The first major electoral debate of 29-N has brought together the Catalan candidates on TVE and has served to contrast the two options that are at stake in these general elections: that of the continuity of Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa or that of an alternative led by the Popular Party, of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The Popular Party candidate for Barcelona, Xavier García-Albiol, has called for "grouping the vote" in the PP so that Feijóo obtains "a sufficient majority to govern alone" and reach "specific agreements" with Vox and other forces throughout the legislature. The mayor of Badalona has also specified that he has no "complexes with Vox", with whom he has predicted that he will be able to reach agreements "on the issues that unite them", leaving aside those that separate them.
In front of him, the head of the PSC list and current Minister of Industry, Jordi Hereu, has stirred fear against the party led by Santiago Abascal and has defined PP and Vox as an "action unit" that represents "a very important danger." In an effort to avoid the right-wing alternative, the socialist has demanded the "activation of an immense majority in Catalonia", a decisive place in which 48 deputies are at stake and in which in 2023, 40 of them supported Sánchez's investiture.
That same scarecrow has been shaken by the Frente Amplio candidate and current Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, who has predicted that PP and Vox will form "a majority against the interests of Catalonia", if they get enough seats to govern Spain.
Those from Abascal, represented by Juan José Aizcorbe, have demanded the support of citizens to "end the Government of corruption", supported by a clear proposal against irregular immigration ("national priority and those at home first"), and deregulation and tax cuts.
"Two models are at stake: that of Feijóo against squatting and illegal immigration or that of Sánchez with Colau as vice president. Order or continue with the open door policy," said Albiol, who has claimed that he will personally lead the new law to guarantee expulsions within 48 hours in the event of illegal occupation of homes.
Urtasun has claimed as its own the main social measures of the current Government, that is, the increases in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage, the labor reform of Yolanda Díaz or the freezing of rents through the housing decrees that were overthrown in Congress, leading to the early calling of elections, and subsequently approved in the Permanent Deputation.
Albiol has promised that the new regulations will be repealed if Feijóo becomes president, because it is "blocking access to housing" and for the sake of "legal security." He has also asked Hereu, without receiving an answer, "why housing is the main problem for Spaniards today, when it was the sixteenth when Sánchez was sworn in as president" for the first time.
The independence candidates of Junts and ERC have intervened in the struggle between the two blocs of the right and the left. The neoconvergent candidate, Míriam Nogueras, has claimed her party as the "only one of strict Catalan obedience" and has disassociated herself from the electoral call because the PSOE "did not do the royal housing decrees well." Nogueras has stressed that "socialists and commoners govern Spain and Catalonia" and that the results in housing "are increasingly bad, with a decreasing offer" and with the demonization of the small owner: "The grandmother who has a rented apartment is not a speculator."
Junts has not taken a position on its role in future investitures, but Nogueras has already clarified that they would only be open to supporting the PSOE again if they dispensed with Sánchez as a presidential candidate.
Gabriel Rufián, for his part, has dedicated himself, fundamentally, to trying to wear down Junts, placing him as a preferred partner of the PP and Vox and accusing him of harming the interests of Catalans by opposing measures from the left-wing Government: "They vote in a self-harming way."
