Junts' candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemontthreatens a new unilateral declaration of independence if he wins the elections and Pedro Sanchez He does not agree to allow “the holding of a self-determination referendum, not a consultation or substitutes, which then slip you a Statute.”
Puigdemont, in a conference in France in which he gloated about Sánchez, announced that “in this legislature we will propose to the State the holding of a self-determination referendum, in a more politically favorable context than what we had in 2017.” But he warns that “we have to take advantage of the learning and knowledge of what has been done so far to do it better.”
The former Catalan president who promoted the most important blow that has been dealt to Spanish democracyhas also warned his new PSOE partners and especially Sánchez that “if the negotiation path does not bear fruit and drags on without negotiation, making things dizzy, if we see that there is a delay, we we will not give up assuming full independence “if it is the will of the Catalans.”
Appealing to the rest of the pro-independence parties that are running in these elections, the Junts candidate has stated that “It would be unacceptable not to take advantage of all the knowledge we have To do it much better, we don't have to be in a hurry, but we can't stop.”
In his opinion, and recalling how, thanks to the need for separatist votes, Pedro Sánchez changed his mind regarding the amnesty, the leader of Junts has stated that “the referendum is as possible as the amnesty, there is no constitutional impediment for it.” “A referendum is organized to ask all Catalans.”
Puigdemont can run in the Catalan elections whenever he does not meet the ineligibility requirements set out in the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG). He is not serving a prison sentence or disqualification for any conviction, nor has he ever been convicted of crimes of terrorism or rebellion.
It is worth remembering that the Junts leader already appeared without problems in the 2017 and 2021 elections, when he was also being prosecuted in absentia for the 'procés' cause. In the same way as then, although he failed to comply, he has promised to be present at the investiture debate if the Catalans elect him as the next president of the Generalitat. He has said that if he has the votes “he will do it no matter what the judges say.”
“It is assumed that the judges will have applied the provisions provided for in the amnesty law, but if they adopt an attitude of rebellion and insubordination and refuse to comply with the law, I will also attend the plenary session of Parliament if I have the majority to be invested,” he said. Puigdemont warned in front of a thousand people who have traveled to Elna and flanked by the leaders of Junts and his family.
And it is that in the event that the Junts leader gathered the necessary votes to once again preside over the Generalitat of Catalonia, his investiture would depend on the national arrest warrant that he has active for the cause of the 'procés', on the deadlines for processing the amnesty law that is in the hands of the Senate and its subsequent application by the judges.
After the official announcement this Thursday that Puigdemont will be 'number one' on the Junts lists for the next Catalan elections, a series of scenarios and their respective legal doubts open up. Specifically, because the former Catalan president and MEP has had to appear before the Spanish Justice since 2017 – when the Supreme Court prosecuted him in absentia in the procedure relating to the process– and the law that aims to forgive more than a decade of the Catalan independence process has not yet been approved.