Together they already fish in the far right to block Catalan Alliance

Barcelona"Manresa cannot have an open door to the ocean and welcome everyone indiscriminately and without control". "We have to be able to say enough". "Manresa is saturated". "We have imported a model of delinquency from the Third World". "It cannot be that Catalonia has been the country that in the last 25 years has received the most immigration". "Manresa must be a more prosperous, safer, more ours, more Catalan city". The first three sentences were said by Ramon Bacardit (Junts). The last three by Sergi Perramon ("Avanç Nacionalista).

Both announced this week that they will share a candidacy in Manresa in the next municipal elections. It is clear that they defend similar immigration policies and they also agree in linking the increase in immigration with insecurity in the capital of Bages. Of Manresa's 80,000 inhabitants, approximately 18,000 are foreigners, almost half of whom are Moroccan. The immigration percentage is therefore above 22% (in Catalonia the average is 18%). "If there is a speed limit, a pollution limit or a heritage limit, could not such a uncontrolled phenomenon be limited?", Perramon asked a few months ago.

Immigration, security, and also the fight against squatters and false registrations or the promotion of the Catalan language are some of the priorities that have facilitated the first agreement of Junts with representatives of the far-right. Perramon was the candidate for the Front Nacional de Catalunya in the 2023 elections, the same party from which Sílvia Orriols split to promote Aliança Catalana. It is an agreement that is understood in the Manresa context – the Catalanist right seeks unity to defeat the left – but which can serve as a model for other similar experiences in Junts' goal of blocking the rise of Aliança, especially in inland Catalonia.

Ideological clarification

Polls are increasing Junts' concern, which wants to strengthen its profile as a party of order where it already governs and aspires to be recognized as the center-right alternative to governments that currently have left-wing mayors. The ideological profile of Junts members, once more diffuse due to the prevalence of the national axis, has been clarifying for some time. Now, for example, Catalonia has become a "fiscal hell" for Junts, where the inheritance tax must be urgently abolished and the social benefits system modified from top to bottom. The prohibition of the burqa has also once again been a flag to be raised by Carles Puigdemont's party, who, regarding housing policies, oppose price caps or the prohibition of speculative buying promoted by the Government.

The competition between Junts and Aliança is expected to be fierce, much like the one between PP and Vox in the state electoral arena. And it seems that Junts' strategy involves clarifying its position on issues where, until now, Aliança has spoken most clearly. However, there is still one avenue to explore: Orriols has already proposed post-election pacts to Puigdemont to govern together. A kind of bear hug that, for the moment, Junts is fleeing from. In Manresa, in fact, Junts has snatched the candidate Aliança desired.

The details of the week

It was no use, but José Luis Ábalos' lawyer tried a new strategy this week to try to postpone the trial of his client by a month (the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 24 years in prison). According to him, he had not been able to read the entire case. The reason he gave in a document addressed to the Supreme Court was: "[When I tried to open the documents] The computer kept thinking indefinitely in a continuous loop".

In this week's plenary session at the Assembly of Madrid, as Isabel Díaz Ayuso finished a speech, a kind of nuclear alarm began to sound, the sound of which entered through the microphone of the Madrid president. Amidst geopolitical tensions in Iran, there were a few seconds of doubt, but it turned out to be a simple mobile phone alarm of Ayuso's spokesperson.