The ERC lists for the general elections of 23-J will force the Government of Aragonès to retouch

Teresa Jordà, former mayoress of Ripoll (Girona) and current advisor for Climate Action in the Catalan Executive headed by Pere Aragonès, will be the number two of Gabriel Rufián on the list for Barcelona of ERC for the general elections on July 23. The appointment of Jordà is a gesture to the most pro-independence wing of the party, which attributes the poor results obtained in the May municipal elections to the low presence of that discourse. The proposal (the bases have yet to endorse that candidacy) leads to retouching the regional government to replace the counselor.

“We entrust them with the defense of Catalonia and the cause of independence,” said the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, this Saturday in his speech before the National Council that the formation held in Barcelona. He former vice president he had annoyed the most independentist bases of the party by handpicking Rufián, but now he compensates them with the appointment of the counselor. The tandem for 23-J will have to be voted for by the militancy shortly.

ERC and Junts per Catalunya agreed, after the regional elections of February 2021, an Executive in which, for the first time, the Republicans had the presidency. The internal clashes, caused by the management of the dialogue with the central government of Pedro Sánchez, led to the fact that in October 2022 the bases of the formation founded by Carles Puigdemont voted to leave the Government. ERC then opted for a monochrome adventure, alone and with meager support in Parliament.

The electoral fiasco of the last municipal elections of 28-M left ERC plunged into a deep shock from which he is now trying to recover. Some voices in the party, before the municipal elections, raised the possibility of implementing changes in the Executive to give it strength before the second part of the legislature, which will end in 2025. But the loss of up to 300,000 votes in the 28-M elections he aborted any proposal that could be read as a sign of weakness.

The ERC leadership has now made a virtue of weakness and the figure of Jordà allows, in some way, to face two problems that the Republicans have on the table. Last Tuesday, most of the interventions in the open assembly after the elections stressed the need to raise decibels to the independence claim. Although the path of dialogue is not renounced, many grassroots militants criticized that the party’s initials on this axis have been decaffeinated. Jordà is one of the visible faces of the secessionist soul of ERC and that helps to generate complicity.

The hole that Jordà will in all probability leave in the Government (ERC obtained 13 deputies in 2019, and therefore his seat is taken for granted) will imply, at least, his replacement. Until now, Jordà has managed to avoid the controversy over the anti-drought measures and has kept the debate on the deployment of wind farms in places as delicate as the Gulf of Roses under control. Officially, in the Palau de la Generalitat they deny that more changes are going to take place. But no one escapes the possibility that the remodeling of the Executive is broader.

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