Junts per Catalunya is calibrating the effects of the rupture in relations with the Government and, while reiterating that the divorce is “irreversible”, tries to maintain the influence and complicity accumulated when it presented itself as Pedro Sánchez’s key partner. Among the actors that Junts seeks to take care of is the Catalan business community. Carles Puigdemont will receive Josep Sánchez Llibre, president of the Treball Foment, in Brussels this week. The Catalan employers’ association has a particular interest in raising concerns about whether Junts has ceased to be a valid mediator with the government to address measures relating to working hours or energy policies.
Puigdemont used one of his usual channels, social networks, to address this Sunday the perplexities and doubts, even within Junts, which may have generated the decision to break with the PSOE. “Let’s not get confused: we never went to Madrid to make friends or to play with the good Catalans”, he underlined, defending that his party’s only mission is the defense “of national interests, in all sectors”.
Míriam Nogueras, spokeswoman for Junts in Congress, said on Friday that “it seems that the only language that the Spanish parties understand is that of taking everything to the limit.” He insists that his training no longer has anything to do with dialogue with the government. Faced with this dead end, Catalan entrepreneurs are mobilizing to prevent the detonation of relations between Junts for Catalunya and the Government from generating a chain effect that short-circuits the communication channel maintained by the three parties and which has led the Independence Party to act as a transmission belt for the interests of Catalan businesses.
Next Tuesday, the president of the Foment del Treball, Josep Sánchez Llibre, will travel to Brussels and in his agenda he has included a meeting with Carles Puigdemont, president of Junts. On the table is the question of how the employers’ association can guarantee its influence in the government, after the bombing of the bridges organized by Junts.
Foment has taken a very severe stance on issues such as the rejection of the reduction in working hours wanted by Sumar and Minister Yolanda Díaz and makes demands that Junts supports, such as denouncing the state’s lack of investment in infrastructure for Catalonia or the reduction of personal income tax or taxes such as those on property or inheritance. They also showed other coincidences, such as when they defended the need to expand Barcelona airport or when Foment applauded Junts, together with PP, Vox and PNV, for the repeal of the tax on energy companies.
In addition to acting as a loudspeaker for repeated requests for tax cuts, the Catalan business world saw Junts as a counterweight so that the government does not give in to Sumar’s demands on issues related to energy policy or the organization of the working day. The party, especially through the president of the parliamentary group Albert Batet, has committed to working on relations with representatives of the business world, both in Barcelona and Madrid. Four days before Puigdemont made the closure of the agreements with the government official from Perpignan, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, met with representatives of Pimec, the association of small and medium-sized enterprises, where he argued and defended that there were reasons for the breakup.
For his part, Sánchez Llibre regularly visited the former Catalan president. When the Junts leader made public his candidacy to run for the presidency of the Generalitat, in the 2024 Catalan elections, he received a visit from a delegation from the management of the Foment del Treball. The president of Foment, and vice-president of CEOE, was a member of Convergència i Unió at the Congress of Deputies for a decade and has publicly recognized that one of his missions includes the attempt to find adequate political alliances to defend the interests of companies.
Junts’ decision to distance himself from the Government alerts Foment, but is not seen as a turning point in the deal. “As long as the legislature is alive and there are no elections, Junts is our ally; he has been reliable, he has demonstrated loyalty and he has respected all the commitments made,” Sánchez Llibre said in recent statements to The avant-garde.
