Joan Carretero: the first former minister to announce the vote for Aliança Catalana

BarcelonaAnti-processist, pro-Israeli, and Islamophobic. With this introduction, it was not difficult to foresee that Joan Carretero would support Aliança Catalana, as has ended up happening. He is the first former minister of the Generalitat to publicly position himself in favor of Sílvia Orriols' party. He announced it in a tweet just after the Diada following the insults that the party leader received during the anti-fascist protests at the Fossar and the September 11th demonstration, and also due to an incident he suffered in Puigcerdà. "These days AC has won, at minimum, 1 vote: the shouts of “Jew” at Sílvia Orriols and the tug this morning by a Moorish SOB (redundancy) who wanted to steal the chain I wear around my neck with the Magen David have made up my mind," he wrote in reference to the Star of David, the six-pointed symbol associated with the Jewish people and Judaism, which he wore around his neck. "Maybe they won't change anything, however this pisses off all those who have filled Catalonia with thieves, rapists, and murderers. I continue with the thought that one cannot participate in the Spanish institutions in Catalonia. We will annoy the processists," he added in the tweet.

In conversation with ARA, Carretero reaffirms that he will vote for Aliança Catalana in the next Catalan elections, but that he will do so simply as a protest vote. "No support; a vote to annoy the progressives and the pro-independence movement, even knowing that nothing is settled in the Parliament," he declares. In fact, the former Republican minister presented Parlament Lliure a year ago, a project to create a Catalan chamber alternative to the Parliament that would make the independence of Catalonia effective with new representatives outside the Spanish institutional framework. An initiative that has not taken root, as shown by the platform's inactivity on social media since the month of November. The former minister reveals that the leadership of Aliança offered him a few days ago to be the candidate in Puigcerdà, but that he refused: "The offer was before the tweet, but I am old now and only interested in independence," he says.

The first minister expelled from Maragall's tripartite government

Before presenting this new project, Carretero had been in a discreet background after having been one of the best-known leaders within the independence movement during the 2000s. After joining Esquerra in 1990, five years later he would become the mayor of Puigcerdà, a position he held until December 2003, when President Pasqual Maragall appointed him as Minister of Governance and Public Administrations.

Carretero lasted in the position for three years. He was dismissed by Maragall on April 20, 2006, because, as an ERC minister, he publicly criticized the cuts to the Statute and the position of the Spanish president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Maragall considered that his statements were incompatible with his responsibility within the Government. The dismissal took place before the expulsion of all ERC ministers, in the context of the Statute crisis, for calling for a vote against the text in the referendum.

The re-edition of a second tripartite government with the PSC led Carretero to lead an internal split of ERC in 2007. He created the Reagrupament current, critical of the ERC leadership and its participation in the Government with the PSC. In 2008, he ran for the presidency of ERC and came in second, behind Joan Puigcercós. His defeat at the republican congress led him to leave ERC in 2009 after the disciplinary proceedings opened by the republican leadership following his disagreements with the party's direction. In the 2010 Catalan elections, Reagrupament ran as a candidate separately from Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència, which is the one that ended up taking the unilateralist vote.