Oriol Junqueras or Xavier Godàs? and five other unknowns in the election of the new leadership of ERC | News from Catalonia

Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) celebrates this Saturday the second round in the election to elect its leadership. Militància Decidim, the candidacy of the party’s former president and re-election candidate Oriol Junqueras, is the favorite against Nova Esquerra Nacional, headed by Xavier Godàs and which brings together supporters of the party’s until now general secretary, Marta Rovira. In a process where participation will be key, a little more than 8,000 militants are called to vote. The results will be known at eight in the afternoon.

Junqueras or Godás?

He former vice president and pardoned after being convicted in the trial of process starts as favorite in the race. In the first round, held on November 30, Junquera garnered 3,157 supports (48%), and was 111 votes away from achieving an absolute majority. This would have prevented the more than 8,000 ERC militants with the right to vote from being called to the polls again. Godàs, for his part, obtained 2,308 votes, 35% of the total.

In the arithmetic aspect, this Saturday participation will be key, what do the 824 votes do that supported the candidate defeated in the first round (Foc Nou) and the 19% of members who did not participate in the vote. But in the underlying fight, militancy has to choose between two paths that at first look very similar but with important nuances.

Godàs embodies a sensitivity of the party that considers that, given the change of political times in Catalonia, a change of faces is also necessary in the leadership of Esquerra Republicana. Two facts allow us to defend this change of level: the loss of the pro-independence majority in the Parliament (which made it easier for the PSC to govern again in Catalonia) and the electoral catastrophe of the Republicans (only in the last regional elections they left 180,000 on the road). votes and 13 seats compared to 14-F 2021).

This thesis of renewal, whose promoters are Marta Rovira herself and the former president Pere Aragonès, clashes with the idea of ​​continuity in leadership proposed by Militància Decidim. Both lists mix former senior officials of the party with new faces, but Junqueras remains a candidate for the presidency, which he had held since 2011. He defends that, if re-elected, he can once again take the party to the maximum levels of power and reorganize the party. way for a new independence attack.

Junqueras, among others, has the support of the party’s spokesperson in Congress, Gabriel Rufián; his predecessor, Joan Tardà. The number two candidate is the leader of the Barcelona City Council, Elisanda Alamany. Two former advisors of Pere Aragonès’ Government are also at his side: Joan Ignasi Elena and Ester Capella. Godàs, for its part, has Congressional deputies Teresa Jordà and Pilar Vallugera on the list. Also the vice president of the Parliament, Raquel Sans. Aragonès voted for him in the first round.

Will participation be decisive?

Eight out of ten ERC militants voted in the first round of the leadership election, which like this Saturday’s election will be telematic. This is the new record of participation in an internal ERC vote. The previous one was last July, when the agreement reached with the socialists to invest Salvador Illa was put to a vote, in exchange for a unique financing model for Catalonia. The yes vote prevailed, with 53.5% voting in favor. He no reaped: 44.8% support and participation was 77%.

The figures indicate that the very high participation mainly benefited the candidacy of Godàs and that of Foc Nou, which then thoroughly played its card of being the only one that did not have members of the current Executive on its list. If the endorsements given by each of the candidates are compared with the votes obtained, Junqueras only rose 23%. Godàs achieved an increase of 52% and those of Helena Solà, 76%. Participation is so key that the game will give four previews of the figure before giving the final result, at eight in the afternoon.

What will happen to the 800 votes of the candidacy that did not go to the second round?

Foc Nou was the revelation candidate of the first round, obtaining 824 votes (12%). What emerged as a group of militants that united opposition to the investiture pact for Salvador Illa ended up crystallizing as a third way against Godàs and Junqueras. In an assembly last Thursday, the promoters chose not to give explicit support to any of the lists for this Saturday. However, on the X network, several official messages suggest that there is more harmony with Nova Esquerra Nacional than with Militància Decidim.

The candidacy that had as its main faces Helena Solà, former councilor in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), and the former councilor of the Generalitat Alfred Bosch almost doubled support between the endorsements it received and the votes it finally obtained. Hence, it was a very attractive pool of votes that the Junqueras and Godàs lists have tried to appeal to during the second round campaign. This has led to a certain hardening of the discourse towards the socialists.

What can be expected from the pacts with the socialists?

To begin with, in that race to get closer to Foc Nou, the other two candidates have ended up blessing that the militancy be submitted to whether or not the General Budgets of the State and the Generalitat are to be supported. Both Junqueras and Godàs share that demands must be increased in view of the pending commitments of the investiture agreements, but now this will take place in an uncertain vote.

“It must be clear that we will not sit down to negotiate budgets with the socialists until all the agreements that have already been signed have been fulfilled,” Junqueras said this Friday, after proposing an internal commission to evaluate compliance. Godàs, for his part, has defended that this vote does not have to be binary. Of course, at a time of so much internal division, nothing shields the vote of a very divided militancy from a taste of a second round after the internal Congress.

Will ERC join the Government of Barcelona?

While Junqueras and Godàs agree that they should not join Salvador Illa’s Executive, they differ on what to do in Barcelona City Council. Alamany had an almost ready agreement with Jaume Collboni’s Executive to enter after the last municipal elections. The crisis of the party derived from the bad end of the Junqueras-Rovira tandem blew up an agreement in which they had even already divided which areas it would assume, but which the militancy of the Federation of the Catalan capital of the party never voted for. The terms were also negotiated behind the backs of the ERC councilors, something that the municipal group officially denies. Alamany and the Federation put on hold the vote again on whether to enter or not, but in less than six months a new regional Congress of the party will have to be held.

Is there a risk of splitting?

Recoser is the word most used in recent days by both candidates. But everything indicates that it will not be easy. Junqueras has moderated his language after the campaign began, ensuring that he had been betrayed and that the party’s wounds could not be stitched if they were not cleaned first. Those from Godàs believe that Junqueras will carry out a purge if he wins and see his proposed Truth Commission on the Maragall brothers’ cartels as an instrument to settle accounts with his detractors. Those of former vice president They accuse Nova Esquerra Nacional of wanting to get rid of Junqueras and even playing dirty with discredits on a personal level.

Everything points to a very close result and so both parties will have to take note of how to move forward together from Sunday. For example, Joan Puigcercós won the congress in the first decade of the 2000s with just over 30% of the support. From the outset, a proposal from Godàs that Junqueras has embraced seems to give a little hope on that path: the drafts of the papers to be voted on in March should be written by teams from the three candidates. This shared roadmap would be, in a certain way, the highway where everyone fits.