Junts challenges Feijóo to meet with Puigdemont: "If he has a serious motion offer, let him explain it to us in Waterloo"

BarcelonaThe Secretary General of Junts, Jordi Turull, has challenged Alberto Núñez Feijóo to meet with Carles Puigdemont in Waterloo if he wants to convince the party to join a "motion of censure to unseat Pedro Sánchez" and call elections. "If he has a serious offer, serious things are explained in meetings, and he [Feijóo] knows that meetings with Junts, with the highest leadership [...], must be held in Waterloo," he said on "El matí de Catalunya Ràdio".

Although the Junts members know that Feijóo is unlikely to take the step of traveling to Waterloo to meet with the former president in exile, Turull has not ruled out joining a Popular Party initiative, which would also include Vox, to put an end to the legislature. The Junts leader has argued that, given the avalanche of judicial cases splashing the PSOE, it is the Spanish president who should call elections. It would be the "quickest and easiest" option, he said, but he has opened the door to seeking an alternative.

However, he insisted that the details of the Popular Party's offer must be known, which Feijóo summarized this Monday on Telecinco as "decency and elections." "We need to know if he's serious or not, what he means by [motion] instrumental, what period...", said Turull. And he reiterated that this motion offer should not be made through the media, but in meetings with his party and, specifically, with its leader, Puigdemont. "If he has something serious to explain, he should ask to see us," he concluded, emphasizing that, at first glance, they would not be satisfied with an emissary from Feijóo.

After the weekend Sánchez vowed to resist at Moncloa, Feijóo on Monday proposed that Junts and the PNB join forces for an instrumental motion to bring down the coalition government, besieged by alleged corruption around the PSOE, and call for elections "immediately". The opposition leader, in fact, expressed confidence about the possibility of his proposal moving forward. "It seems there is some movement, I am optimistic: from Vox to the PNB, including Junts, UPN, and Canary Islands Coalition," he said.

Feijóo's underlying reflection is that there are already 184 deputies in the Spanish lower house, eight more than necessary for an absolute majority, who support an early general election in the State. And he considers that both Junts and the PNB would accept going hand in hand with Vox to achieve this, because it would be an instrumental maneuver, which would not involve the direct entry of the far-right into the Spanish government.

The warning from Vox

Faced with Turull's proposal, Vox has distanced itself from Junts and the PNB and has warned that "no Spaniard would understand [Feijóo] going to Waterloo". "We want absolutely nothing with these people and we have absolutely nothing to do with them," warned Vox's spokesperson in Congress, Pepa Millán, at a press conference. Millán urged the leader of the Popular Party to present a motion of censure "now" instead of feeding "artificial debates that materialize into nothing" and has shown a predisposition to support it if the initiative does not involve "any kind of concession to separatists" and entails an immediate call for elections.