The muddy trenches of Puigdemont

Until the procés changed the rules, Catalan nationalism had always behaved, before state elections, with a double hope: that the least adverse Spanish party would win (the policy of the lesser evil) and that doors would remain open, whoever governed would govern, for get the best for Catalonia and theirs (the ‘bird in hand’ policy). Jordi Pujol was the architect par excellence of this strategywhich he practiced with Philip Gonzalez and with Jose Maria Aznar and that allowed him to continue leading the Generalitat for more than twenty years. With the procés, pragmatism collapsed. It was replaced by confrontation, which some claimed to be more intelligent than others, but which left Catalan nationalism without influence in the Congress of Deputies. Carlos Puigdemont embodied like no one else a mutation that ended with a defeat on all fronts and with a division of the independence movement into six or seven currents that range from radicalism without limits to Clara Ponsati until the attempt to graft xenophobic sap to give it a new verve, an experiment with which Silvia Orriols has reached the Ripoll mayor’s office.

After a lost decade, it is not surprising that the two million Catalans who ended up supporting the independence cause are perplexed and disconcerted by the upcoming electoral call. What to vote? those who listen to Puigdemont say that the only difference between Pedro Sanchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo is that the first amputates with anesthesia and the second does not need it. The pro-independence leaders justify their attacks by the useful vote towards the Catalan socialists that they detect among their own. They could criticize Sánchez for many things, but equating him with Feijóo and what can come is nonsense. It was not Sánchez who acted as an arsonist against the unilateral route, it was Mariano Rajoy. Memory is short. Rajoy was not mentioned in the central act of the campaign that he gave yesterday Together for Catalonia in Amer, Puigdemont’s hometown. The rally was a coven against the leader of the PSOE. For every critical mention of Feijóo or Santiago Abascal, there were between eight or ten of Sánchez. Intervening from Waterloo, Puigdemont chose not to add fuel to the fire, as is usual for him in moments of confusion and outburst. Was not necessary to. The day before he had declared that Sánchez would not be president with the votes of Junts.

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So, what is the meaning of the independence vote? Buried the classic way of ‘bird in hand’, reviled the parliamentary support that Esquerra Republicana has offered to the Sánchez government during the last legislature, which way is left The trench, said Puigdemont. With what wickers? With the eight or nine deputies that Junts can get in Madrid? It seems sarcasm to talk about pro-independence trenches after elections that will give the PSC and the PP one of their best results in Catalonia. Could it be that Puigdemont confuses his personal situation, aggravated by the setback caused by the latest European judicial decision, with that of the country? Trapped by the logic of a campaign against the PSOE, he does not even speak, as he could, of wide democratic and Catalan trenches that would provide solid refuges in the event that Feijóo and Abascal end up ruling together. Theirs are the trenches of October 1, without realizing that, since then, it has rained a lot. So much so that the grounds of the independence movement have been muddy.

Puigdemont’s support for participation, against the most radical, seemed to indicate that he was willing to wage a political battle. He even dreamed that the Junts votes could be essential to bring Sánchez to Moncloa. Spent the judicial gunpowder, Being decisive after 23J was the only option left for him to maintain a leading role that the passage of time is taking away. But this option, for which an unlikely astral conjunction was required, is unlikely today. Caught up in the harsh speeches of Laura Borras and the most radical, he has few cartridges left. “Catalan votes cannot be used to prop up Spanish parties,” he went on to say Miriam Nogueras at the Amer rally. What is the use, then, of going to vote?

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