Artur Mas: "Junts has to press, but without breaking the Government"

He is not a member of Junts per Catalunya, but his opinions carry a lot of weight within the group led by Laura Borràs and Jordi Turull today, and which is immersed in the debate on whether they should leave Pere Aragonès' Executive.

Artur Mas (Barcelona, ​​66 years old) lives apart from the political front line after being removed from the presidency of the Generalitat in the midst of the independence process, the political phenomenon that he himself led from its beginnings.

Ten years after the beginning of this fight with the State, Mas calls on the independence movement to seek links and rejects Junts leaving the Government.

Ask.

Coinciding with the anniversary of the beginning of the

and five years after the failed declaration of independence, the debate on whether to reactivate the unilateral declaration of independence (DUI) should once again appear.

Are you in favor of it?

Do you see it as realistic as the Catalan National Assembly defends?

Response.

The DUI has become a kind of totem.

But the important thing is not to proclaim it or verbalize it;

it is to know what it means, what consequences it has.

Then people will be able to calibrate between the sacrifices and the benefits, decide if that battle pays off or not.

That debate does not exist in Catalonia.

There was already a DUI in October 2017 and we continue to be an autonomous community within the framework of the Spanish State.

More information

Countdown to save the Catalan Government

P.

Junts, despite Thursday's unchecking, is the formation that has given more wings to that speech.

R.

Esquerra was the one that pushed the most towards it before 2017. But the issue is how to recover in Catalan sovereignty and even beyond, a basic consensus, a lowest common denominator.

Now, with the current division, we are not credible.

In addition to this consensus among independentists, another is necessary to shield the country's basic issues, which can perfectly incorporate the PSC and the commons.

The former Catalan president, on Thursday in his office. Albert Garcia

P.

But the Government is reluctant even to agree on budgets with the PSC.

R.

The commons agreed on the last accounts and I do not see why the PSC cannot be in that possible agreement.

In fact, the Minister of Economy has opened the door to it.

P.

Do you think that Junts will be able to put together a unitary discourse on the break or permanence in the Government?

R.

Junts must be understood as a project under construction.

My personal opinion, although I am not a member of Junts, is that it has to tighten, it has to demand, but without breaking the Government.

Because if we are not capable of creating or maintaining a pro-independence government, how are we going to convince someone that we are going to grant independence?

Q.

What do you think Junts can demand?

R.

You cannot have a dialogue table with the Government that has not been previously agreed in Catalonia by the pro-independence political forces.

It doesn't make any sense that Junts isn't there.

At the table you have to show strength and that strength goes through cohesion.

If there is only one, the Spanish Government, the job is already done.

And Junts has to be represented as they decide.

And we must establish a common strategy of pressure and influence in the Spanish Courts.

P.

But Junts, in Congress, seems installed in the no to everything.

R.

We must maintain a common policy in Madrid, which does not have to be in 100% of cases, but fundamentally.

Among other things, because Catalan sovereignty, like Basque nationalism, has a very significant arithmetic force in the Spanish Courts.

And they will have it more, because the possibility that there is a great consensus in Spanish politics between popular and socialists seems more and more distant.

Sometimes it occurs in some specific topics.

It was given to annul Catalan autonomy in October 2017. There was that consensus, but few other times.

So there is room for action.

P.

You ended up withdrawing from politics after the CUP demanded your replacement to support the investiture of a Catalan president.

Carles Puigdemont is still on the front line from Brussels.

Do you share the idea that it should move away following the request of entities such as Òmnium Cultural that demand new voices?

More information

10 years of 'procés': The open wound of Catalonia

R.

The people who have exercised a very intense leadership in these last four or five years must be able to have a role, unless they give up that role.

It would be a mistake to leave them out.

Be it Puigdemont or Oriol Junqueras.

P.

Should the Consell per la República, led by Puigdemont, be the one to lead the pro-independence action?

R.

If the Consell is a consensus space, I don't see it wrong, or it could be another [strategic direction], but there has to be one.

The Catalan sovereignty movement, as the president of Òmnium said this weekend, needs a strategic direction.

He needs it like eating, and he doesn't have it.

It is not impossible to get.

We had it.

P.

The interim in the presidency of the Parliament is an absolutely dysfunctional situation.

Should Laura Borràs, as you did in 2016, take a step to the side to facilitate unlocking?

R.

If in 2018, with the autonomy suspended, a president of the Generalitat was elected, why now that we do not have it suspended, although it is monitored and controlled, can we not elect president of the Parliament of Catalonia?

Laura Borràs is quite right when she says that what has happened has to do with being who she is and defending what she defends.

But one thing is to be right and another thing is to be recognized and have the majority to support it.

P.

It is not just a matter of majorities.

The suspension is the result of the application of the regulation voted by the Chamber itself.

R.

Including that article in the regulations was a mistake, because it is giving judges and prosecutors the power to put and remove someone who has been elected at the polls.

But once entered, it is the regulation and you only have to try to change it.

P.

Next week marks a decade since the meeting with Mariano Rajoy in La Moncloa to ask him for specific financing for Catalonia, the fiscal pact, which was the advance of the independence process.

Today, not only is there not this fiscal pact, but all the autonomies continue to drag the financing model that expired in 2014. Did you ever think that everything could go so wrong?

R.

No. I had some hope, naive, perhaps, that Rajoy understood what was happening in Catalonia after the ruling on the Statute and did not attribute [the discomfort] to "a hot summer", as they defined it.

The Constitutional Court squandered the backbone of what the Catalans had voted for, with a very hard position from the PP.

I thought they wouldn't be so short-sighted or act so cocky.

Artur Mas, on Thursday in Barcelona.Albert Garcia

P.

Perhaps it was also interpreted as cocky that his approach was either a fiscal pact or nothing.

R.

When I say cocky I mean the arrogant attitude of someone who, having the absolute majority, knows that he does not depend on anyone and treats others with indifference.

I found myself with a terrible myopia before the evidence that something was happening in Catalonia and that I had won the elections with the flag of the fiscal pact to get out of the quagmire after the ruling of the Constitutional Court.

And that flag was neither independence nor self-determination, it was a way out within the constitutional framework, which sought to resolve the economic and financial issue.

P.

Catalonia traditionally led the debate on the autonomous financing model, until it chose to be removed from the discussion tables for the

.

What way out do you see if the position of the Generalitat does not change?

A.

The law requires the model to be reviewed every five years.

It played in 2014 and we are in 2022. We are facing a fraud of law.

And it is not up to the Catalan independence movement to lead this debate, but to the Government.

P.

But Catalonia refuses to participate in forums, for example, the one of experts on the subject launched by the Executive.

R.

I think we do not have to inhibit ourselves from this type of debate.

In the end, reality is what it is and we all need each other to improve our financing system.

But one thing is not to be inhibited and the other is to lead the debate.

When we did this we received all the blows and in the end there was an agreement that ended up being modified to satisfy the rest of the governments and then in Catalonia many did not understand it.

Q.

And shouldn't they ally themselves with other communities with similar problems?

R.

Yes, and in any case we should forge an alliance with Valencia and the Balearic Islands, territories systematically punished.

It's not just us.

P.

Xavier Trias and you share having said that you would not return to the front line of politics.

The former mayor seems to be rethinking it, in part because he believes that he was unjustly deposed by the so-called Operation Catalonia.

And you?

R.

The

, the

, they do not exist neither in life nor in politics.

I maintain the necessary sense of responsibility, but at this moment I lack something that is fundamental, the will.

Like Trias, I feel like a victim of that State that allows a parallel State that tries to destroy people, families and ideas.

And that challenges me, but not to the point of returning to the forefront of the political scene.

You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on

Subscribe to continue reading

read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber