Salvador Illa (PSC candidate) can become the 133rd president of the Generalitat after the elections on May 12, whose campaign began on Friday. It is also possible that Carles Puigdemont (heading the Puigdemont x Catalunya candidacy) regains said presidency, which he already held between 2016 and 2017. Its current incumbent, Pere Aragonès (ERC), obtains lower voting intentions than those in the polls. two rivals. In any case, the Catalans will choose 12-M between trying another option for the future or remaining trapped in the one that foundered in 2017.
If Illa becomes president, it is possible that he will do so heading a left-wing tripartite, made up of PSC, ERC and Comuns. If Puigdemont arrives, he would do so at the head of an independence coalition, with the support of a vicarious ERC and, perhaps, the CUP. In the first case, the social axis would recover its traditional preponderance; In the second, we would continue to be linked to the national axis, this time with a marked personalist accent.
This is indicated at least by the way in which Puigdemont presents the campaign. In the header of his candidacy website we read, in capital letters, PUIGDEMONT x CATALUNYA, and below, in lower case and with lower case letters, junts. In other words, Puigdemont, whose candidacy was acclaimed with a volume of support with Bulgarian resonance, has minimized the weight of Junts, the party that supports him, reducing his own name to an adjective.
It is true that the dress of conservative Catalan nationalism has been patched and dyed so many times –CDC, CiU, PDeCAT, Junts x Catalunya, Crida Nacional per la República…– that it already looks unrecognizable. But it is also true that Puigdemont's messianism almost surpasses that of Jordi Pujol when he served as the father of all Catalans, or that of Artur Mas when on the poster for the 2012 regional elections he put the eyes of Moses leading the Jewish people.
In recent weeks, Puigdemont has confirmed his promising fondness for the scenes of defeat, by moving from Waterloo, where Napoleon sank, to Argelers, where he holds daily rallies, shamelessly colonizing the republican collective memory. And he claims as his supreme merit his supposed status as the only leader capable of standing up to Madrid. That, in his opinion, would be enough to improve Catalan society in the current complex situation. As if in the last twelve years we have not seen what this strategy offers.
If the presidency does not fall on his side, he has announced that he will leave active politics (generating hope among his rivals, sovereign or not, and helplessness among his unconditional supporters), arguing that the opposition is a small thing for him. And also that if a hypothetical PSC-ERC coalition in Barcelona does not please him, the Madrid Government's hours are numbered. Puigdemont therefore wants a country tailored to him, that obeys him or, if not, that it bursts. That is his idea of making a country.
Meanwhile, Illa is cautious, avoids explicitly disqualifying her rival and summarizes her motto in two verbs: “Unite and serve.”
Usually, campaign slogans are predictable, hyperbolic, hackneyed and, what is worse, they sometimes reek of cynicism. But Illa's, despite evoking that of the New York police – protect and serve – is attractive. Because it proposes overcoming the division of Catalonia caused by a plan that turned out to be chimerical, as Puigdemont himself knows well, who was president when he suspended independence seconds after it was unilaterally proclaimed, violating Catalan and Spanish law, and contravening the unitary spirit. European.
After winning the elections, candidates often say that they will govern for everyone, trying to heal wounds, seeking a more cohesive and stronger society. Some even say it before, like Illa, with her current song of unity and service. But not Puigdemont, who offers us to deepen the division and mess it up again, as if that were a great plan.
It is also often said that Puigdemont's people, with their seven deputies in Congress, hold the key to the governability of Spain (for now). But it will be his nemesis ERC that will handle the key to the governability of Catalonia. I hope you handle it intelligently.
