Gerard Melgar Barcelona

Barcelona

Updated Monday, February 5, 2024-02:09

  • Security Junts wants Catalonia to be able to expel repeat immigrants and Oriol Junqueras accuses him of "embracing the speeches of the extreme right"

  • Politics Junts toughens its stance on security and immigration in the face of the rise of the pro-independence extreme right

Immigration

, like the drought, will be one of the major themes of the last year of the legislature in Catalonia

.

Junts

' speech

on this matter in recent months, leaning towards harsher postulates, has opened a debate whose epicenter has now moved to

Sant Cugat del Vallès

(Barcelona), the most important city of those run by the

neoconvergents

.

A municipal survey by telephone, with questions about the foreign population and crime, has put the left-wing parties of the City Council on a war footing and has cracked the government coalition that Junts has formed with

Esquerra Republicana

since last June.

«Can a high immigration rate strain public services or put Catalan traditions and language at risk?», «Does

Sant Cugat

have to welcome immigration to the maximum of its possibilities?» or "Should immigrants who commit

repeat crimes

be returned to their place of origin ?" These are some of the questions that residents have answered, anonymously, in recent days in order to prepare

this year's

Municipal Sociological Observatory report.

The

PSC

, the

CUP

and

En Comú Podem

have pointed out the deputy mayor

Jordi Puigneró

, former counselor of the Generalitat and also vice president between May 2021 and September 2022, when he was dismissed by

Pere Aragonès

a few days before Junts left the Government led by ERC. As the person in charge of the barometer, Puigneró is accused of "having promoted xenophobic messages" and that he has taken "a first step to legitimize future

racist policies

in Sant Cugat."

Criticism of the head of the municipal area of ​​Institutional Relations, Good Government and Digital City has also come from the minority partner of the Sancugatense Executive. Esquerra was not aware of "the changes in the focus of the survey" compared to previous years and has distanced itself from the inclusion of "questions that lead to linking immigration with concern,

crime

and recidivism, stigmatize migrants and respond to the political agenda of a party, not that of the city government.

Puigneró acknowledges that he had not informed ERC of the content of the survey and alleges that, except in the last term, in which the City Council was governed by a tripartite of ERC, PSC and the CUP, he had already asked about immigration in other stages. The Republicans emphasize that "linking crime and origin is tendentious and a serious error that feeds the discourse of the

extreme right

" and describe it as "a great disloyalty" of the deputy mayor "to have appropriated a political tool to ask citizens about issues." linked to their agenda.

It so happens that Puigneró's "disloyalty" is the same that Aragonès attributed to his vice president in 2022 to dismiss him. The president of the Generalitat justified his decision by "the loss of confidence" in the

number two

of the Cabinet, who had not informed him about the request that he submit to a question of confidence if he did not offer "guarantees of compliance with the investiture agreements." » that the leader of Junts in the Parliament,

Albert Batet

, launched in the middle of the General Policy Debate. The dismissal of Puigneró precipitated the breakdown of the coalition between both parties, which had been battered for a long time and was finally certified by the

neo-convergent

militants through a consultation.

'Convergent' fiefdom

Sant Cugat, with

more than 97,000 inhabitants

and a high level of income, is the only municipality in the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona in the hands of Junts, which recovered this square after the left-wing tripartite took away the leadership that it had held in 2019. preserved

CiU

since 1987.

Amid speculation about the possibility that the far-right independence party

Aliança Catalana

, led by the mayor of Ripoll (Girona),

Sílvia Orriols

, will run in the next regional elections, the Sant Cugat chapter joins the controversy unleashed in December in the coastal municipality of

Calella

(Barcelona), where its mayor,

Marc Buch

, along with several

neo-convergent

councilors from the Maresme region, demanded the expulsion of those immigrants in an irregular situation who have committed multiple repeat crimes. A position that the general secretary of Junts,

Jordi Turull

, has supported on more than one occasion since then.

In this context, the

neoconvergents

, who this year will organize a convention to establish a programmatic line on migration, started less than a month ago the commitment of the Government of

Pedro Sánchez

to transfer powers in migration policy to the Generalitat through an organic law empowered by the

article 150.2

of the Constitution. This was the route used, in 1998, to transfer state traffic powers to the

Mossos d'Esquadra

by the

PP

Executive chaired by

José María Aznar

.

"Catalonia must have a State policy on immigration whether you like it or not," Turull declared a few days later in a national council of Junts, defending his party's agreement with the

PSOE

for the delegation of immigration powers.