Comes back pujol. After a stage of ostracism, sadness and Christian flogging for having defrauded millions of euros for years, at the age of 93 and after recovering from a stroke, the ‘expresident’ took advantage of the presentation of a reissue of one of his reference books to display all the color palette of your self-esteem. Pujol claimed his time in prison under Franco, his country project, “pride” in the face of sadness and the idea of a country that despite everything is “alive.” He even allowed himself his usual gags of flirtation, forgetfulness and leadership skills: “I am old but I have some energy. Shut up!“, he joked.
At the gates of being tried together with his entire family -his wife, marta ferrusola, is exempt for health reasons- for having defrauded the Treasury and managing a large amount of money in an allegedly irregular manner, Pujol has spent months going from punishing himself to an explicit declaration of combat against a public image that is at least injured. It did not seem so this Wednesday in the central bookstore where a multitude of faithful and personalities from yesterday and today from politics, the media and the converging environment of a lifetime gathered. No trace of confession, no trace of moral punishment. On the contrary, from the ‘expresident’ Arthur More to miquel rock, from ex-presidents of FCBarcelona to prominent ex-leaders of the public media… Not a trace of reproach. Not a word about her confession, except for those spoken in passing by a young woman who participated in the presentation of the book, who simply mentioned that for her generation, after the confession, “you could no longer name” Pujol.
“I have failed the young man that I was”
The only hint of self-criticism of pujol was the sentence: “I have failed the young man that I was, full of illusion and enthusiasm”, to immediately add that “I have conviction, faith, hope, but I can’t stop being happy with myself, not with many people”. Words that sounded like reproach, too, without a fixed addressee.
Pujol unfolded his story, that of a boy who at the age of ten said “we will have to redo this country” Catalonia after the civil war when he went up to Tagamanent. He spoke of his time in prison (the fruit of which are the texts of “Dels turons to the other band of the river” and he boasted of his model of Catalanism, despite the new phase of independence. He made it clear that his idea has never been anti-Spanish but of an active will to be present in Spain, although “So far it has not worked out for us, but maybe one day it will give its result“. All this combined with a warning about the danger that Catalonia “will again be pressured in a negative sense” which, finally, forces the recovery of “the will to move forward”. Pujol, skilful, avoids references to the today and instead displays his great concepts such as the integration of immigration and collective self-esteem: “I who am tempted by sadness notice that the country is alive“.
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This deployment of the classic Pujol, despite his age, was accompanied by a relaxed tone, which delighted the staff, such as when he said, looking at a photo of himself from the 1960s, that “when he was young, he was handsome”, he asked his son Oriol had made a bad speech, and he jokingly ordered those present to be quiet. He put the public in his pocket and fulfilled one more stage of his personal -and possibly judicial- redemption strategy.
His previous book was titled ‘Between pain and hope’. Now there is much more of the second, together with undisguised pride – the same one that he displayed with acrimony in Parliament when he appeared after the confession, of someone who is no longer insulted on the street for being a fraudster and corrupt.