At the handover ceremony, the new Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, repeated on more than one occasion, apart from some endearing references to his mother, the concept “with head and heart.” He says it's his philosophy. It was also the electoral slogan, as is, of Mariano Rajoy in 2008. And it did not go well.
I do not win. Also because things, in addition to saying them, must be practiced. It was not seen that this portrayed the candidate or his PP. And is putting head and heart into things compatible? Clear. Do your honors practice it? Not so clear.
Most of the time, in the political story, the dialectic of emotional shock prevails over the reasoned and the reasonable. Do they have heads? Definitely. Do they pretend? Bit. And instead of looking for the appropriate combination between feeling and reason, they subscribe to choosing, almost always opting for the most effective.
It's like another dichotomy that came to mind this Christmas when watching a shocking movie: Saltburn. Not to the new generations, but to many of us it may have reminded us (vaguely) of Brideshead Returns, which, based on the book by Evelyn Waugh, triumphed as a series decades ago. And a phrase from that fiction revisited me: “Those who have charm don't need brains.” There are those who do have brains, but knowing for a long time that they have too much charm, they hardly bother to use it. Why put your mind to it, when what draws the most is attraction through the generation of emotions for or against? And they are like that because a social majority is like that (or adapts to it). Const.
In this context, 2024 looks like it will be the year of truth in Catalan politics. For Pedro Sánchez we have already seen that the truth offers a wide range in which for the moment he operates like a fish in water. For now, the fact that others treat him worse is letting him draw on charm and the broad feeling of rejection that bad people provoke. But, for the independence movement, that is not working and it will not work in this (again) election year. Little charm. Little perception of lesser evil, already.
Before the end of the course we will have European elections. In the previous ones, in 2019, Carles Puigdemont won in Catalonia with one million votes. The post-trauma of 2017 was fresh and so was the mystique of the confrontation with the State. Now, five years later, the plot leap we are in seems like several decades.
We do not know if the former president will be a candidate there. Nor do we know if it will be in the Catalan elections that will come a few months later and that will have already colored that entire campaign. But, when he stands there, he (or his brand, Junts, without him), will be warned of what others suffered before when they left the trench (where they got in or were thrown) without knowing how to find the right balance between head and heart . They are warned, which he does not mean instructed. 2024 will be their year of truth and, with them, perhaps for a long time, that of the entire independence movement and Catalan politics.
