Joan Esculies, 4 August 2023
Carles Puigdemont at the Junts congress in Argelers // Josep Balcells Adzet
Traitor
This is a full-blown betrayal, they’ve played with me! Mid-October 2017. Carles Puigdemont has suspended the effects of the declaration of independence. The Spanish government doesn’t understand. Has he proclaimed it or not? “I opened the damn window of dialogue. I listened to all the pressures”. Mariano Rajoy threatens him with Article 155. “They have betrayed me once. They won’t do it twice”.
For the rest of the month, the president of the Generalitat sees traitors everywhere. In the PP executive, in ERC, in the ministers who remain silent, in his own people who put pressure on him, in the PSOE, in the PSC? “The spectre of the 1-O flies over me all the time. They won’t fool me again”. On the 26th there is no guarantee that the 155 will be stopped even if he calls elections, which is what he wants to do. “I am defending what I think is best for the country, which will make me look like a traitor”. On Twitter, traitor. In Plaça Sant Jaume a banner, ” Puigdemont, traitor.”
Independentism will only move the government if it finds a point of leverage.
On 27 October, the president has a clear analysis. There is no social majority to defend the DUI, nor tools. The proclamation will not translate into anything for Catalonia. On the contrary, it will add suffering to the lives of many. His own, first and foremost. . He describes it in detail in Me explico. De la investidura al exilio (2020). Puigdemont, however, does not want to betray what he has always defended and the Declaration goes ahead.
Today his circumstances are even more complex. The president is a wounded and therefore susceptible person. Resignation is the most complicated moment for a politician. Francesc Macià, in 1931, renounced the Catalan Republic and obtained autonomy. Traitor. Josep Tarradellas, in 1977, in order to regain the Generalitat, renounced the exceptional nature of republican autonomy and accepted a monarchical regime. Traitor. But both negotiate on the structuring of Spain.
Now Puigdemont is being sought to endorse a legislature. In recent years, the Moncloa has not wanted to resolve the Catalan portfolio, but to put it to bed. Independence will only move the Spanish government, whichever one it may be, if it finds a point where it can get leverage (we explain this in Punto de apoyo, 18 March 2022). When one backs down at the ballot box, one has fallen from the sky: to get amnesty? To obtain the referendum? No government will offer these conditions to parties that are losing voters – woe betide the short-sighted ones who had to turn abstentions into loaves of bread! But a pact between weakened parties (PSOE-Sumar/peripheral independentisms) could consolidate self-government at a delicate European moment.
To explore this, a man who may have a van and handcuffs on the horizon is being asked to resign, albeit momentarily. The gesture to be made is a grand one. “They have betrayed me once, they won’t do it twice! You have to have a very firm conviction that this is the way forward. Would you do it? Puigdemont already knows what his mirror will say to him: traitor!
https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20230804/9150521/traidor.html
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