Màrius Carol, 11 June 2024
Editorial Director La Vanguardia
Picture: David Borrat/EFE
Nothing justifies voting again
The results of the European elections favour Salvador Illa as the next president of the Generalitat, although Catalan politics is always capable of surprising us. The PSC has won five consecutive elections, the last three in less than a year. By contrast, independence is in free fall. The Catalans did not buy Carles Puigdemont’s story of restitution on 12-M, as Junts was seven MPs and 200,000 votes behind Salvador Illa, who also outnumbered ERC by 22 seats and 450,000 votes. The pro-independence movement was now in a clear minority in the Catalan parliament. But even so, Puigdemont has tried desperately to get the Republicans to vote for him and the Socialists not to vote for themselves in the investiture debate, which sounds like a surrealist tale by Monterroso.
And Puigdemont is still determined to do so, however ridiculous it may seem, after the PSC gave him another major setback in the European elections, winning 30.6% of the votes, while the pro-independence party left half of the support it received five years ago in the dust. Junts has gone from having three MEPs to just one. Or to put it in Toni Comín’s words, ‘almost two’, which is one way of fooling oneself, after losing a quarter of a million votes. The percentage of pro-independence votes in Sunday’s European elections is 32.8% of the total. Hasn’t the time come to retire to the corner of thought, make a profound self-criticism and let the politician with the most votes govern?
Independentism must go to the corner of thought and make a deep self-criticism.
It remains to be seen what ERC, whose president Oriol Junqueras is leaving office circumstantially to return in a few months like General Douglas MacArthur, will do. The only advantage is that he will not have to put up with Junts’ pressure to block Illa’s investiture in search of a repeat election, as if that would not lead to the final shipwreck. Puigdemont is trying to buy time as if he were the conductor of the Titanic’s orchestra, realising that the trumpeter’s instrument is full of water and the pianist is blowing bubbles out of his mouth. What this country needs to restore is common sense for once and for all.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20240611/9720323/justifica-volver-votar.html
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