Puigdemont's government in exile has never worked as he wanted

BarcelonaOn October 30, 2018, the Council of the Republic was presented at the Palau de la Generalitat in a solemn event packed with parliamentarians from JxCat and ERC, senior officials and the entire executive. A month and a half later it did so in Belgium with the same solemnity and with a hug between President Quim Torra and Vice President Pere Aragonès that symbolized the unity between the two great pro-independence forces, who had been fighting for months to define what the powers of the body should be. The Council ended up being one of the main investiture agreements between the Junta members and the Republicans and was to serve to internationalize the conflict and weave the strategy to follow away from the institutions.

Eight years later, the balance is not what Carles Puigdemont, its president since then and until a few months ago, had envisioned. The Council, which embodied the legitimacy of the 1-O government, has not become the executive or the Parliament in exile and is the paradigm of the division of the independence movement, with internal quarrels and accusations included. The disagreements did not take long to surface. The CUP, from the start, disassociated itself because it considered it to be "a symbolic institution". Poble Lliure, one of the CUP factions, would end up getting involved, but would end up leaving due to "the lack of transversality".

ERC, which arrived dragging its feet, never got fully involved because it saw it as a satellite of Junts and a spokesperson for Puigdemont's strategy, which sought to erode the negotiation with the PSOE, which at that time was only practiced by the Republicans. "At first we wanted to be everywhere but we were not enthusiastic, and we were immediately captured by the convergent space," denounces Isaac Peraire, a member of the ERC leadership and representing the Consell in the first years of life together with Rut Ribas. When the deputy left to enter the Parliament table, she was not replaced, which highlighted the lack of interest of the Republicans. Junts refutes the Republicans' arguments by pointing out that if the initial objective has not been met it has been precisely because Esquerra never wanted to get involved.

The breakup comes two years after its foundation, at the end of 2020. Peraire demands to "preserve" the Consell before the elections of 14-F the following year and that its activity be stopped until after the elections, but the government of the entity rejects it. The Republicans would no longer attend the founding act of the assembly of representatives of the Consell in the Generalitat, arguing that the entity neither internationalized nor united the movement, and Peraire would stop attending the meetings. ERC would not be there, but the thirty deputies of Junts, the five from PDECat –integrated into the JxCat group– and the three from Demòcrates –increasingly closer to Puigdemont's party– would be. Both would form, from the first moment, part of the entity's bodies.

The victory of the Republicans over the post-convergents in those 2021 elections was the final blow. The new president, Pere Aragonès, did not want an institution that would protect him from exile as a "legitimate government" removed by 155, and the investiture pact included a remodeling of the project that was never consummated.

The 2017 General Staff that was not

"Initially, it seemed that the intention was to reproduce the general staff prior to 2017, with all the parties and entities, as the ANC wanted, but the fact that neither ERC nor the CUP nor Òmnium were betting heavily prevented this," laments Elisenda Paluzie, former president of the Assembly and member of the Consell during the Council. "The fact that the structure of the Consell had been growing in parallel with the creation of the local councils and the assembly of representatives elected by the registered members also complicated things further," she adds. "If it was going to be the government in exile, why did they have to create local councils?" asks Peraire.

But without the support of both pro-independence parties, internal problems also began to undermine the entity, with divergences between the government of the Consell, led by Puigdemont, and the assembly of representatives. The most relevant, the approval of a resolution of the assembly to "block" the negotiations with the PSOE that Puigdemont himself led on behalf of Junts while he was still president of the Consell. The dispute would end with a remodeling of the Assembly, which would end up taking away power from him. "Beyond the direct link with exile and the rhetorical appeal to the declaration of independence, the concretion in an operational organizational model and the functions that it should fulfill have failed from the beginning," concludes the former president of the ANC.

Now a new president is elected. In a few hours it will be known If it is Toni Comín, who argues that the Consell should remain in exile and he should be its president, or one of his rivals, Jordi Domingo and Montserrat Duran (Antoni Walker Castelló is also running). Puigdemont has not gotten involved in the campaign, but it has been made clear that he is committed to the renewal of an entity that, without his leadership, runs the risk of irrelevance.