Laura Borràs proposes Pere Aragonès as candidate for investiture

Parliament Speaker, Laura Borràs, has proposed Pere Aragonès to be the candidate for president of the Generalitat in the investiture debate this Friday. In an institutional declaration, Borràs has stated after the round of consultations with all the parties that he is the one who has "more possibilities" of being voted in.

Nevertheless, it is not clear that Aragonès will be invested president in the first round. Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) does not guarantee its support to Esquerra's candidate. The deputy spokeswoman of JxCat, Gemma Geis, has assured that "predictably" there will be no agreement and Aragonès's candidacy will be rejected. According to Geis, JxCat wants a "strong and stable" pro-independence government with Pere Aragonès at the head and a "shared strategy" with the rest of the pro-sovereignty political forces, but said that right now the conditions are not right for this to happen. She has not said which way she would vote; the party is expected to decide before Friday. The role of the Consell per la República -right now, a point of disagreement- and the management of European funds and the health crisis are some of the elements on which negotiations are being conducted.

Despite JxCat's reservations, ERC insists on reaching an agreement by Friday. The president of the parliamentary party, Josep Maria Jové, and Marta Vilalta as spokeswoman of the party have met this noon with Borràs to tell her Pere Aragonès will stand to become president and insist that "this is possible this Friday". "There are no insurmountable differences," Vilalta insisted at a press conference

"Two weeks ago we did it, at the last minute we reached an agreement on the Parliamentary Bureau," recalled the spokeswoman, who has insisted in the pro-independence majority of 74 MPs (if they agree), putting the ahead of the Socialist candidate, Salvador Illa. Therefore, Vilalta has not wanted to "speculate" on the possibility that the investiture of Friday fails and has to go to a second vote on Sunday or Tuesday. She insisted that they have "no problem" with either of the two days, but defended a second round is unnecessary. Borràs has not made reference to it in her institutional statement, which has been limited to sign the call for Friday