M.A. Ruiz Coll
08/09/201918: 45
This is the thesis presented in an article by Albert Pont, president of the Cercle Català de Negocis (CCN), a lobby of separatist businessmen close to the Catalan National Assembly (ANC). In recent years, Cercle has produced numerous reports on fiscal balances and the state investment deficit in Catalonia, with manipulated figures, to support the independence claims.
But the divorce between this business lobby and the Generalitat is already final. In his article, Albert Pont asks that the coup leaders under trial of the Supreme Court take a “step aside” because “nothing that can be decided from exile or prison will bring us closer to independence”.
In the same way, he is in favor of throwing the politicians of the PDeCAT and ERC from the Generalitat, considering that they have betrayed the sovereign cause: “The only way for the parties to renounce the struggle for power is to throw them out, even if temporarily. If they are not able to unite, we will do it”.
The coup leaders “were a bluff”
Among the founders of the Cercle Català de Negocis (CCN) is the owner of the Petrolis Independents gas station company, Joan Canadell, who after being elected president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce has announced that he will put this institution at the service of independence.
In his article, Albert Pont assumes that Carles Puigdemont and his ministers never intended to make independence effective: “The bluff has become so obvious that our hearts have shrunk in the face of the rotundity of the lie being articulated”.
And he dedicates especially harsh words addressed to them: “Someday we will know if our authorities fled from the Spanish Justice or from ourselves…, if they surrendered to be tried or to put themselves under the protection of the Spanish State against a people that had just busted their ass for them and that would not have forgiven such a betrayal. Perhaps they should not fear the judgment of the Spanish Justice so much, but the judgment of history”.
The president of the separatist businessmen considers that, for Puigdemont and his ministers, the illegal referendum of 1-O was only a challenge to the State to obtain more powers and financing. They played with the illusion of the people, but they never intended to make independence effective.
“The story of victimhood”
“Processism”, says Albert Pont, “needed to generate a state of maximum collective emotion that would make us absolutely invulnerable to the emotional shock that should come to perpetuate autonomy. The story of victimhood should be the dignified exit for our political class, but a carefully set design was necessary to make it unquestionable”.
The truth, adds Pont, is that “there were no structures of the State, nor was there the slightest willingness to enforce the declaration of independence, and even today they do not have it, despite maintaining the absolute majority in the Parliament”.
The president of the separatist businessmen draws a disturbing parallel with the Basque Country: “The regime of 1939 forces us to live in semi-hiding, with our legitimate authorities and social leaders in exile or prison, as the regime of 1939 did before Not even the Basque Country, which has left a trail of blood and almost a thousand dead in the most infamous way in an absurd and deplorable war, will never feel its freedoms under threat”. Thus he defines the murders committed by ETA: “An absurd and deplorable war”.
He already concedes that there was an escape of companies
The president of the Cercle Català de Negocis (CCN) mocks Oriol Junqueras and the rest of the coup-makers prosecuted by the Supreme Court: “Some political prisoners offered warm hugs and kisses to their jailers on the stairs of the Spanish Congress”. He believes they must take “one step to the side” because they have become a bargaining chip: the PSOE offers the pardon to the coup plotters, in exchange for ERC and PDeCAT renouncing independence.
For the first time, Albert Pont acknowledges that there has been a “relocation of companies” (more than 5,000 have moved their headquarters outside of Catalonia since 1-O) but assures that it has been “used as a tool by the Spanish Government to generate fear and distrust in independence, as happened in Quebec”.
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