The alarm bells have been ringing loudly in Junts since the CEO’s barometer in November predicted a tie with Aliança Catalana in third position in possible regional elections. Although Sílvia Orriols’ party was lower in voting intention, both forces obtained 19-20 seats and Aliança appeared as the party with the most votes in Lleida and Girona. Since then, Junts has lived with anguish the feeling of a crossroads in which, if things go wrong, it can become a secondary force, even a residual one.
The first litmus test will be the municipal elections of May 2027, in which polls and many experts assume that Aliança Catalana will take away a good part of the votes it obtained in 2023. It is true that in local elections each municipality is different, but the fact that Junts only has a vote loyalty of 60% indicates that it has entered a risk zone.
Aware of this serious threat, former president Artur Mas has advocated reunifying the different sensitivities of the old Convergència. He poses it in terms of “recovery”, which means challenging the political drift of Junts under the leadership of Carles Puigdemont.
This call is actually a desperate survival operation in the face of the confusion in which Junts lives and its difficulty in establishing a strategy to confront the threat that Sílvia Orriols represents. A part of the party opts to try to retain undecided voters by adopting the Aliança Catalana discourse. This is what happened in Manresa, when announcing a candidacy with the ultra Sergi Perramon, leader of Avenç Nacionalista, a splinter group, like that of Sílvia Orriols, from the National Front of Catalonia. The mayor, Ramón Bacardit, defends an anti-immigration speech that is in no way different from that of Orriols. Manresa has 80,000 inhabitants, of which 18,000 are foreigners, and half of them of North African origin.
If this strategy is followed, the path would lead to naturally accepting post-electoral pacts with Aliança Catalana in other municipalities to retain mayoralties or snatch them from the left. But this option implies abandoning the idea of centrality advocated by those who long for CiU. The problem is that in these years a lot has happened and it is not so easy to recover the lost space. Firstly, because some of the old sensibilities have found accommodation in neighboring political forces. But, above all, because in addition to the competition from Aliança Catalana, Junts has to face two powerful adversaries who have already taken away its hegemony and are competing for electoral space. Firstly, the PSC of Salvador Illa, which does not hide its attempt to attract economic and business sectors previously related to Convergència. And, secondly, Esquerra Republicana, which has undertaken a possibilist turn and agreements just when Junts entrenches itself in the politics of confrontation and flirts with populist essentialism. The recent motions of censure promoted by ERC to snatch the mayorships of L’Ametlla de Mar and Perafort from Junts are testimony to that struggle. Constrained between three strong political forces, Junts is going to have a very difficult time preserving its electoral space.
