Salvador Illa

Madrid. Political events closed the electoral marketing campaign in Catalonia, the place regional elections might be held this Sunday to resume the regional Parliament and elect a brand new Government. The 2 favorites to win the elections symbolize diametrically opposed proposals: the candidate of the Socialist Get together of Catalonia (PSC), Salvador Illa, advocates burying the lengthy interval through which the battle for independence has prevailed and consolidating a authorities mannequin with extra autonomy, and the opposite possibility is that of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, the chief and promoter of the unilateral secession technique of October 2017, who carried out the marketing campaign from Brussels, the place he has resided since then for concern of the actions of the Spanish courts. towards him, and who has targeted his marketing campaign on selling a brand new path in direction of definitive independence.

The socialist Salvador Illa begins as the good favourite to win the elections. The previous Minister of Well being of Pedro Sánchez’s authorities through the pandemic has emerged because the stalwart of the socialist challenge in Catalonia, by proposing his personal challenge that may definitively bury the sovereignty course of. Regardless of Illa’s rise within the polls and in Catalan society, his most hopeful outcome (between 40 and 43 deputies) might be inadequate for the formation of a authorities, so he should agree with different forces. Most likely the pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), which can endure the wear and tear and tear of 4 years on the head of the federal government and it’s probably that its chief, Pere Aragonés, is not going to be re-elected. And with the Comuns Sumar coalition. Between the three events, they may add sufficient assist to reissue a brand new left-wing tripartite, much like the one which ruled Catalonia between 2006 and 2010, with the additionally socialist José Montilla on the helm.

Whereas Puigdemont, who has lived in Belgium since November 2017, has carried out his total marketing campaign from a distance, with out taking part within the candidates’ debates (to which he despatched colleagues from his occasion) and who defends his return to Catalonia as a strategy to “restore” the “legitimacy” that existed in 2017 and that, in his opinion, was proscribed by the Spanish courts. His fundamental asset is the independence vote, which in keeping with polls continues to be the bulk in Catalonia. Not like Illa, Puigdemont’s authorities’s fundamental goal is to renew the method of independence of the Spanish State with extra vigor.