Laura Borras and Jordi Turull they will lead Together for Catalonia after the congress that the formation will celebrate next June 4 in Argelers, in the Catalunya Nord. When there were only a few hours left before the deadline to present candidacies for the conclave was exhausted –it was done at 4:00 p.m. this Tuesday– both parties have reached an agreement to share organic power, for which Borràs will take over from Puigdemont in the presidency and Turull to Jordi Sànchez in the general secretary. Like Sànchez, Turull was one of the pro-independence political prisoners and was released on June 23, 2020, after being pardoned by the government.
The agreement to submit a single candidacy in congress avoid a confrontation that could have bled the formation, which right now does not exactly have the polls in its face, but this Monday the pact was far from closed and the respective teams have been forced into a frantic negotiation. The understanding, which has been advanced by The vanguardit implies role changes that until now had the presidency and the general secretary of the organization. The first had a solely representative role –performed by a Puigdemont who, at the same time, was the magma that united the different political families of Junts–, and the agreement establishes that the Executive tasks will be shared 50/50when currently held only by the general secretariat.
In this way, Borràs will also be able to participate in the day-to-day match, beyond the fact that some of his affines will have a presence in the new executive. The president of the Parlament defended for some weeks that she is the main institutional position of the party and therefore this had to be reflected in some way in the organization that emerged from next month’s congress. Likewise, he has the shadow of the case of alleged irregular contracts during his time at the head of the Institution of Catalan Lettersfor which she is being investigated and pending trial.
With the aim of achieving the aforementioned distribution of executive tasks, Borràs’s entourage had pointed out in recent days that they did not rule out a solo candidacy, appealing to the popularity among the militancy of the president of the Parliament. It should be remembered that Borràs had already clearly imposed himself on the former minister Damia Calvet in the primaries to choose the Junts candidate for last year’s Parliamentary elections.
Despite the broad support among the bases, the supporters of Borràs in the political positions of the party are quite inferior and until now they are limited to a kind of praetorian guard made up of deputies in the Parliament such as Aurora Madaula, Francesc de Dalmases or Jaume Alonso Cuevillas. Turull, on the other hand, has the backing of ex-political prisoners like himself Jordi Sànchez, Josep Rull or Joaquim Forn, apart from a good part of the members of Junts in the Government of the Generalitat, as well as numerous deputies, both from the Parliament and from Congress –such as Míriam Nogueras–, or significant voices from the territory. In fact, last week most of these positions signed a manifesto calling for this unitary candidacy between Borràs and Turull.
differentiated sectors
The two future top leaders of Junts belong to clearly differentiated sectors of the party and have widely divergent political trajectories. Turull belongs to the pragmatic sector of the party, where most of the leaders of the old Convergència are included. A lifelong party man, he is clearly in favor of participating in the Government and even held talks with the ERC – during the most difficult moments of the negotiation to form the current government – to try to unblock the issue by offering himself as an interlocutor.
The former Minister of the Presidency during 1-O has been a militant since 1983 in the old CDC, first in the youth and then in training as such. In 2010 he was appointed spokesman for the group in Parliament and in 2013 he began to preside over it. With a liberal profile, in addition to being Minister of the Presidency, he was spokesman for the Government of Carles Puigdemont in the last months of the legislature, before the application of 155. He is currently one of the four vice presidents of the party.
Borràs entered institutional politics in 2017 as an independent, which places her in a very distant profile. Coming from the academic world, she presided over the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (2013-2017) before making the leap to the JxCat lists as an independent. In the current legislature, she was much more reluctant to the government agreement, to the point that she refused to be part of it and assume her vice-presidency, ending up in the presidency of Parliament. Within the party, she occupies the secretariat for Rights and Freedoms.
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