Deputy Glòria Freixa, first secretary of the Parliament’s Board, is considering joining Junts’ primaries to lead the Barcelona list for next year’s municipal elections. She will make a decision in the coming days and could be the fourth contender if the other three who have publicly expressed their willingness to participate in the process at some point are confirmed.
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The JxCat leader held talks yesterday with the party leadership, which will launch the process to choose its mayoral candidate in the Catalan capital on June 1, so that the date to find out who wins, if there are several candidates, will be June 21, thus fulfilling the leadership’s plan to have the matter resolved and on track before summer.
A few months ago, it was already considered possible that Freixa would step forward if a primary process was finally opened, something that will happen following the resignation of the vice president and spokesperson of the organization, Josep Rius, announced on Monday through a letter addressed to the members.
JxCat will activate the process to choose the candidate on June 1 and conclude before Saint John after months of speculation
JxCat’s secretary general, Jordi Turull, met yesterday with the presidents and district councilors of his organization in Barcelona as well as with the party president in the city, councilor Joan Rodríguez, and informed them of the schedule the party leadership is managing for this process, which has been reached after the strong will of Jordi Martí, president of the municipal group in the City Council, to aspire to lead the post-convergent project. Turull also spoke yesterday with the leaders he had on his radar, those who at some point had shown their willingness to lead the project, including Freixa, who is currently the only woman in the race.
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In the same situation as Freixa are former minister Jaume Giró and lawyer and former deputy Jaume-Alonso Cuevillas. Both have expressed their intention to lead the project at different times and are now considering whether to take the step. The only contender who has done so without a doubt is Martí, who is the preferred man of former convergent mayor Xavier Trias. Another person who has been informed that there will finally be a primary process is former health minister Josep Maria Argimon, a more outsider profile who has always appeared on the scene as another option, but less involved in the party’s internal life than the others.
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A deputy since 2018, in the Parliament, beyond her role in the governing body, Freixa is in charge of JxCat’s housing policies and has defended legal initiatives to speed up evictions in occupied flats. In fact, the parliamentary groups are now working on a bill registered by the post-convergent group to enable neighborhood communities to sue squatters when they cause problems and the owner abstains.
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Although she debuted as a parliamentarian after the October 1 referendum and has been in JxCat’s leadership in recent years alongside Turull and Carles Puigdemont, Freixa has always been classified in the party’s order and pragmatic sector. So much so that in the last electoral campaign, in Argelers, she was one of the first to openly claim the figure and legacy of former president Jordi Pujol from the stage.
With Rius, who had the label of the official candidate and was a priori the leadership’s winning bet, out of the race, other names that were waiting for their moment in case a different scenario from the designation of a single candidate opened up appear in the contest.
It should be noted that the initial contest planned between Rius and Martí, to whom various exits were offered and declined, had a reading that went beyond the internal struggle to lead the JxCat project in the Catalan capital, and some saw supporting the latter and his candidacy as an act of rebellion and a way to challenge Waterloo. This last element weighed on Rius’s decision to resign, who pointed out in the letter that the project “must start from the first moment with unity and not confrontation or internal challenge” and considered that the circumstances are not yet given for him to take the lead.
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