Judicial proceedings are piling up in Altafulla. In addition to the case concerning the awards to former minister Joan Ignasi Elena and former Initiative leader Joan Herrera, which also involves the Commons MP Félix Alonso and former minister Salvador Milà, now another case directly splashes the mayor, Jordi Molinera (ERC), and the councilor Tomàs Serra, who was elected by Junts and continues in government as an independent after his former party left the coalition government last year. In fact, this move is what is now in the sights of the Vendrell courts, where an investigation has been opened following a complaint by the president of the Junts municipal group for alleged crimes of bribery and prevarication. In an order to which ARA has had access, the judge summons Serra and Molinera to testify as investigated parties in this case on January 2, 2027.

While the Spanish legislature is alive, the Spanish government maintains steps to try to bring the new regional financing model to light. With what calendar is it working? Once the Andalusian elections are over – in which the former vice-president and former Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, ran as a candidate –, the state executive has reactivated the machinery and has set a new meeting of the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF) for Wednesday, July 29, which should serve to put on the table the new financing system that the socialists agreed with ERC (and presented in January). Previously, on July 14, the Spanish government will hold a preparatory technical meeting with all the autonomous communities and that week it will distribute the concrete proposal to all communities. The next step will be for the Council of Ministers to approve the proposal to then send it to Congress, probably in September. And there, it still has to win the necessary support for this new model to see the light.

"Whoever comes to commit crimes must know they have no place in our society." Read in isolation and without any context, it might currently be difficult to guess which leader or political party this phrase might come from. The reality, however, is that it is an excerpt from the Catalan PP's position paper for its 16th congress just a few days ago. This discursive forcefulness brings an evidence to the table and introduces a lively debate: Spanish politics, as well as Catalan politics, is shifting towards an increasingly radicalized right.

Ten months and a half remain until the municipal elections, and parties are still debating candidacies and programs. At Junts, moreover, they have an important decision to make: what will they have to do with Aliança Catalana (AC). To curb its growth before the elections, but also to know whether they should form alliances afterward, knowing that Sílvia Orriols' party has set its sights on replacing them. What does the leadership say, and what does the local sphere think?

José María Aznar gave Alberto Núñez Feijóo an order yesterday in front of everyone: to get rid of Sánchez, you must only count on Spaniards. And to govern, in the future, also, only Spaniards, not the PNB, nor Junts. He said it like this:

In Madrid, Galician ambiguity doesn't pay, and that's why when Alberto Núñez Feijóo sends messages that can be interpreted as a gesture towards Junts or towards Catalonia (whether or not that is the Galician leader's intention), someone quickly reminds him that this path leads nowhere. This Wednesday, the great mastermind of the Madrid right and its spiritual guide, José María Aznar, has set Feijóo on the course he should follow. Aznar has called for a "national majority" that includes the left and the right to oust Pedro Sánchez. "This majority will be national or it will not be," he reiterated. Translated into political terms, Aznar tells Feijóo that he must forget about Junts and the PNB and, instead, look towards people like Emiliano García-Page and Jordi Sevilla, that is, the Felipe González-era PSOE. Lest there be any doubt, Isabel Díaz Ayuso has cried out against "the constant independence threat".

José María Aznar must always be listened to. Beyond the occasional strident declaration or the catchy soundbite that makes headlines, what he says usually reflects in depth the thinking of the dominant right-wing in Madrid. Not always coincident with what, by intuition, the Galician Alberto Nuñez Feijóo might think.

June began in Parliament with a heated control session in which the opposition tried to surround the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, for the cases of alleged corruption affecting the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez's circle. And the first control session of this July has started the same way, with one more step from the Junts politicians. The president of the Junts group in the Catalan chamber, Mònica Sales, demanded this Wednesday that Illa ask for "forgiveness" for the judicial cases and stop "hiding himself". "When Catalonia has a problem, you disappear; when the PSOE has one, you are always there," she said. "This weekend you had the opportunity to ask for forgiveness on behalf of your party," she retorted, referring to the PSOE federal committee, in which the president said that socialists have "no fear" of anything. Illa, in turn, reiterated that he fears nothing and that he has already given the necessary "explanations".

In their desperation to obtain the support that will allow them to oust Pedro Sánchez from Moncloa, the Popular Party is now playing their particular tites, tites with Junts. PP leaders are aware that their policy regarding Catalonia has consisted not only of frontal ultranationalism (enriched by the radioactive energy of Vox, a partner and, in fact, a split from the PP itself), but also of a Catalanophobic populism that is profoundly divisive and, often, directly civil-war-like. Aware that these are not very good credentials to ask for Junts' votes, they have decided to resort to selective amnesia. The mantra is to look to the future and not "to the past", a remote place that, in the PP, they place between 2017 and 2018. This is what the "bad" and "good" spokespersons have said and repeated these days — the slimy Miguel Tellado and the wolf in sheep's clothing Borja Sémper — and also the curious anti-leader Núñez Feijóo, completely engrossed in his role as a man who can't find his glasses. piolins, the savage beatings by the police mob on October 1st, the más dura será la caída” from prosecutor Maza, the approval of Article 155 and the dismantling of Catalan self-government institutions one morning in the Senate, the farcical trial against the leaders of the Procés, with Rajoy and several ministers and high-ranking officials — as well as dozens of police officers — giving false testimony, the police and judicial persecution against Catalan independentists; all of this was, according to Sémper, "the useful and reasonable position that a state party must have".It is opportune, in any case, that the PP proposes this exercise of interested amnesia precisely when the Statute was approved twenty years ago. What times! This must be prehistory already, but the old people in the area still remember the PP's petition tables all over Spain asking for "a little signature against the Catalans”, the accusations —even then— of coup and terrorism, some not very veiled calls for military intervention, an avalanche of insults and of fakes xenophobic and supremacist against "Catalans" from media outlets controlled by the Spanish right and, needless to say, the lawsuit to the Constitutional Court that was resolved with the ruling that laminated a Statute voted by citizens and endorsed by the Parliament of Catalonia and the Spanish Courts, in a true —this one— judicial coup d'état that continues to this day with all the noise and fury we know well.In summary, the PP's hate speech against Catalonia and everything related to it has somewhat old roots and is a bit difficult to hide just because they are now willing to literally do anything for Junts' votes. On the Catalan side, it is urgent to get rid of the bullshit (whether Josep Pla or whoever said it) according to which there is nothing more similar to a right-wing Spaniard than a left-wing Spaniard. It's a joke to blow off steam at a supper, but above all it's a boomerang that always returns and makes a deeper and deeper cut.

To oust Pedro Sánchez, the PP needs Junts and the populars' latest moves consolidate a shift on the Procés and Carles Puigdemont's party in particular. However, for the moment, it's all just simple rhetoric. As ARA has learned from various sources familiar with the PP and Junts, there are no contacts between the parties.

The PP's crusade to bring down Pedro Sánchez runs into the fact that it depends on Catalan and Basque parties for it to have real effects. In this context, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has revived one of those proposals that the popular party has in mind to end the dependence on independence movements in the Congress of Deputies and, in turn, also on Vox, to whom they are increasingly tied in more autonomies. The PP leader has proposed an electoral reform that would give the winning list a "plus" of deputies "to facilitate stability." A scenario that could have prevented Pedro Sánchez from governing this legislature in which the sum of PP and Vox fell just four deputies short of an absolute majority. This is what Feijóo defended in an interview this Monday on EsRadio, after being directly asked about ways to prevent "minority groups from being overrepresented" in the lower house.

This weekend, the PP of Catalonia held its congress, and the party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, came and said: “Like most Catalans, we also want to turn the page”. The phrase has been interpreted as an offer to Junts so that one day it may be possible for the PP candidate for the presidency of the Spanish government to receive their votes. Junts must already know what they want to do, but it would seem that Feijóo is playing at an interested confusion: Junts voted with the PP and Vox that Sánchez had to resign, but has said in every way that he does not intend to invest Feijóo, meaning that for now Feijóo will have to wait.But it is interesting to delve into Feijóo's phrase to see what the popular candidate understands by wanting to turn the page.And the answer could not be more predictable: that Catalonia should return to the common regime autonomous path, that it should pay, that it should be silent, and if it has to do something exceptional, it should do so to offer new glories to Spain. And that's when Feijóo pulls the rabbit of the Sagrada Família out of his hat. Look at this tweet on social media:“The image of the Sagrada Família. The one the PP wants to represent”. It reminded me of what happened a few years ago, when TVE premiered Operación Triunfo and the PP said that the contest embodied their values of effort and meritocracy to achieve success. Does something work and is liked? They make it their own. Theirs, in their own way. Listen to this minute and a half of Feijóo, very revealing of the thinking he has about Catalonia:“I want to mention something that has surprised again, finally, and that we haven't seen in Catalonia for decades. It is a moment that moved millions of people, and it is none other than the extraordinary inauguration of the tower of Jesus of the Sagrada Familia with Pope Leo XIV. It was the symbol of a capable Catalonia, of a Catalonia that was thinking big again. Capable of doing extraordinary things and capable of building a collective ambition”. Look, Mr. Feijóo, I'm very glad you liked the blessing ceremony of the tallest tower of the Sagrada Família, but hire a speechwriter who doesn't mix apples and oranges. You say he's "surprised again, finally"? Finally what? "That we haven't seen Catalonia for decades"? Do you really think that Catalonia hasn't done anything good in 34 years, between the '92 Games and the inauguration the other day? Has representing 25% of Spanish exports and 20% of GDP happened on its own? Has the player that the followers of la roja pray to and who has half the world in love come up like a mushroom? Does it seem to you that wanting independence is not thinking big, that organizing a referendum to discuss it as the most democratic countries do is not characteristic of a country "capable of doing extraordinary things and capable of building a collective ambition?" Here, the one that is not capable of doing things is the State. And I'm not referring to doing extraordinary things, but ordinary ones, like getting trains to run. What is commendable, Mr. Feijóo, is that with the fiscal deficit – extraordinary, this one – that has been dragging on for decades, the Catalans, as your predecessor Rajoy used to say, do things. But please, continue. "That day we did not see one part of Catalonia impose itself on another; we did not see one part of Spain against the rest of Spain. No, what we saw was a part of Spain offering the best it has, and we want to see it again more".

The floodgates of political contempt have long been open in Spain, and the water of mutual contempt between the opposition and the government is at a record level. The worst thing is not that they mutually detest each other and permanently show it, but the effects this has on public opinion which will one day go to vote.

Surrounded by the top brass of Junts, former president Jordi Pujol received a major tribute this Saturday to his political legacy at the hands of the Joventut Nacionalista de Catalunya (JNC). In Planoles, a symbolic municipality for the Junts youth wing, Pujol launched a powerful message in favor of immigrant integration, which was heard by the President of the Parliament, Josep Rull; the Junts general secretary, Jordi Turull; the deputy to the presidency, Albert Batet; the president of the parliamentary group, Mònica Sales; and the Barcelona municipal leader, Jordi Martí; as well as former convergent leaders such as former minister Irene Rigau, Jordi Xuclà, Marta Pascal and Carles Campuzano, who is now an ERC deputy. Pujol stressed that Catalans have the duty "to maintain the language, to transmit a culture, to integrate people who come from outside and to bring them together", as well as to "work hard and not give up".

The investigation by the Audiencia Nacional into José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is revealing the movements of the former Spanish president in recent years. L'ARA has gained access to his 2024 and 2025 diaries and to the WhatsApp conversations he had with his secretary, Gertrudis Alcázar, between April 2025 and the day of his indictment. "Cancel my run?", she asked him that morning. "Yes, of course", he answered her immediately afterwards. There are messages in which both speak directly about Junts. "I can't do English, mess with Junts", Zapatero told him on July 21, 2025. The next day there was the last plenary session of Congress of the political year and Junts voted against the anti-shutdown decree, which also derailed with the rejection of Podem, and against the advance payments, which Moncloa saved thanks to the approval of the PP.

Junts per Catalunya has taken advantage of Pedro Sánchez's appearance in Congress regarding the corruption cases that tarnish the PSOE to make a move and put a new roadmap on the table to ensure the continuity of the legislature. "Step aside and let this parliament put someone in who does have the capacity to fulfill commitments to Catalonia," Míriam Nogueras demanded during her speech. She considers the situation "unsustainable" and that the current Spanish president is the "main obstacle" for the legislature "to be able to culminate the objectives for which it was conceived." This unexpected proposal comes weeks after the leader of the Junts party in Madrid urged the Spanish president to dissolve the lower house: "What argument do you have left not to call elections?" she asked him just two months ago.

Reneix Nous Catalans, renamed Catalans Segle 21. And it is reborn under the warmth of Junts personalities such as former minister Victòria Alsina, responsible for immigration in the Junts leadership, but also with the blessing of former president Artur Mas and former Convergència immigration official Àngel Colom – promoter of Nous Catalans–. At the presentation this Tuesday afternoon in Barcelona, around forty migrant entities have given their support and received the Flama del Canigó, accompanied by Junts members such as deputy Ennatu Domingo.

Junts is in turmoil the day after Jordi Martí's victory in the primaries in Barcelona, which has made him the party's candidate in the municipal elections in the capital. He was not the leadership's man, quite the opposite; prominent members of the top brass maneuvered to boost the officialist Pilar Calvo, a deputy in Congress and president of the National Council. But the operation failed: Xavier Trias' right-hand man has won and, with him, the clearly convergent DNA. And this has caused an upheaval in the formation, as this newspaper has confirmed from various sources.

Jordi Martí Galbis wins Junts primaries in Barcelona and will be the party's mayoral candidate in the Catalan capital. Martí has won by 253 votes (40.29%) against the other candidates. Pilar Calvo came in second place with 184 votes (29.30%), while Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas came in third, with 117 votes (18.63%). In last place, Glòria Freixa, who obtained 70 votes (11.15%). In total, 934 militants were called to participate, of whom 628 voted, representing a 67.24% turnout. Jordi Martí was not the candidate Carles Puigdemont's leadership was backing, but the current leader of the municipal group in Barcelona decided to step forward regardless. His victory is, therefore, a warning to the Junts leadership.

Junts' primaries in Barcelona are not only serving to dispute the legacy of former mayor Xavier Trias – who has given explicit support to municipal leader Jordi Martí – but have also consolidated Carles Puigdemont's party to put the pedal to the metal against insecurity in Barcelona. This was evident in the four-way debate on the last day of the primaries campaign, in which topics such as daylight murders, drug trafficking like marijuana, and dirtiness resulting from incivility and drunken tourism were discussed. This weekend, the party's Barcelona militants will decide the mayoral candidate between Jordi Martí, Congresswoman Pilar Calvo – close to the national leadership –, MP and Parliament's table secretary Glòria Freixa – a pragmatic liberal –, and former MP and Puigdemont's former lawyer, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas.