ERC opens a file on Puigtió for saying he wanted to "kick out" the party's leadership in Girona

Barcelona / Girona"My intention was to kick them all out and keep Esquerra. And then, to be able to use its electoral resources". This is one of the phrases that Marc Puigtió, ERC's mayoral candidate in Girona, utters in a conversation with a young man linked to Vox, responsible for the Instagram profile Girona Perduda, which spreads disinformation and messages of insecurity in the city. The young man secretly recorded the conversation and has made it public on social media in recent hours. Following this leak, the party has opened an informational file to gather all the information and make a decision. Specifically, the ERC ethics commission met this Tuesday afternoon to open the file and "determine, where appropriate, the corresponding responsibilities", they point out from the party, which adds that it will not make any further assessment of the case until the file is closed.

Puigtió was elected mayoral candidate almost a year ago after tense primaries in which he faced Adam Manyé. In fact, in the audio that has been published, Puigtió also criticizes Manyé and promises to send the young man he is talking to compromised information about him, in exchange for not spreading information against him. Furthermore, he reaffirms that he wants to get rid of the current councillors of the party in the consistory. "I have everyone angry because I am leading a new project and I don't want any of those who are in the City Council and in the party now", states Puigtió. In an interview with Catalunya Ràdio, the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, who until now had endorsed Puigtió's candidacy, has defended the opening of the file to "gather all the information" and make a decision.

Puigtió, for his part, has sent a letter to the militants in which he admits that the conversations include "expressions and proposals that are not adequate" and that may have caused "discomfort, disappointment or distrust". However, the candidate does not respond to the content of the statements and defends that the audio is a montage with edited fragments from different days in informal conversations. He also assures that he makes himself available to the militants to give explanations, listen to criticisms and try to repair trust. Finally, he acknowledges that "I did not assess the interlocutor or the consequences of the conversation well enough". "I have learned and I commit that a situation like this will not happen again", he states.

The leak has already had its first political consequence. Karim Sabni El Garraf, former secretary of image and communication and citizenship of ERC in Girona, has announced that he is stepping aside. "I am doing it out of coherence," he wrote on social networks, where he also defended that "anti-fascism, republican values and the left do not admit ambiguities".

Puigtió forced the local executive to resign to place his allies

The primaries to elect the city's mayoral candidate were not smooth, but ended with the process being challenged by Manyé. Puigtió won the primaries by a single vote, but Manyé asked that the decisive vote, which contained a sticker with the ERC logo over candidate Manyé's name, be counted as valid. The party's guarantees commission, however, determined that the annulled vote was correctly invalidated. ERC jurists argued this by taking the "jurisprudence of the Electoral Board of Catalonia".

Once ratified as mayoral candidate, Puigtió did not have the support of the Girona executive, which favored Manyé, so he incorporated new party members and initiated the procedures to move forward with a motion of no confidence with the aim of renewing the executive with people of his own inclination. Faced with this scenario, in February, the executive until then resigned en bloc alleging "lack of democratic guarantees" and practices "contrary to the party's values".