Freed ministers turn out for first day of campaigning

The first full day of campaigning began on Tuesday with two of the Catalan ministers released from jail throwing their support behind their colleagues who are still imprisoned, and the president in exile, Carles Puigdemont. The dismissed Catalan ministers, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, who were freed from prison on Monday evening, appeared before the media on Tuesday morning as candidates on Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia (JxCat) ticket.

Insisting that they will campaign to see the remaining four pro-independence leaders freed from custody, Turull and Rull, who are the fourth and sixth candidates on the JxCat ticket, also said their aims include seeing Puigdemont reinstated as Catalan president along with his entire government. In fact, Puigdemont and the four dismissed ministers in exile with him celebrated the release of the two former ministers in a live video link from Brussels.

“The best government will continue building the republic”

Another freed minister, Carles Mundó, also turned out on Tuesday for the Esquerra party (ERC). With ERC’s main candidate, dismissed vice president Oriol Junqueras, still in prison, Mundó appeared alongside ERC’s secretary general, Marta Rovira. In an event in Barcelona’s former Model prison, Rovira avoided mention of reinstating Puigdemont, limiting herself to a call for support for the independence process: “The best Catalan government will be one that can continue the work and continue building the republic,” she said.

For his part, Mundó hailed “the good work that has been done” and criticized the implementation of Article 155 imposing direct rule on Catalonia, calling it “an anomaly, an imposition and an abuse of the rights of Catalans.” He was also critical of the parties that supported Article 155: “From Cs, PPC or PSC we have not heard a single proposal other than attacks on the determination of the Catalan government and attempts to pass over the good work that the government has done,” he said.

“A unique opportunity to end independence roadmap”

Meanwhile, the main candidate and leader of the Ciutadans (Cs) party, Inés Arrimadas, said that she had noticed that the other unionist parties, PPC and PSC, are “nervous” about the latest polls. Asking the other constitutionalist parties to join her party in “ending” the pro-independence roadmap, Arrimadas called the December 21 election a “unique opportunity” to provide an alternative to the bloc for the Catalan state and attain a “non-nationalist” government in Catalonia. Arrimadas warned that should the pro-independence parties get a majority in parliament, “we will find ourselves in the same situation” and “they will do the same things again.”