The party of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont denied on Tuesday that the separatist formation was considering joining forces with the centre-right and the far-right to table a motion of no confidence against the government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
The right-wing Catalan separatist formation JxCat, led by Puigdemont, who is in self-exile in Belgium, denied on Tuesday that his party was considering supporting the motion of no confidence tabled by the Partido Popular (EPP) against Sánchez (PSOE/S&D).
“We are not in favour of a motion of censure, far from it”, JxCat sources commented, Spanish public broadcaster RTVE and El País reported.
JxCat’s denial came just hours after the group’s president, Laura Borràs, said he was leaving the door open to joining Partido Popular’s motion to oust Sánchez’s government.
“We are not ruling out absolutely nothing; our votes (for Sánchez) cannot be taken for granted in any case, and I think the government is beginning to understand that”, Borrás told private television station Telecinco on Tuesday morning.
But Borràs was forced to qualify his remarks in the face of a wave of backlash from within Sánchez’s coalition government and from Catalan separatist forces.
“It seems that there is an interest in making me say what I have not said. It is absolutely false that JxCat or its president (Borràs) have opened the door to a motion of censure. Junts is here it has always been: working for Catalonia and enforcing the agreements that have been reached, without taking the votes for granted,”Borràs commented on X.
Despite the nuances, her words sounded the alarm in the progressive executive, whose stability depends on the parliamentary support of JxCat and its left-wing separatist rival, the ERC.
According to party sources, what Borràs wanted to say was that JxCat is not subordinate to the PSOE and that the party demands the fulfilment of the agreement signed with the PSOE.
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The agreement signed in early November 2023 between JxCat and the PSOE secured the Catalan formation’s support for Sánchez’s inauguration and, indirectly, its parliamentary support throughout the legislature (until 2027) in exchange for numerous concessions from Madrid for greater self-government for Catalonia.
It also guaranteed JxCat and ERC the approval of a controversial amnesty law that the PP and Vox (Patriots for Europe) have called unconstitutional, among other generous political concessions.
Despite her subsequent qualification, Borràs’s remarks also triggered a cascade of reactions from the right-wing and far-right camps.
TheVox group in the Catalan parliament called on JxCat “not to be complicit in Sanchez’s corruption” and urged the separatist party to support a – for now hypothetical – motion of no confidence, which the far-right party, the third force in Madrid, would also join.
For her part, government spokeswoman Pilar Alegría (PSOE) on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of JxCat supporting a possible motion against Sanchez, saying that negotiations between Madrid and the separatist party were on track, especially with regard to the approval of the 2025 national budget, the government’s main challenge at the moment.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
Source: euractiv.com
