Esquerra Republicana president Oriol Junqueras defends building an alternative alliance to the “obsolete socialist-conservative model” at a gathering with party members

10 years after being elected President and Secretary General of Esquerra Republicana, Oriol Junqueras and Marta Rovira shared the stage in a gathering with party members—the first held off-line since the beginning of the pandemic—under the slogan Let’s Write our Republican Future. Despite Ms Rovira’s unjust exile in Geneva, she was able to discuss the party’s strategic points with Oriol Junqueras via an almost holographic projection, contending that “the negotiating table is a fresh democratic face-off that brings us closer to the Catalan Republic.”

The negotiations with Spain on the political conflict with Catalonia was the last key point that they tackled, after reviewing other strategic issues like feminism, the ecological transition, social rights and the Catalan language. “We got people who did not want to sit and negotiate to sit at the table. There are no ballot boxes, voting slips or polling stations yet, but the democratic confrontation with a state that is demophobic, that is afraid of democratic mandates, is still a renewed face-off, and we must contend with it with all our might and convictions,” Ms Rovira stressed.

“The confrontation Spain is most uneasy with is precisely at the negotiating table, because there we force it to stand out before all the citizens of Catalonia and before the international community, which sees the reply the state and its repressive apparatuses give,” said Mr Junqueras. Esquerra’s president also laid out “the formula” to gain the Catalan Republic. “We all know what it is: it’s amnesty, the referendum and independence, and that will be gained by being very, very strong, and winning international complicity, which is essential.”