The differences between ERC and that indefinite soup of letters in which the old Convergència has turned, what separates what Oriol Junqueras on the one hand and the duo Carlos Puigdemont and Quim Torra on the other embody, can no longer be considered a division. It would be that, a division, if they were two arms of the same project, but they have ceased to be for long. After evidencing that independence is not part of the horizon for the next 10 years, both families not only have almost contradictory political projects, but also consider themselves to be adversaries.
Esquerra wants to govern an efficient autonomy while the sovereignty project matures, and also accepts that it is without great hurry. From the Generalitat they would have a critical attitude, tense and angry with the State but would actually collaborate with it, waiting for other circumstances to come. If moderate sentences in the trial help them and if the voters chose them, that would be their way. They envisage to take advantage of the positions, salaries and resources of all kinds of the autonomic power in order to occupy all the social space that has remained empty after the collapse of the pujolismo, as well as the prominence.
These roadmaps of Junqueras and Aragonés differ completely from those of Puigdemont and Torra. These bad guys reject the return to any kind of normality for Catalan daily life, they want to keep alive the flame of defiant active rebellion to the limit and bet to continue blocking as much as possible the Spanish political life as was done with the budgets. Spain will not have peace while Catalonia is inside.
Both of them know that the ‘indepes’ bases are uncontrollable and they are not very well integrated with the leaders of their parties. ERC, in a particular way, is hanging in a thread because the style of Rufián is more representative of those bases than what his fellow directors do. Out of pure fear of those followers, both the most moderate and the most radical pro-independence leaders do not tell them the truth. They continue to preach that achieving independence without open conflict is more possible than it really is; that secession is closer than it seems; that a referendum can still be agreed with Spain (omitting that it will only be possible if it is also celebrated in the rest of the State, although the results of what happens here can always be read by themselves).
That works for them, and with that they nourish the feeling of distance with Spain in the half Catalonia which psychologically already lives disconnected. But the two roads have nothing to do with each other, one is to do with following and another is to do with changing; they are not a simple strategic division. And what blocks us is their partisan struggle for power, which comes from far and goes beyond independence.
Do not call it division
Tuesday, 04/16/2019 | Updated at 19:22 CEST
Antonio Franco
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