Artadi warns that Junts "will not give away" its votes to Aragonès and urges him to negotiate

BarcelonaJunts' warning to Esquerra the day after the Republicans considered the negotiations for a coalition government to be broken and proposed forming an executive on their own. This Sunday, the vice-president of Junts, Elsa Artadi, has not guaranteed the votes of her party to the ERC candidate, Pere Aragonès, and has warned Oriol Junqueras' party that it will be necessary for them to remain at the table and negotiate in this new scenario. "If ERC now wants to move from a legislature agreement to just an investiture agreement, this has to be negotiated and this agreement has to go through the grassroots of our party", Artadi said this Sunday on Catalunya Ràdio and RAC1. "Junts has never said it will give away free votes to Aragonès", she warned.

Artadi has charged against the republicans for wanting to negotiate "through the media" with the press conference yesterday, Saturday, to announce the will to abandon the coalition with Junts and try to govern alone. "One minute before going to the press conference, Aragonès talks to Jordi Sànchez for one minute. We didn't know all the content of the press conference, nor do we know what happens now", revealed the MP and Junts negotiator. "There is no concrete proposal for an investiture agreement on the table. We, whatever it is, have to end up passing it through the militancy", she insisted, and stressed that ERC has only 33 MPs and needs the support of at least part of her group.

In fact, the Junts MP defended the position of Jordi Sànchez and said that it was "materially impossible" for Aragonès and Sànchez to meet on Friday afternoon. "He had a very limited leave of absence from prison of only half a day. He had no meeting scheduled and couldn't leave everything", commented Artadi, who ended by criticising the "three contradictory messages" from ERC over the course of the week: "First there was the turning point; the second, the ultimatum of 20 May, and then a break and a unilateral withdrawal from the table. It is not normal", concluded the MP and Junts negotiator.

ERC trusts that Junts "will keep its word"

Sergi Sabrià, from the negotiating team of Esquerra, has been convinced that Junts will keep the offer to facilitate a minority government, despite Artadi's warning. "We could not understand that JxCat would not keep their word, they pledged that in no case would they go to elections", he insisted. On the possibility of incorporating MPs of the CUP or the comuns Sabrià has rejected it from the outset because what is needed now is to close this ERC government in minority. "Once the legislature begins, we are open to talk to everyone to strengthen the Government and that the parliamentary majority takes strength in the Government, it is a possibility", he added.