The decision by Oriol Junqueras to continue at the head of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), after the comprehensive defeat of the party in the Catalan election last Sunday, is the second important development in 24 hours within the organization, following the announcement from Catalan president Pere Aragonès that he is stepping down as an MP and will limit his institutional role to managing the transition to his successor in the Generalitat. It is obvious that Junqueras, with his decision, seeks to erect a firewall to prevent the whole party from going up in flames via a power struggle that would undoubtedly occur if a vacuum was created. It also places the principal responsibility for the election result where it mostly belongs. ERC has fallen from 32 deputies to 20 and has gone from single-handedly running the government to being the third largest party in Catalonia.
In a political organization like the Republican Left, which in the not-so-distant past demonstrated a strong tendency to self-destruction, Junqueras's decision can be questioned, but it seems the right one, since, in at least four important matters of recent times, and in this order, he was not consulted or even involved: Laura Vilagrà's rise to the Catalan vice-presidency, the hasty and surprising calling of the snap election, the campaign strategy and the preparation of the electoral lists. On all of these points, his silence has had far more to do with discrepancy than anything else. There is also another fact that cannot be ignored and that is easily forgotten: until June 2021, the date on which the Supreme Court ordered his release after the pardons granted by the Pedro Sánchez government - that is, for three years and eight months - he was a prisoner in the jails of Estremera and Lledoners. A situation identical to that of the other prisoners of the independence process, Carme Forcadell, Jordi Turull, Josep Rull, Joaquim Forn, Jordi Cuixart, Jordi Sànchez, Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa.
Junqueras's decision can be questioned but it seems the right one
As in the case of Turull, general secretary of Together for Catalonia (Junts), the only other one of all those mentioned who remains in the forefront of politics, he has carried the weight of a long - 13 years in his case - ban on holding public office, which will be struck out by the amnesty law which has now returned to the Congress of Deputies for its final approval. All that is left is for the Socialist speaker of Congress, Francina Armengol, to place it on the agenda with the utmost urgency, something that the independence movement should already be publicly demanding. It will be then, with the chain of the ban on office removed, that it will be possible to fully evaluate his leadership and his strength as a candidate in an election in Catalonia, which, even if there is not a repeat election, will not be very far away, given the convoluted panorama of current politics in which there is no clear majority and everyone looks nervously at everyone else.
In relation to the amnesty, there was an unexpected event this Tuesday that has several interpretations. It is none other than the decision of the People's Party (PP) to back down in the Senate on its decision to go to the Constitutional Court with a case of institutional conflict with Congress over how the law had been handled in the lower house. The decision of the PP, after the Catalan election and before the European ones, implies retracting the actions already taken on the proposal and leaving its opposition to the amnesty at a level of political and media noise, avoiding the Constitution Court issue. It may be because they were sure to lose it in the court of guarantees, but, in any case, it was already lost, before they decided to withdraw it. If not, for other reasons which, if they are important, we will find out about. Because in politics there are no longer any innocents and things do not happen by chance.