ERC opens proceedings against Puigtió for saying he wanted to "kick out" the party leadership in Girona

Barcelona / Girona"My intention was to kick them all out and keep Esquerra. And then, to be able to use their electoral resources". This is one of the phrases that Marc Puigtió, ERC candidate for mayor 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 committee met this Tuesday afternoon to open the file and "determine, if applicable, the corresponding responsibilities", they point out from the party, adding that they will not make any further statements on the case until the file is closed.

Puigtió was elected candidate for mayor almost a year ago after tense primaries in which he faced Adam Manyé. In the audio that has been published, Puigtió also criticizes one of the republican councilors of the current municipal government and promises to send the young man with whom he is talking compromising information about him, in exchange for not spreading information against him. "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 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 approaches 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 argues 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 sufficiently assess the interlocutor or the consequences of the conversation". “I have learned from it 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 media, 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 choose the city's mayoral candidate were not smooth, but ended with Manyé challenging the process. Puigtió won the primaries by a single vote, but Manyé asked that the decisive vote, which contained a sticker with the ERC logo over Manyé's name, be counted as valid. The party's guarantees commission, however, determined that the annulled vote was correctly invalidated. ERC's jurists argued this by citing the "jurisprudence of the Electoral Board of Catalonia".

Once ratified as the mayoral candidate, Puigtió did not have the support of the Girona executive, which was in favor of 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 choosing. Faced with this scenario, in February, the executive until then resigned en bloc elegant "lack of democratic guarantees" and practices "contrary to the party's values".