Fidel Masreal – BARCELONA – Friday, 10/07/2020
Puigdemont, in the Brussels court where a hearing on a new European arrest warrant is held, on June 23. AFP / JOHN THYS
The political divergences between the leadership of the PDECat and those loyal to the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, are on the way to open war on a legal, legal and ethical level. The evident political discrepancy for years is now heading down the court battle to win the electoral brand under which both have stood together so far: Junts per Catalunya. Puigdemont has legally seized the name from the PDECat through a notarized document and the post-convergent party considers that this action breaks the written agreements and has little ethical character.
As already recorded in the party registry of the Ministry of the Interior, the former president of the Junts per Catalunya party, Laia Canet – a member of the PDECat in Barcelona – has ceased to be so and now this position is held by Carles Valls, mayor of Balenyà, akin to Puigdemont. In addition, the training headquarters (which is a party without activity, simply based until now on displaying the electoral brand) has moved from the Rambla de Catalunya to Avenida Diagonal in Barcelona, specifically number 505, floor 3, door 1 , as Catalunya Ràdio has advanced this Friday and has been able to confirm EL PERIÓDICO.
Breaking written agreements, unethical
The PDECat management has received the news with amazement, after a few days ago the former ANC leader Jordi Sànchez, communicated the move to David Bonvehí. This, in a harsh communiqué, has accused Sànchez and the faithful to Puigdemont of “breaking not only with the given word but even with the signed agreements”, which consisted in that any change in JxCat should be “agreed and guaranteed” by the PDECat. The party president accuses the other party of disregarding “all the principles of good faith and trust that must govern ethical and political behavior.” The PDECat has announced consultations in the party register on the Puigdemont maneuver and insists that JxCat cannot be understood without the post-convergent political force.
The Puigdemont environment avoided answering this harsh statement. Sources from this environment consulted limited themselves to ensuring that the maneuver is legal because it is supported by notarial documents. The faithful to the ‘expresident’ have maintained, since they announced the creation of another party a week ago, that they will keep the Junts per Catalunya brand, because they consider that it is associated with Puigdemont and the movement they claim to represent, which goes beyond PDECat.
Instead, the CDC heirloom formation led by David Bonvehí replies that the brand and the JxCat party is theirs. Not surprisingly, in the 2017 regional elections, JxCat was registered as a coalition between Convergència and the PDECat. This was stated by the spokesman for the formation, Marc Solsona, in an interview in EL PERIÓDICO last week, when the announcement of a new party by Puigdemont’s followers became official.
In 2018, the PDECat, then headed by the current general secretary of the newborn Partit Nacionalista de Catalunya (PNC), Marta Pascal, registered JxCat in the party registry of the Ministry of the Interior. She registered it in the name of three people, all of them members of the PDECat, among whom Laia Canet Sarri, municipal councilor of the Partit Democrat in the Eixample district of Barcelona, appeared as president.
The Puigdemont environment has maneuvered through a group of lawyers to replace those three people and make Carles Valls president, without the authorization of the PDECat management. According to the post-convergent party, attorney Xavier Solà intervened in this operation, accused and convicted of irregularities in the management of the Catalan Association of Municipis, after having profited, along with Josep Maria Matas, for having looted around a million euros from the municipal entity linked to the old CiU.
A deaf battle
This battle for the control of the name can open a total war that uncovers the set of conflicts until now kept under lock and key that have to do with issues as little political as, for example, the distribution of the money that the parliamentary group of Junts per Catalunya has received since 2017. The PDECat maintains that neither this nor other pacts have been respected, such as those referring to the creation of joint decision-making bodies and liaison committees between the two sensitivities. These discrepancies have been transferred to decision-making on the composition of electoral lists or to the PDECat leadership itself, from which Puigdemont dislodged Marta Pascal due to the political differences that the two kept for months.
This conflict hampers the scarce possibilities of agreement between the two trends in the post-convergence, a few days after the new formation of Puigdemont was constituted on the 25th, on a day in which the PDECat also plans to meet its national council to address the situation. The battle has included an exchange of manifests. One in favor of Puigdemont, supported by ‘consellers’ such as Damià Calvet or Jordi Puigneró, as well as pro-independence prisoners such as Josep Rull, Jordi Turull and Joaquim Forn, and with the support of PDECat territorial offices; another, with dozens of mayors and post-convergent party leaders in favor of keeping this formation alive and not dissolving it in the new political organization promoted by Puigdemont.
The ‘expresident’ already promoted exactly two years ago the creation of a movement, the Crida Nacional per la República, which has decided to dissolve into the new structure that will be created and that the ‘expresident’ is determined to baptize with the name Junts per Catalunya , since the faithful to the ‘expresident’ are convinced that JxCat without Puigdemon has no senset. The PDECat, on the other hand, remembers that it has been its organizational structure and its cadres that have made JxCat possible during these years.
https://www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20200710/puigdemont-arrebata-marca-jxcat-pdecat-8035121
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