The Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, has accepted to head the PSC list in the upcoming general elections and has called for broad electoral participation to achieve "victory from Catalonia for progressive Spain."
Hereu intervened this Sunday before the extraordinary National Council of the PSC, where the president of the Generalitat and first secretary of the Catalan socialists, Salvador Illa, formally proposed him as a candidate in a context in which, he emphasized, the current model of society is "at stake."
Hereu's trajectory includes the position of Minister of Industry and Tourism since November 2023, the presidency of Hispasat between 2020 and 2023, and the mayoralty of Barcelona between 2006 and 2011. His designation as head of the list will be submitted for internal ratification next Friday.
In the previous general elections of July 2023, the PSC candidacy was led by the former president of Congress and former minister Meritxell Batet, who left the political front line a few months later.
"Fifth pillar of the welfare state"
During his speech, Hereu positioned housing as a priority and announced that the socialists will promote measures "that must be of new ambition" to respond to current challenges in this area.
"After health, education, dependency, and the pension system, now comes to build the fifth pillar of the welfare state, which is called housing," he stated, defending that this must be a central axis of political action.
He claimed that the socialists have "the word as a tool to convince from respect for the people" and with a positive project against a situation he considers unprecedented, marked by the use of insults, disqualification, and lies as a political strategy.
"In the coming weeks, they will start to take off the mask. Yesterday Feijóo already expressed a concept called sacrifice. What do they want to sacrifice? I believe they want to sacrifice everything for which we work and believe," he stated.
Hereu made a call to workers, women, farmers, and the entire Catalanism: "We need the strong support of all the people of Catalonia who have always bet on a progressive Spain, a Spain of diversity, and a Spain in which Catalonia feels recognized."