Tuesday’s session in the Congress of Deputies, in which Junts rejected both the housing decree promoted by Sumar and the investment consortium that ERC agreed with the PSC, is still ongoing. It has led to a confrontation between republicans and post-convergence members that in some cases becomes personal, especially after the intervention of Esquerra’s spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, who named the seven JxCat deputies from the speaker’s podium and called for a review of their asset declarations on the institution’s website profile, implying they had personal and economic interests in blocking the decree.
Read more The workforce at the Gurb plant is wary of the deal between Pascual and Casa Tarradellas
His speech from the Lower House podium opened a hornet’s nest, and if ERC calls for reviewing asset declarations – a post-convergence parliamentarian owns 51% of a real estate company – JxCat replies that the only parliament member who owns a real estate company, also listed on the website profile, is a republican leader. The battle is on.
As things stand, two days later, the spat is not dying down, and the post-convergence cavalry has come out in force against the republican spokesperson, whom they accuse of muddying the political debate as Ciudadanos once did – they point out. In fact, Junts tries not to generalize and confines the clash to Rufián’s figure rather than the party led by Oriol Junqueras, and they reveal that the republican spokesperson in the Lower House has a poor relationship with his colleagues.
But despite seeking damage control focused on the spokesperson, whom Pilar Calvo accuses of using the Congress podium as a “firing squad” to go “after them” the seven Junts deputies, the organization has asked the Mossos d’Esquadra to investigate whether Esquerra orchestrated a disinformation campaign against the parliamentarians, due to a chart circulating online with false information about what JxCat deputies supposedly earn for having rental properties. A republican militant from Barcelona, holding a position in the party’s district leadership, shared the image but deleted it after the post-convergence spokesperson, Miriam Nogueras, challenged the Generalitat police.
“I don’t care about the tension, I have tension for breakfast. The ones who are very tense are three million people who are screwed over by what Junts voted the other day,” Rufián later replied in the corridors of the Chamber, although he made it clear that it is very wrong that deputy Marta Madrenas was harassed on the street, an incident Calvo denounced from the podium.
And in the parallel lane, there is another issue that has opened a rift between the two former partners of the procés, but it has been relegated to the background by the political back-and-forth. It concerns the consideration of the investment consortium, whose debate was overshadowed by Rufián’s outbursts.
The bitter housing debate overshadows the fall of the investment consortium
This matter was the thermometer to gauge the state of relations between Junts and ERC. There has never been a common front of the 14 deputies both groups have in Congress, but there was a sort of tacit pact not to sabotage measures that were significant for either formation and related to self-government. The post-convergence members justify their opposing vote – “Madrid doesn’t need any consortium… what is necessary is that the money is executed or transferred,” they argue – and emphasize that ERC did not warn in advance nor opened any communication or negotiation channel beforehand to address the matter. The PSC Government did. In vain.
Read more The Finnish group Sanoma acquires the publishing house Vicens Vives
Be that as it may, JxCat’s vote against processing the law to create the investment consortium opened a significant rift in already troubled relations. That Rufián and Nogueras have not spoken for some time is known, and that the republican spokesperson’s communication in Madrid with Junts deputies is nonexistent, too. Rufián is the most critical ERC leader of JxCat – he has publicly expressed that he wishes them “political ostracism” for “harming” Catalonia – and some of his strong speeches against the post-convergence members have caused discomfort within his own ranks.
In the past, Rufián has already had other confrontations with Carles Puigdemont’s formation, such as when he said they were “young gentlemen strolling around Europe meeting the wrong people because for a while they thought they were James Bond,” linking his former partner with the Kremlin during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This week’s episode is a new chapter in that saga.
Discontent also in ERC over their spokesperson’s manner in Congress
In any case, the manner of Rufián’s intervention during the debate on the decree law to extend rental contracts, in which tension escalated like never before and Rufián focused his speech on reproaching Junts and pointed to the “personal” interests of some deputies for blocking the decree, has also caused discomfort among some ERC leaders. Not all deputies applauded the spokesperson. Even some former Esquerra deputies have publicly reproached their party colleague, who, when he finished his speech, went to the JxCat bench to hand them sheets with more than 300 responses from users critical of the post-convergence position.
Anyway, while the fire with the top leadership of the republican party has been caused by the vote against the investment consortium – they see Junts as the “party of no” and lament their “little constructive character” for “renouncing gaining sovereignty” – the fight with Rufián centers on housing. In this bitter climate, voices from Esquerra admit their distance from the “targeting” of Junts deputies but regret that this is “covering up” the “blockade” by the post-convergence members of the investment consortium. This has marked a “turning point,” linking the decision to the fact that these are aspects that “affect” Illa’s mandate, and it conditions the framework in which two very relevant issues will have to be addressed for which Junts’ votes are again essential: the write-off of the FLA debt – which, in theory, if voted separately from other initiatives, will have JxCat’s support – and the new financing model, which the post-convergence members oppose, as they did in 2009.
In this context, it is no minor detail that the one who has avoided publicly commenting on everything that has happened is Oriol Junqueras, who wants those bridges to be maintained. Although the codes of Catalan politics have changed, the axis on which it pivots is more ideological than national, and the arithmetic does not make an understanding between ERC and Junts essential, no one wants coexistence to erode further… although that silence also annoys the post-convergence members, who see a “calculated ambiguity” in the Esquerra leader.
Read more Private employers leave the CNIO due to the center’s reputational crisis
