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A Republican president back in office

ERC’s Pere Aragonès becomes Catalonia’s 132nd president promising a “social, green, feminist and fully free” future, and pledging to make amnesty for the jailed independence leaders and self-determination “inevitable”

calls for a “just, prosperous, green, feminist, and fully free” Catalonia “THE COUNTRY NEEDS TO LIFT ITS HEAD AGAIN AND BEGIN A NEW PHASE”
The new president stated his willingness for major changes COMMITMENT TO MAKING AMNESTY AND SELF-DETERMINATION INEVITABLE

I promise to faith­fully ful­fill the oblig­a­tions of the po­si­tion of Pres­i­dent of the Gen­er­al­i­tat, in ac­cor­dance with the pop­u­lar will of the cit­i­zens of Cat­alo­nia rep­re­sented in our Par­lia­ment.” With this oath was the 132nd Cata­lan pres­i­dent, Pere Aragonès, sworn into of­fice on May 24. In his first speech, Aragonès out­lined the four “ur­gent” pri­or­i­ties of the new re­pub­li­can Cata­lan gov­ern­ment, say­ing it must be “so­cial, green, fem­i­nist and de­mo­c­ra­tic”. The work to try to achieve those aims began the next day, when Aragonès an­nounced his new ex­ec­u­tive.

The swear­ing in cer­e­mony that took place in the evening was a sober af­fair. There is no reg­u­lated pro­to­col for these events and it is left very much to the dis­cre­tion of the new pres­i­dent. How­ever, it was the first time that the swear­ing in of a new head of gov­ern­ment had taken place in the Tarongers court­yard in the Palau de la Gen­er­al­i­tat, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment head­quar­ters in Barcelona.

The new pres­i­dent stated his will­ing­ness to drive through major changes, and there was no short­age of sym­bolic el­e­ments, such as ref­er­ences to the his­toric re­pub­li­can pres­i­dents from the ERC party who pre­ceded him. Yet Aragonès also said his gov­ern­ment aimed to serve the en­tire coun­try, giv­ing thanks to the pub­lic ser­vants who have been on the front line in the fight against the coro­n­avirus pan­demic.

In a nod to sus­tain­abil­ity, the court­yard where the cer­e­mony took place was cov­ered with braided nat­ural fi­bres for the oc­ca­sion. The Cata­lan music group, Ginestà, per­formed the song ’Es­ti­mar- te com la terra’, while in a stanza of the na­tional an­them per­formed by Magalí Sare and Manel Fortià, at the singer’s re­quest and with the ap­proval of the new pres­i­dent, the usual mas­cu­line form of the word ’reapers’, or ’segadors’ was re­placed by the fem­i­nine form, ’segadores’.

Main pri­or­i­ties

In his first speech as pres­i­dent, Aragonés summed up the new gov­ern­ment’s pro­gramme with which he aims to pro­mote a pro­found trans­for­ma­tion of the coun­try “with­out leav­ing any­one be­hind”. He also reaf­firmed the com­mit­ment, al­ready ref­er­enced on the pre­vi­ous Fri­day when the par­lia­ment con­firmed him as the new head of gov­ern­ment, to work “to achieve amnesty [for the jailed Cata­lan po­lit­i­cal lead­ers] and make self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in­evitable”. Aragonès called for a “just, pros­per­ous, green, fem­i­nist, and fully free” Cat­alo­nia, and de­scribed the mo­ment as “tran­scen­dent” due to the “very com­pli­cated” sit­u­a­tion in all as­pects of so­ci­ety.

“The coun­try needs to lift its head again and begin a new phase. With all ur­gency. With­out fur­ther ado,” he said, and he called for “clear­ing the way” and get­ting to work with­out fear to “over­come the bumps in the road” so that “every­one can move for­ward.” Aragonés evoked him­self as a teenager, going into pol­i­tics in­spired by the ideals of so­cial jus­tice and na­tional free­dom. “Two strug­gles, which for me, are com­pletely in­sep­a­ra­ble, and which from today I will con­tinue to serve from the pres­i­dency,” he stressed, con­clud­ing, as he did on Fri­day, with: “Long live free Cat­alo­nia!”

Torra and Iceta

Among the 40 guests lis­ten­ing to his speech were for­mer pres­i­dents such as Artur Mas, the in­cum­bent min­is­ters, mem­bers of the par­lia­ment bu­reau, lead­ers of par­lia­men­tary groups – ex­cept for those from the Vox, Cs and PP par­ties, who chose not to at­tend – some of the jailed po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, such as the pres­i­dent of the pro-in­de­pen­dence Òmnium or­gan­i­sa­tion, Jordi Cuixart, the gen­eral sec­re­tary of the Junts party, Jordi Sànchez, and the pres­i­dent of the ERC party, Oriol Jun­queras, who was back in the Palau for the first time since the events of Oc­to­ber 2017 that led to his im­pris­on­ment.

Mo­ments be­fore his speech, in which he praised the work of his pre­de­ces­sor, Quim Torra, Aragonés had re­ceived from his pre­de­ces­sor the cer­e­mo­nial medal­lion by gold­smith Jaume Mer­cadé, which has been awarded to new Cata­lan pres­i­dents by the out­go­ing head of gov­ern­ment since the Re­pub­li­can era. There was no such pre­sen­ta­tion for Torra when he took of­fice three years ago, as his pre­de­ces­sor Car­les Puigde­mont was by then in exile, and the medal­lion was left on the desk in the pres­i­dent’s of­fice.

In the front row, in ad­di­tion to Torra and the new par­lia­ment speaker, Laura Borràs, who read the res­o­lu­tion de­clar­ing Aragonés pres­i­dent, were his par­ents, the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, and the Span­ish Min­is­ter of Ter­ri­to­r­ial Pol­icy and for­mer leader of the Cata­lan So­cial­ist Party, Miquel Iceta. His pres­ence was seen as a pos­i­tive ges­ture, as no mem­ber of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment had come to Torra’s swear­ing in cer­e­mony three years ago. At that time, the con­ser­v­a­tive PP party were in power in Madrid, and they stayed away in dis­ap­proval over the for­mat of the event, which had been kept pur­pose­fully aus­tere to point out the ab­nor­mal po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, with Cat­alo­nia under di­rect con­trol and the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum im­pris­oned.

Lit­tle ex­pec­ta­tion

Pro-in­de­pen­dence groups did not gather out­side the Palau, and there were only a few cu­ri­ous peo­ple and about 50 pro-Pales­tin­ian pro­test­ers, al­though dozens of peo­ple fol­lowed the event on a screen out­side the ERC party head­quar­ters. Aragonés ar­rived at the Palau on foot, with his wife Jan­ina Juli and his two-year-old daugh­ter Clau­dia. Be­fore en­ter­ing, he laid a red car­na­tion on the Stolper­steine plaque ho­n­our­ing vic­tims of Nazism, and in this case Lluís Com­pa­nys, the last ERC party pres­i­dent to take of­fice in Cat­alo­nia, who was ex­e­cuted by the Franco regime in 1940 after being cap­tured by the Nazis. The last ERC party pres­i­dent had been Josep Tar­radel­las in 1954, who at the time was still in exile in Mex­ico.

In­side, the new pres­i­dent was met by the Mosso d’Es­quadra chief of po­lice, Josep Lluís Trap­ero. After a for­mal in­spec­tion of a for­ma­tion of Mossos in dress uni­form, Aragonès met rep­re­sen­ta­tives of health, ed­u­ca­tion, and Civil Pro­tec­tion. Be­fore leav­ing the court­yard as pres­i­dent, he stopped for a mo­ment in front of the busts of Com­pa­nys and Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent Francesc Macià. As the Cata­lan poet J.V. Foix put it: “I’m ex­cited about the new and I’m in love with the old.”

fea­ture pol­i­tics

fea­ture pol­i­tics

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