The leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, has confirmed the breakdown of the investiture pact with the PSOE and Junts' transition to the"opposition." "We are not willing to continue helping a government that does not help Catalonia; goodbye," the fugitive stated.

Puigdemont has assumed that his decision will lead to a deadlock in the Spanish legislature, but that Pedro Sánchez will not leave the Moncloa Palace."The government may occupy seats, but it will not be able to approve budgets, it will not be able to govern," stated the Junts leader. He then urged the Prime Minister to clarify"how he intends to continue governing the country." "He will not be able to resort to a majority vote, and problems cannot be resolved by a minority," he added.

Puigdemont has refrained from calling for early general elections and has not indicated that he plans to support a vote of no confidence alongside the PP and Vox to oust Sánchez."When Junts had to choose between the PP and the PSOE, they chose the PSOE," the Junts president stressed, to avoid being lumped in with the parties led by Santiago Abascal and Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

The Junts executive had unanimously backed its leader's decision hours earlier. The fugitive expressed his determination to end the alliance with Sánchez at the very beginning of the leadership meeting, held in the French town of Perpignan, after having reached an agreement on Sunday with his core group, headed by the separatist party's vice president, Miriam Nogueras, and its general secretary, Jordi Turull.

The split will mean ending the clandestine negotiating table that met monthly in Switzerland under the supervision of the Salvadoran mediator. Puigdemont confirmed that the forum has been held 19 times and criticized the PSOE for having"disregarded" the warnings that Junts emissaries repeatedly notified it of during their meetings."It has ignored its parliamentary weakness," he said.

The decision of the Junts Executive Committee must be confirmed on Tuesday by the party's National Council, its highest body between Congresses, and will be submitted for validation by the membership in a consultation that will be held between Wednesday and Thursday, when the result will be announced.

The investiture pact signed with Sánchez two years ago was endorsed by the Neo-Convergent grassroots with 86% of the vote. The result of the referendum that Junts organized in 2022 to decide whether to leave the coalition government it formed with ERC was much closer. On that occasion, only 55% of the membership backed the initiative championed by Puigdemont.

The rupture was precipitated last week, when Nogueras warned the President of the Government that"the time for change" had arrived, suggesting that the end of the alliance that the PSOE and the independentists signed almost two years ago - they did so on November 9, 2023 - in Brussels was approaching, and by which they exchanged the approval of the Amnesty Law for support for Sánchez's investiture.

The split was made official on the eighth anniversary of the unilateral declaration of independence, a hugely symbolic date for the secessionist movement and for Puigdemont, who led the attempt to break the constitutional order before fleeing abroad. Junts has argued that maintaining the pact with the PSOE is"unsustainable" after its repeated breaches. The former president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) accused Sánchez of"conniving" and mentioned the publication of fiscal accounts and the declassification of documents on the 17-A attacks as unfulfilled agreements. Puigdemont emphasized these and not other more significant ones, such as the official status of Catalan in Europe or the delegation of immigration powers to Catalonia so that the Socialists cannot hide behind the fact that these were issues beyond their jurisdiction.

Also, and especially, the polls have been decisive in the divorce, which already place Aliança Catalana and two deputies from Junts in the best of cases for the formation of xenophobic bias."Is it possible to bring down the Madrid Government from Ripoll? I think so," boasted its leader and mayor of the Barcelona town, Sílvia Orriols, yesterday.