Turull rejects the motion of no confidence against Sánchez: "Feijóo should not ask for help from business leaders, but for forgiveness"

BarcelonaAlberto Núñez Feijóo asked Catalan business leaders this Friday to They will help him convince Junts to move forward with a motion of no confidence against Pedro SánchezThe request was not well received by Carles Puigdemont's party, and on Saturday, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, retorted: "The first thing he should do is not ask for help from business owners, but apologize to them for having asked them to leave Catalonia," Turull stated during his address at the party's national council meeting. "He should apologize for his systemic mistreatment while they were in government," he added. Turull criticized the People's Party (PP) for having the "audacity" to make this request to Catalan business owners and criticized the PP for boycotting issues such as the official status of Catalan in the European Union. The Junts leader also criticized the PP for carrying out a "preemptive vote of no confidence" against former Barcelona mayor Xavier Trias and allowing Jaume Collboni to become mayor of the Catalan capital. "They should also apologize for everything they did from the state's dirty tricks department to destroy so many Catalan political leaders, both civilly and politically," he added.

The PP leader participated this Friday in an event at Fomento where he directly appealed to Catalan business leaders to convince Junts to oust Pedro Sánchez. "I have no shortage of desire to present a motion of no confidence. I lack the votes," he stated. In fact, addressing the business community directly and politically linking them to Junts, he pointed out that he lacks "the votes of their own people." This Saturday, Feijóo did not refer to it explicitly, but he did call for a demonstration this Sunday against Sánchez in Madrid at the march organized by the PP. "The left doesn't dare to take to the streets," he criticized, adding that the Spanish government's partners are "afraid of people expressing their opinions."

The Spanish government censures Feijóo

For its part, the regional government once again criticized Feijóo's intentions, and the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, sought to differentiate the 2018 motion of no confidence presented by the PSOE to oust Mariano Rajoy from La Moncloa from the Ábalos case. "In Rajoy's case, there was a ruling from the National Court. This is not the case today," he said, referring to the Gürtel corruption case, in which the courts proved the PP's irregular financing. In any case, Turull reiterated that Junts has "no intention of being anyone's crutch": "We are not part of any blog, and our only motivation is to defend Catalonia." In this regard, he again defended his decision to break with the PSOE and lamented that the Socialists had not taken advantage of the opportunity presented by, he said, the Brussels agreement. "They haven't done so, neither with international mediation nor with verifiers, nor in a situation of absolute fragility," he criticized. "Now the government is in a state of absolute fragility and bogged down in legal issues," he pointed out. Turull, at this point, admitted "many doses of lawfare"in the legal cases affecting the Spanish government, but he replied to the socialists: "Yes, from this one lawfare which they denied when they applied it to us separatists."

Feijóo also addressed, to a lesser extent, ERC, and this Saturday, its general secretary, Elisenda Alamany, also closed the door on the motion: "If you think you'll find ERC, it's because you're living in a parallel situation." "especially worrying" after the imprisonment of Ábalos, and warned that if the crisis "escalates further," it will be "very difficult" for the Spanish legislature to continue.

Although Junts is unwilling to enter into an agreement with the PP to oust Pedro Sánchez, it also has no intention of guaranteeing the governability of the coalition government. Turull made this clear again on Saturday, reiterating his rejection of the new financing system being negotiated by the Socialists with Esquerra. The Junts leader pointed the finger, in this instance, at the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, criticizing him for visiting different autonomous communities to "sell them a financing model" that, he said, "will end up being a complete scam."