Puigdemont announces this Thursday in Elna (France) if he is the Junts candidate for the elections

He will do so in a conference from City Hall, accompanied by the party's senior staff.

BARCELONA, 21 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The former president of the Generalitat and Junts MEP, Carles Puigdemont, will announce that Thursday in Elna (France) if he is the Junts candidate for the Parliament elections on May 12.

He will do so in a conference from City Hall at 7 p.m., accompanied by the formation's senior staff, and thus clarifies the Junts electoral poster with a month and a half to go before the elections.

In recent days, his party had raised the possibility that Puigdemont would lead the candidacy, and he himself was convinced that he could be in Catalonia for the investiture debate.

Although Puigdemont was clear that he would lead the poster for the Europeans, he has had to advance something that he planned among the different Junts families: the possibility of leading the candidacy in the Catalans and predictably abandoning his initial idea.

Although the Amnesty Law is not yet in force, the former president can attend the elections as he did in 2021, when he led the Junts list accompanied by the president of the party, Laura Borràs, --number two-- who was finally the effective candidate.

Thus, Puigdemont can repeat as a candidate, but the approval of the Amnesty Law can open the scenario for the possible return of the former president to Catalonia once it comes into force, which various voices suggest could occur in June or July.

This is what has led the former president of the Generalitat to state that he would be excited to be at the investiture plenary session after the Catalan elections, thus flirting with his possible return as his people already did in 2017 and in subsequent elections.

His lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, asked about the possibility that if he wins the elections and can be sworn in, he crosses the border and could be arrested, acknowledged that "it is a possibility, but what will not be able to prevent him from being president of the Generalitat." .

The opposition parties have already begun to accuse Junts of presenting the possibility of Puigdemont's return as the only one they have to try to win the elections, aware that this conditions their electoral strategies.

From Junts they deny this and want to present the elections as a plebiscite between their figure and that of the PSC candidate, Salvador Illa, leaving the ERC candidate, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, in the third place.

In fact, Junts' strategy involves taking advantage of the so-called 'Puigdemont effect' with the aim of collecting the maximum number of votes and thus surpassing a PSC that polls place in first place and an ERC that is lagging behind.

While waiting for the party to explain the campaign they will carry out, it will be difficult for the former president of the Generalitat to campaign in person because the Amnesty Law has not yet come into force.

In the event that the former Catalan president returned before its application, his possible arrest could shake the electoral campaign and distort the electoral result.

After Junts left the Government in autumn 2022, the party also wants to take advantage of the gains achieved in Madrid, such as the Catalan in Congress, the meetings abroad with the PSOE to resolve the conflict and the Amnesty Law , among others.

The formation also wants to vindicate the work that the parliamentary group has carried out in areas such as drought and education, and demands that they have made within the framework of budget negotiation, such as the elimination of the Inheritance tax.

Elna, the municipality in which Puigdemont will reveal his decision, exudes special symbolism for the independence movement due to its connection with 1-O, given that millions of ballots were printed there and the ballot boxes were hidden in a warehouse in a nearby town.

In addition, the municipality has hosted events of the Consell de la República (CdRep), led by the former Catalan president, as well as the one organized by Òmnium Cultural to commemorate the 60 years of the entity.

From a historical point of view, at the end of the Civil War, hundreds of exiled republican women gave birth in the Elna Maternity Hospital, a center promoted by the Swiss nurse Elizabeth Eidenbenz.