(Argelès-sur-Mer) Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont announced Monday that he would present his candidacy before the new Parliament of Catalonia elected on Sunday to lead this region of northeastern Spain at the head of a government minority grouping together the separatist parties.
Despite the victory of the Catalan branch of the Socialist Party (PSOE) of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in this election, Mr. Puigdemont felt he was in a better position to form a government.
“We think there are options to go to the nomination,” said Mr. Puigdemont, in exile abroad since 2017, during a press conference in Argelès-sur-Mer, in the south of France, a few kilometers from the Spanish border.
Mr. Puigdemont, leader of Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), a center-right party, stressed that the leader of the Catalan Socialist Party, Salvador Illa, did not have an absolute majority in Parliament.
He indicated that he had initiated contacts with the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the other major Catalan independence party, in order to create “a government of sovereignist obedience”.
Sunday’s elections were a heavy defeat for the pro-independence movement, which lost its majority in Parliament, more than six years after the abortive secession attempt in 2017 that Mr. Puigdemont, then president of the region, had led and which forced into exile abroad to escape legal prosecution.
The Catalan socialists won 42 seats in the regional Parliament, which has 135, nine more than in the last election in February 2021.
Junts per Catalunya certainly progressed by obtaining 35 seats, a gain of three seats compared to the previous election, but ERC, the party of the current regional president Pere Aragonès, collapsed by obtaining only 20 seats, i.e. a loss of 13 seats, while the CUP, a far-left independence party, fell from nine to four seats. Between them, these parties would therefore only have 59 seats.
Even including the two seats of the Catalan Alliance, a new far-right separatist formation with which Junts, ERC and the CUP have assured that they would refuse to ally, the independence formations would remain very far from the absolute majority of 68 seats.
Mr. Puigdemont had assured that he would withdraw from local politics in the event of failure.
But he indicated on Monday that he had a better chance than Mr. Illa of forming a government.
“We potentially have more options, as I said during the electoral campaign, to be invested in the second round in Parliament,” he said, in a reference to the fact that a relative majority is sufficient to be invested in the second round.
“We can assemble a coherent majority, not absolute, but a coherent majority, larger than what the candidate of the socialist party can muster,” he said.
“We will focus on it from now on,” he continued, adding that contacts had already been made with ERC.
Despite its defeat, ERC has a key role, because its support appears essential to both the Socialists and Mr. Puigdemont to form a government.