Marta Rovira, The secretary general of the ERC bid farewell to the political front line this Monday, during a public conference, after 13 years in office. He will leave the leadership of the party on November 30, the day of the election of the party congress, and from this week his position will be in office since on Tuesday the candidates who aspire to control the formation will be announced. Rovira took advantage of the conference to take stock of her 13 years as general secretary but, above all, she harshly attacked Oriol Junqueras.
The “number two” of ERC, who has controlled the formation without Junqueras since June, indicated that, from her point of view, “there must be a new direction in the independence movement”, which is why she decided to take its distances from the political front line. A decision which, according to the leader of Junts, should be adopted, Carles Puigdemont, and above all, the one who, until a few weeks ago, was president of ERC. “Does anyone really believe that those of us who couldn’t [la independencia] Can we fix it? For seven years they have shown that they are incapable,” he said, referring to Junqueras and Puigdemont.
But above all, Rovira harshly attacked the one with whom he formed a political tandem in the leadership of the ERC since 2011. De Junqueras and his team declared that, in recent weeks, in the aim of winning the congress, “this generates toxicity”. , because “they are running to save the party from the current leadership”, a direction, recalled the leader, which was that of Junqueras. “We are the management of Oriol Junqueras, we know each other well. I thought the 13 years with Junqueras had to end well, but no,” he lamented.
In this sense, the general secretary held Junqueras responsible for all the party’s decisions and accused him of holding, from now on, “a negative discourse, against, in large part, his team.” Rovira justified the content of the conference by summoning Junqueras “and six people from his team”, but since his return from Switzerland in July, “We have only seen each other for 10 minutes in Cantallops [pueblo de Gerona en el que Rovira hizo el primer acto tras volver a España y al que acudió Junqueras]”. And he addressed him with a request: “Everything has an end. Let us not do it separated and divided.
Thus, Rovira launched himself against Junqueras, whom he accused of having set in motion “a parallel structure” in discussions in which she was not present and in which important decisions were made such as the pacts with the PSC (in the deputations, the Barcelona City Hall and to place ERC officials close to Junqueras in the Generalitat of Salvador Illa), the negotiation of the Amnesty Law and, even, one of the Deputies in Congress, apart from “the leadership” and, of course, himself, assured. And he defended that when Junqueras was in prison, he was never outside the party and without support, legal or political, as the former president of the ERC himself denounced.
“There are those who believe that the worst will be the best for him”
“To win the congress [que se cierra el 30 de noviembre con la jornada electoral]there are those who believe that the worst will be the best for him; but I think it’s worse for the common project,” said Rovira, adding that “for several months, there have been those who have insisted that “cannot be sewn” the internal division, due to the congress and the poor electoral results of the last regional elections which left the ERC outside the Generalitat.
“Thinking differently cannot penalize anyone and thinking differently can never divide,” he said, then calling on the four options who aspire to succeed the current leadership to “confront ideas” and “stop confronting people.” . Another direct message against Junqueras, who he also implied did not handle well on October 1, 2017: “Some have forgotten that same night [del 1 de octubre de 2017, tras el referéndum] pull the cart and make decisions. Yes, he praised Carme Forcadell, presenter of her conference and president of Parliament in 2017, because “she was the only leadership that dared to declare independence”. A dart also against Puigdemont, who left Spain a few days later.
Regarding the latest ERC agreements, the politician who is on the exit ramp revealed that “the management”, of which she was part, did not take into account her opinion against the formation of an agreement with the PSC in the deputations and came closer to an agreement with the socialists of Barcelona City Hall. He also criticized the ERC leader in the Catalan capital, Elisenda Alamany, which is “number two” in Junqueras’ candidacy.
And, in this sense, Rovira linked the fact that the abandonment of the municipalities in the Barcelona negotiations, which the ERC carried out only with the PSC, had consequences in Parliament: the municipalities destroyed the accounts of Aragonès and he had to call elections (the lists of which did not have his approval, he assured). For Rovira, it is not fair that Junqueras does not want to assume, now, this responsibility.
“We are not Spanish reformists”
However, he defended the agreement with the PSOE in Congress, which allows Pedro Sanchez maintain La Moncloa. It did so because it allows the ERC to move away from federalism and towards the goal of independence. “We are moving forward step by step because we cannot do it otherwise in the context we have,” he recalled. And he added that no one in the PSOE asked them to “give up anything”, he insisted that pardons and the reform of the Penal Code (elimination of sedition) were not demands of the ERC (the objective was amnesty) and he assured that: “We are not Spanish reformists”.
In this sense, he justified what had been done in 2017. “We sowed a seed that We will try to germinate it. We internationalized the cause and we learned a lot to be able to do better next time. This gives us the political power to win the self-determination referendum. “I’ve been there, I’ll do it again, and I’ll be there again.” Since 2011, the event has brought together members of the executives who accepted the invitation, including Aragonès, Marta Vilalta, Raquel Sans, Dolors Bassa and Josep Maria Jové. Basically, those who support the list of Xavier Godàs.
Beyond the harsh criticism addressed to Junqueras, the leader of the ERC gave a positive and, at certain moments (economic, organizational, etc.) triumphalist assessment of her 13 years as general secretary. He apologized once again for the management of the “Maragall posters” affair, carried out by the party which used Pasqual Maragall’s Alzheimer’s disease to win votes in 2023. He defined himself as “socialist” and “independence” and declared that his references in the game that they were Josep-Lluis Carod-Rovira (who is no longer an activist), Joan Puigcercós, Joan Ridao, Xavier Vendrell and, with a small mouth, Junqueras himself.
