The president of the UGT trade union in Catalonia, Matías Carnero, has made controversial statements at a trade union event that the Catalan Socialists (PSC) held this Friday at the Axa Auditorium in Barcelona, aimed at the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont. Carnero, who himself fills the symbolic last place on the list in the Socialist candidature for Barcelona for the May 12th election, launched a tirade against the Together for Catalonia (Junts) candidate and expressed disdain about his situation in exile: "This morning, when I opened the letterbox at my house, I found I had received the electoral material of Puigdemont, this gentleman who is out of the country. He is pictured sitting in a car - which by the way is a Volvo, this person who loves his homeland and country", quipped Carnero, amid laughter and applause from the union delegates present. "My question is: why wasn't the photo taken in the trunk of the car?" Most of those present laughed at this phrase, which alludes to the accusation that Puigdemont hid in the boot of a car when he left Catalonia in 2017 - an accusation which is false, the Catalan president himself has denied that he got into a car trunk.
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Carnero, who is also president of the SEAT works committee, added that Junts are "inviting us to give them stick". And his aggressive tone against Carles Puigdemont went even further: "Now they pretend to be defenders of the working class when they are the Catalan right. The other day I heard him say that prime minister Pedro Sánchez should do his crying in private and that what he is doing is indecent. He [Puigdemont] was the one who left crying in the trunk, and I don't know if he had shat or pissed his pants, but he went all the way to Brussels."
The presence of UGT and CCOO leaders
At the event, entitled 'Respectable work, a fundamental right', the unions called for Salvador Illa to lead a "stable, progressive and left-wing" government, while the PSC candidate pledged to listen, in the first place, to the trade union delegations over the issues of "improvement of public services, change in Catalonia's financing system and social dialogue". Among those listening to Illa were the general secretaries of the major UGT and CCOO unions in Catalonia, Camil Ros and Javier Pacheco, in addition to Ros's Spanish counterpart, Pepe Álvarez. During the controversial references made by UGT Catalunya president Carnero, none of the three - Ros, Pacheco and Álvarez - applauded his words. Neither did Salvador Illa, who was looking at the floor.
In fact, Carnero defended that it is "necessary to recover Catalonia and Catalonia must be the point of reference because we have lost a total of 10 years with pro-independence policies that have not improved the lives of the people and have caused the hatred that the rest of Spain has for Catalonia". With the leadership of Pedro Sánchez, according to the UGT president in Catalonia, "the soufflé has gone down" and that is what "politics, dialogue and consensus" must do.