The election candidacy led by the Catalan president-in-exile and MEP, Carles Puigdemont, will go beyond the acronym of the Together for Catalonia party and will bring the president's surname into the brand for the electoral coalition agreed on this Tuesday with seven other parties. The name of the list for the May 12th parliamentary elections will be Junts+ Puigdemont per Catalunya ("Junts+ Puigdemont for Catalonia"), an initiative that takes the spirit of the Trias per Barcelona brand under which former Barcelona mayor Xavier Trias ran in the municipal elections in 2023. In a statement, Junts maintains that the will is "to offer a candidacy that will allow us to face this new stage by incorporating profiles and support from different sectors, with the aim of recovering the strength of unity and returning trust in the Catalan institutions to the citizens".
Both at the presentation in Elna, where Puigdemont announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Generalitat of Catalonia, and at the event in Perpinyà on Tuesday to present the Vernet Accord (the agreement with seven other Catalan parties beyond Junts), the predominant scenography has been for the Junts motifs to disappear and the main colour to be a dark blue - "presidential", say Junts sources - as against the turquoise of the Junts logo. With this aesthetic, the aim is to create a "country list", a goal that the president-in-exile has spoken about from the beginning. In fact, in Elna, the Junts MEP defended a unitary candidacy: "I think I am not wrong if I say that most of us share the idea that the best proposal to correspond to the hopes of the people, to be able to fight with the maximum strength on all fronts, would be a candidacy of unity. [...] Since the experience of [earlier unitary list] Junts pel Sí, there has never been another political proposal as encouraging, as mobilizing and as powerful. [...] ] That's why I've never stopped calling for unity, at the risk of 'preaching in the desert', because when we've made the most progress it's precisely when we've been the most united."
In fact, a few days before Carles Puigdemont confirmed that he would lead the candidacy for the May 12th elections, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, defended the idea of drawing up a list that goes beyond party lines. At Elna, Puigdemont spoke of incorporating independent profiles: "In the pool of resourceful people who have been acquiring experience in recent years, we must continue to incorporate new reference figures and new values that are able to return our fellow citizens' trust in the Catalan institutions".
Creating the electoral list
After the accord signed on Tuesday with the seven parties - Demòcrates, Moviment d'Esquerres, Estat Català, Acció per la República, Reagrupament, Joventut Republicana and Alternativa Verda - the brand 'Junts+ Puigdemont per Catalunya' will have to be registered before Saturday 30th March at 2pm, which is when the deadline expires for registering electoral coalitions. Between April 3rd and 8th, both the parties and the coalitions that participate will have to register their candidacies with the provincial electoral boards. What is already defined is that Carles Puigdemont will lead the list of 'Together + Puigdemont for Catalonia' in Barcelona, Salvador Vergés will do so for Girona, Mònica Sales for Tarragona and Jeannine Abella for Lleida. The party will approve and ratify its lists in a national council meeting on Saturday, April 6th. Next week will be key for defining the full electoral list in each of the demarcations.