Sabrià warns JxCat that "the agreement with CUP is not to be changed"

Barcelona"The agreement with the CUP is not to be changed". This is the message that ERC MP and member of the negotiating team for the investiture, Sergi Sabrià, has launched to JxCat this Thursday. The tension between the two parties is once again palpable, after ERC candidate for the investiture, Pere Aragonès, did not receive JxCat's support in the last session and became the least voted candidate (with 42 votes in favor) since the restitution of the Parliament. ERC was critical in the debate with this decision, since they consider that the differences between the parties are not insurmountable, while JxCat (which abstained) reproached ERC for having started talks with CUP first, although it is the role and composition of the Consell per la República that has been the main stumbling block of the negotiations.

In an interview with Efe, Sabrià urged JxCat to agree on the new Government without further lengthening the negotiations. The general undersecretary of communication and strategy of ERC has regretted the failure of the investiture, but has insisted on his party's willingness to continue "negotiations, even if it is during Easter". "We understand that the mandate of the ballot box is very clear and we do not value other options," he said.

Sabrià has attributed to JxCat the failure of the negotiations and has insisted that neither "was it necessary" to take the negotiation to name Borràs Speaker "to the limit". In the same sense, he denied that JxCat has been relegated in the talks to give priority to the CUP, because ERC has "met more" with Junts and the negotiations, he assures, "have been carried out in parallel". Thus, he stressed that with the anti-capitalists the negotiations "advanced quickly" and not with JxCat.

In his view, it is "curious that those who have so often lectured us on unity are now unable to digest the results" of the elections, which mark that we must make "a pro-independence and left-wing government," he said. "We have been stuck for many days on the question of the strategic direction of the Independence bid, but this is no longer a problem, so we do not understand why it has not been possible to reach an agreement so far," he lamented.

Thus, he advanced that they will ask JxCat to "get quickly and to the point" in the next meetings and explained that ERC has eight documents prepared, ranging "from the one that defines the mechanics of the new Government to the Consell per la República". "We don't want to set dates, but we have to get a move on," he said, because "without red lines there are no excuses" and we need a stable government. Sabrià considers that ERC's agreement with the CUP "is very well written and very well done" and that, therefore, Junts "should not have to question it", since the negotiating team (of which he is part) was "careful" so that "it would not make it impossible" for JxCat to accept it. Despite admitting that there is a very clear ideological distance between centre-right JxCat and anti-capitalist CUP, he has defended that "the country has advanced when independentism has been able to agree": "We have to make it possible".

Vilalta rejects "subordinating" ERC's decisions in the Spanish Parliament

In parallel, the deputy secretary general and spokesperson of ERC, Marta Vilalta, has rejected ERC decisions in the Spanish Parliament and Senate be "subject" to any coordinating body of pro-independence parties, as requested by JxCat. She told Europa Press "We all has to respect the internal dynamics and the mandate of the polls," and insisted that each party ran in the elections with its own electoral programme. We have to find a balance between the necessary coordination," she said, "and respect for the internal dynamics of each organisation and its own strategy.