There will not be debates - not in plural, that is. Pere Aragonès's request for a three-way Catalan election debate to be held between himself, Salvador Illa and Carles Puigdemont has been born dead and holds no interest for his opponents. Nor will there be a face-to-face between Aragonès and Illa, nor between Aragonès and Puigdemont. The Catalan president and Republican Left (ERC) candidate, who has launched the proposals, has been jilted at a time when both the Catalan Socialist (PSC) list leader and the Junts+ Puigdemont candidate are trying to engage in a one-on-one battle that would leave Aragonès to one side, in an attempt, above all by Puigdemont, to open up a significant distance over the incumbent.
So far, or at least in the polls that have been published recently, there has only been poll in which the Junts candidate had an advantage as large as five seats over Aragonès. In the others, the margin was much narrower. With the present script, only the debate on Catalan public channel TV3 is certain for all the candidates with current parliamentary representation. We are therefore talking about an eight-person debate between Aragonès, Illa, Jéssica Albiach (Comuns), Ignacio Garriga (Vox), Carlos Carrizosa (Ciudadanos), Alejandro Fernández (People's Party), Laia Estrada (CUP) and as for Junts, the representative cannot be Puigdemont, since he can't cross the border without going to prison, and having ruled out taking part via video conference, a very poor formula for television.
Puigdemont's chair will not, however, remain empty and it will be Josep Rull - number three in the current candidacy for Barcelona and former Catalan territorial and sustainability minister until the dissolution of the government under Article 155 of the Constitution - who will occupy it. Junts has opted for a politician who was convicted in the Supreme Court leaders' trial of 2019, sentenced to more than ten years in prison as well as being banned from holding office, who left Lledoners prison through a pardon from the Spanish government. He has given years of service, both in party structures and in legislative tasks as a parliamentarian over more than two decades.
With the present script, only the debate on Catalonia's TV3 is certain for all the candidates with current parliamentary representation
Once the debates proposed by Aragonès have been discarded, and with the TV3 encounter as the star attraction, there is only the question mark - very small, if not invisible - that a face-off between Illa and Puigdemont will find a way to happen. For this to take place, two circumstances would have to occur which, as of now, do not apply. One, for the Socialist candidate would have to accept a debate outside the Principality of Catalonia and, two, that both would say yes to confronting each other, face-to-face. It would, without a doubt, be a morbid and risky contest. The only indisputable benefit, and both know it, would be a polarization of the campaign.