who at the end of the event had to return to Lledoners prison.
From Madrid, where she explained that she had to take part in a motion on the "fake dialogue table", Borràs focused her speech on denouncing Catalonia's fiscal deficit of 40 million euros a day, and she referred to the "study made public today on the difference in funding that Catalonia and the Basque Country receive".
Ask Iceta
"Catalonia has permanently poor funding that will not be solved with a credulous attitude," she warned, in another implicit reference to ERC support for the Spanish executive and after reiterating that the Pedro Sánchez government never fulfills its commitments with Catalonia - which is why JxCat did not support the investiture or the budget.
Borràs explained that tomorrow at the question session held in Congress she will ask the new Spanish territorial minister, Miquel Iceta, what he plans to do to resolve the state's breaches of its agreements on Catalonia.
Rull: "It won't be in vain"
Before these speakers, jailed former Catalan territorial minister Josep Rull took the floor, insisting that all that has happened since 1st October referendum will not be in vain. He asserted that JxCat people want dialogue in depth, but if the other side does not want to open up dialogue in any way, "the alternative cannot be resignation".
The minister reviewed the Catalan independence process from the 2010 Constitution Court ruling against the Statute to the 2017 referendum and warned that "you don't negotiate from a position of giving up your goals. You negotiate from firmness and determination." "The 1st October happened, we will not give it up, the path we took was worth it and it will work for us if we maintain that attitude,” he reiterated.
Josep Rull took part in the JxCat event before leaving for Lledoners
The government that helps the emeritus
The party's spokesperson, Elsa Artadi, also spoke at the event, insisting on critical references to the way the Covid-19 has been managed in Catalonia by the (ERC-led) health ministry. "We want to generate a strong government, with leadership, that makes a change in pandemic management, that listens to all the experts, that works in prevention, that not everything can be based on opening and closing businesses, that technology can be used as well as massive testing,” she warned.
Artadi also criticized Salvador Illa for sending an e-mail in 2017 encouraging Socialist members to go to the anti-independence Catalan Civil Society demonstration, before launching into a list of what the Socialists and their Comuns allies stand for in government. "Their progressiveness is to help a corrupt monarch flee, to give more money to the military, to raise quotas for the self-employed, to maintain the gag law, not close the CIE migrant detention centres, doing nothing when the Spanish army shows signs of fascism, passing measures with the votes of Vox and having Marlaska as minister. All this has nothing progressive about it," she concluded.
Catalan territory and sustainability minister, Damià Calvet, also took part in the meeting, asserting that Catalonia is living in a permanent 155. He called for "fewer Spanish state institutions in Catalonia and more investment".
Lluís Puig during his speech from Terrassa / Julio Díaz
In the main image, Carles Puigdemont speaks by videoconference at the JxCat event in Terrassa / ACN