When Junts signed its accession to the liberal centrists of the European Democratic Party (EDP) the natural move was its integration into the Renew liberal group of the European Parliament. Within Junts, multiple voices were clear about this path, which reinforces the commitment to centrism, the same as the PNV and what Convergència had followed. However, all of this clashes with the will of the Junts MEP. As he expressed publicly this Monday, Toni Comín has reservations about joining this parliamentary group once his rights as an MEP have been recognized, following his return from exile. Junts prefers not to make any public comment on the matter despite the questions from this newspaper.

Criminal complaint by Junts for reckless homicide against Renfe, Adif, and the state's Directorate General of Roads for the Gelida accident on January 20th, in which there was one fatality. The Junts members made public this Monday the document they filed on October 20th, when the four-month deadline expired to comply with the request made by Parliament to the Government to report these rail operators, which the executive did not carry out. The crimes listed in the document are reckless homicide, injuries, as well as crimes against workers' rights and for catastrophic risk.

Parliamentary boycott and the destabilization of the State are the cornerstones of Alhora, the clearly pro-independence project that is running in the general elections for the first time. For the moment, the party led by Jordi Graupera has secured the endorsements needed to run in the elections, tripling (16,000) those required. Alhora debuted in the last Catalan elections but suffered a significant setback, ending up with only 13,000 votes, 0.4% of the total. The presidential candidate believes that one situation cannot be equated with the other: "Two years ago we were six founders, six days later they called the elections and six weeks later was the polling day; now we have 650 militants, we have 1,200 volunteers and we hold large events and campaigns. We have obtained more endorsements than votes two years ago; the growth is obvious".

Junts would be willing to invest a socialist president after November 29th, provided that the PSOE meets the demands of Carles Puigdemont's party, and the candidate for president is not Pedro Sánchez. The Junts candidate for the Spanish elections, Miriam Nogueras, set the party's position this Tuesday for the investiture of the future president of the state government and clarified what was meant bythe party would not invest either Pedro Sánchez or Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as the top leaders had expressed in recent days. Junts will not remain on the sidelines of the State's governability; quite the contrary, as Nogueras and her running mates have championed the "useful policy" that they have developed in the Spanish Cortes this term. In fact, the members of Junts want to be decisive again after November 29th.

Applause, hugs, and smiles were not lacking this Monday at the Junts headquarters in Barcelona. The sovereignist party is smiling again with a new step towards the normalization of Catalan political life: the return of former ministers Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, who participated in person in the party's executive meeting after nine years of exile. The joy, however, is not complete. The polls are not in their favor and point to a possible electoral decline on November 29th, a symptom of the difficulties of their political strategy to convince the electorate. According to the polls collected by ARA, the sovereignist party could lose up to half of its seats in the upcoming elections, with an average of projections that places them between four and five deputies in Congress.

Nine years later, Lluís Puig returned yesterday to his city, Terrassa, where he was received with tears of emotion by the people of Terrassa who every day, for more than 3,000 days, have met in the evening to sing for freedom. Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva were also honored in Sant Vicenç dels Horts. Puig will go to Parliament this afternoon and will sit in his seat, until now occupied by a yellow ribbon. The discourse of those amnestied oscillated between returning to where we were and the idea that they have won a battle against Spain. Is that so?

Spanish politics has stages of incomparable turmoil. These days the acceleration has reached a degree of excitement that makes one fear for the coronary health of governments, politicians, propagandists, and believing citizens in general. Trying to understand the world that surrounds us in full acceleration and once we have exhausted the quotes from the cynic Machiavelli, the blessed Rousseau, the provocateur Nietzsche, and the brave Arendt, we are only left to surrender ourselves to the wisdom of James Bond. Politics today responds to the “shaken, not stirred” (shaken, not stirred) of yet another Martini that we know cannot end well.

"We will not vote for Pedro Sánchez because we have been burned". That is how the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, responded this week to journalist Ariadna Oltra on Els matins when she asked him what his party would do if they were decisive again in the Congress of Deputies. What has happened in these three years for Junts' conclusion to be this? What has broken and, above all when, if in the end it seems that the amnesty will be able to be applied to former president Carles Puigdemont? L'ARA has reconstructed the key moments of this tortuous relationship that began in the summer of 2023 after years of little contact following the Process.

Spanish and Catalan reactionarism rejected last week the emergency decrees on housing that could alleviate, if not resolve, the residential emergency situation that a significant part of the population is suffering. There was a social outcry for it to be addressed. Junts has adopted the narrative of large property holders and real estate speculators, as well as that of small and medium-sized rentiers who have contributed to straining, and in what way, this market. With their position, they have not defended the interests of their voters nor of those who are owners of their own homes, but rather those of speculators with tourist apartments and large flat holders. They present it as a mere technical issue, but the subject is radically political. Either we defend particular interests or general ones, that is indisputable. When someone questioned the existence of class struggle, the great financier Warren Buffett said: “There is class struggle, and the one winning is mine”. Buffett is a speculator who was sensible enough to say that he does not understand why a tax rate below that of his secretary is applied to him. There are those who are in politics to defend lobbies, vulture funds and extractive minorities. It does not hide it that they wrap themselves in flags or falsely technical speeches. Experts claim that the agreement to validate one of the decrees was done, and that it was Puigdemont and his unpleasant representative in Madrid who backed out.

1. The crux of the transaction between Junts and the PSOE to facilitate Pedro Sánchez's investiture was the amnesty, which finally materialized after much struggle and effort. The agreement unleashed a wave of resentment the likes of which had never been seen in Madrid (we, however, already knew it well enough here). Judges, economic powers, media outlets, and all the mechanisms of the deep state reacted to the offense by orchestrating a major hunt for the Spanish prime minister and his inner circle. Finally, in an ending worthy of a Greek tragedy, Sánchez has ended up struck down by those who had been giving him air for more than three years. What is my assessment of all this? Junts has squandered a truly historic opportunity to assert the country's interests instead of focusing everything on the restitution of grievances for the victims of the 'Procés'. Both causes were legitimate, of course, but priorities had to be chosen. And the facts are stubborn: it is either one thing or the other. With a government on the horizon in which the PP and Vox will have a comfortable majority, we can forget for many years about better financing, the forgiveness of a part of the FLA debt, transparency in fiscal balances, and necessary investments in infrastructure. Nothing at all will remain of it.

Political earthquake in the Alt Empordà. The municipal government of Junts, led by Lídia Ferrer, has decided to keep Roger Pinart, the councillor of El Port de la Selva who chose the swastika over the espadrille, in one of the latest controversies related to Aliança Catalana. The leadership of Carles Puigdemont's party has demanded the immediate dismissal of Pinart –who is not a member of Junts but is part of the municipal executive–, but Ferrer has decided to give him "total support". In statements to ARA, Ferrer defends his "magnificent work as councillor for Security" at the city council, where he is the second deputy mayor, and downplays his controversial tweet in favor of the swastika. The mayor admits the clash with the Junts leadership, but makes it clear that she will in no case dismiss him and that the party must respect her decision.

Allow me to start the analysis by going off-script, but it is great news that yesterday 55,000 people attended the first farewell concert by Oques Grasses at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium. Filling an Olympic stadium is not within everyone's reach, and even less so doing it four days in a row. Do not miss the chronicle written by our musical specialist, Xavier Cervantes. Music sung in Catalan reaches people, it has an audience, an audience of all ages, including many young people, and when there is good news for our culture it must also be said.

Change of tone from Salvador Illa. This Wednesday was the first plenary session of Parliament after the total amnesty for Carles Puigdemont and the exiles, but also of the early election in Spain, and the President of the Generalitat has fully entered the pre-election campaign in the control session. The socialist leader, and great defender of Pedro Sánchez, has referred time and again to the Spanish elections of November 29 and has launched a forceful attack against the opposition. "Three acronyms, PP, Vox, and Junts; one single vote, blocking access to housing," he snapped, in reference to the two decrees that the three formations rejected last week.

The day after the leader of Junts in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, completely closed the door to facilitating a PP and Vox government, the party's secretary general, Jordi Turull, also ruled out investing the Spanish president and socialist leader: "We will not invest Pedro Sánchez, because we have been very badly burned by this person," he stated in an interview with TV3. In fact, he stressed that the Brussels pact, the seed of the last legislature in the State, "was an agreement in historical terms, but it was one thing after another and, always finding excuses, everything kept getting delayed."

Not even the best screenwriter could have foreseen it better. Three years after the amnesty gave Pedro Sánchez another term, the amnesty has also put an end to it. The acceleration of events following the eviction case of Maricarmen Abascal has meant that the dissolution of the Courts has practically coincided with the Constitutional Court's order to the Supreme Court to immediately apply the amnesty to the leaders of the 'Procés' and with the withdrawal of the arrest warrants for former president Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig. A sword of Damocles that they had been carrying for nine years. However, after almost a decade, the most difficult part remains for Carles Puigdemont: the true return.

The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has declared the end of the "political repression" stage following the 1-O, after the Constitutional Court fully endorsed the amnesty. The decision represents, he said, a defeat for the various Spanish public powers that have put obstacles in the way of the law's application "for strictly political reasons." The institutional appearance of the former head of Government took place this afternoon, a few hours after the Supreme Court also announced the lifting of his arrest warrant, which represents the first definitive step for him to return from exile to Catalonia. The leader of Junts has claimed the "enormous political importance" of the law, which disavows the repression and makes it evident that "this was not the way." However, he warned that the political conflict with the State remains in force: "In terms of the Catalonia-Spain relationship, nothing is solved today [...]. The amnesty is not in itself a solution," he claimed from Waterloo.

The publication of the calling of early elections to the Official State Gazette (BOE) kicked off the pre-campaign this Tuesday. Pedro Sánchez seeks to drag the progressive vote mobilized by the housing crisis and turn around the result predicted by the polls, which give a majority to the right and the far right. Everything will depend, however, on the correlation of forces resulting from the polls on November 29, and much of the attention in the campaign will be on Junts, which already tipped the balance in this last Spanish legislature. A position of calculated balance and equidistance is expected from the Junts members in the campaign, but the spokesperson in Madrid, Miriam Nogueras, has already assured that they will not facilitate a PP and Vox government.

I do not usually agree with Junts on many things. However, regarding housing, their vote against Friday's decree contains a great economic sense which, as a science, is above any ideology.

Could the refusal to vote for the housing decrees in the Congress of Deputies benefit Junts? The calling of early elections by Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, will it allow him to gain support, stop the decline detected by the polls, or, on the contrary, will it take its toll? Issues related to housing navigate, in the electoral and communicative sphere, between what is technically called a positional issue and a valence issue. That is to say, on one hand, parties have different positions (proposals), which in this case can oscillate between positions more pro-market or pro-intervention (often aligned with the logic of left and right). On the other hand, there are valence issues, a way of focusing on a question that, a priori, has an opposing position, but which no one defends. For example, the idea that everyone has the right to housing is, politically, a valence position. Rarely will a politician give a public speech defending the opposing position. This also applies in many other areas: it is hard to think that a party can win votes by defending corruption or incompetence.

We live in dangerous times for truth and coherence. Polarization has devoured the capacity to confront ideas –replacing adversaries with enemies– and electoral slogans have replaced laws. There is no legislation, only announcements are made. Problems are not solved, patches are applied. Responsibilities are not demanded from governments but from the opposition. In general, common sense went into exile years ago.