There are absences that are presences and some presence that highlights some void. This is the paradox of what some call the return or resurrection of Jordi Pujol, after his resounding civil death as a result of his confession in July 2014, when he made public that his family had had undeclared money in banks. abroad. Paradoxically, the nationalist leader shows himself more in public after having suffered a stroke last September, from which he is recovering quite well.
At the age of 92, the man who presided over Catalonia for almost a quarter of a century appears at various events, coinciding with a delicate moment in the political space that –with more or less efficiency– has been structured on the site occupied by the party he founded in 1974, Democratic Convergence. Is Pujol really coming back?
My answer is that it does not come back, that is impossible. The president of the “fem i farem” is part of history more than of the present. What we are seeing is something else, and it is the sum of two operations that overlap. On the one hand, and from those closest to Pujol, there is a will to vindicate his figure and his legacy as a ruler who builds the foundations of contemporary self-government.
On the other, and from areas linked to Junts, there is a desire to send a signal to the sector of the electorate that could be more sensitive to the lexicon and forms of pujolismo, as a nod to those who today feel orphaned and disoriented before the polls.
Pujol is today an icon that everyone tries to adopt for their objectives, even to give atmosphere to a calçotada. At times, this icon becomes a hologram with calming properties: some see in it a presence with which to cover the gaps of the post-convergent independence movement, based on the mark left by a pragmatism tinged with mysticism and institutional meaning.
The crepuscular Pujol who appears before the processional audiences makes the famous sentence of the communicologist Marshall McLuhan come true: “the medium is the message”. The veteran leader's speech is not important now, it matters that he is there, that he returns to the stage, even if it is only for an afternoon. The mere presence of President Pujol has a double, apparently contradictory function: it evokes a time when the Catalan conflict was absorbed by the "peix al cove" trade, and it projects the consistency of the basics of Catalanism that the procés has not always had into account (case of language, for example). It is Pujol, but without pujolismo: this was surpassed from 2010, when the Constitutional Court blew it all up, by emptying the 2006 Autonomous Statute.
Pujol does not want to disappear in silence, and that is understandable. Worried about whether tomorrow's historians will know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the leader modernizing Catalan nationalism wants his government work to be fairly scrutinized, even by his most furious adversaries. That is why it is strange that his prison writings are reissued and not his speeches as president of the Generalitat.
Perhaps someone wants to connect the first Pujol of mystical contours with certain visions of the post-process? Will the fiery prose of the young anti-Francoist serve to alleviate the disappointment for not having completed the secession in October 2017? The Pujol who wrote a letter to benefit from the general pardon that the regime granted on the occasion of the "25 years of Peace" today would perhaps be criticized by those who see "traitors" on every corner.
In the book L'última conversa, which includes the dialogue between Jordi Pujol and the Japanese intellectual Ko Tazawa, who died a few months ago, the Catalan president affirms that "I, in part, have failed the young man that I was", and that this it is his form of honor. But first, he warns that he is not referring to "an alleged ruling related to so many things published against me and my family."
This Pujolian message is enigmatic and points to the tangled depths of the personal journey that the retired politician has undertaken, from the moment he lost the status of Molt Honorable and destroyed the magnificent pedestal of his own statue. He talks about honor, not reputation.
Jordi Pujol is not coming back, he is simply saying goodbye, in the way that he can and that his circumstances allow. He is the most important Catalan politician of the 20th century and he is also a tragic character in search of a little light in the shadows.
