Former President of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and former President of ERC Oriol Junqueras met this Sunday in Waterloo (Belgium) for about five hours, after years of no contact and a bad relationship full of crossed recriminations. The meeting, preceded by The national one and confirmed by elDiario.es, this took place in the middle of the investiture talks. The ERC negotiating team is not led by Junqueras, but by the Secretary General of the Republicans, Marta Rovira.
The meeting comes after Junqueras gave up the presidency of the ERC, albeit with the intention of regaining the party's leadership in November, amid the Republicans' internal crisis following the electoral setback and with the decision to be made on whether to facilitate the investiture of Salvador Illa, the only one who has the necessary numbers to advance.
The meeting between Puigdemont and Junqueras is relevant because they have not seen each other for a long time and have distanced themselves a lot lately. The last known meeting between both leaders took place in 2021, after the ERC leader was pardoned.
The differences between the two leaders were already noticed in the sovereign autumn of 2017 and later widened. It was the former president himself who reported in a book about the turbulence with his vice president –which he came to call 'unfaithful'– during his time in government. The relationship has remained bad all these years.
Puigdemont also recently met with the Republicans’ secretary general, Marta Rovira, who is responsible for leading negotiations to form the government. Puigdemont’s options are slim in any case, since to become president again he would need a more than unlikely abstention from the PSC, in addition to the ERC’s “yes.” For this reason, Junts is maneuvering to repeat the elections and roll the dice again with a single list led by the former president, which also includes Republicans.