Yesterday there was an aroma of nostalgia in the appearance of Carles Puigdemont, in a hotel in the European quarter of Brussels, to announce the conditions for Junts to support a hypothetical investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president and thus avoid a repetition of the elections of 23- J.
Almost six years have passed since the 1-O referendum was held, the images of police repression and the arrival of President Carles Puigdemont and several of his ministers in Brussels turned the Catalan political conflict into the most European "internal issue" is remembered in the community capital. It was an unusual situation and it still is. But the spotlight of the international press has long since shifted to other current issues.
The passage of time, the entrenchment of the judicial battle of the independence movement and the pacification – through pardons – of the situation in Spain have made little of Puigdemont and his former ministers, MEPs since 2019, part of the picturesque political landscape of Brussels. Apart from specific controversies such as the one staged yesterday, when the European Parliament forced them to withdraw in extremis a photo of the 1-O polls from an exhibition on the contributions of Catalonia to Europe because it was not in the dossier they presented when they requested authorization to the exhibition, hardly attract the attention of the media, except in their press conferences when sentences are handed down on their cases.
The situation created by the electoral result has once again placed Brussels and the former president in the spotlight, but in Spanish national politics, not in Europe. Yesterday's press conference, at eleven o'clock in the morning, aroused great interest, but basically among the national media. The appointment had nothing to do with the tumultuous press conference that Puigdemont and his ex-consellers staged at the Brussels Press Club in 2017. Yesterday there were hardly any foreign journalists to whom to explain, as Puigdemont's entourage wanted to do, that when speaking of amnesty is not about resolving the personal situation of a handful of senior officials, but about the future of hundreds of people.
Yesterday's appointment led to a rare image of unity of the independence movement. The leadership of JxCat (Laura Borràs, Jordi Turull, Albert Batet, Anna Erra and Josep Rius, among others), representatives of ERC, the CUP and sovereignist entities, were there to embrace the former president, who was greeted standing up and with applause. as well as Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Lluis Puig. "It is an abnormal situation" that everyone has had to travel to Brussels due to the "repression" of the independence movement, Teresa Jordà, ERC spokesperson for the investiture negotiations, complained to the press, while several Spaniards with bags from the European People's Party who They passed by shouting “fugitives” or “to prison”.
The recognition of the Catalan political conflict that Puigdemont calls for also implies gestures like the one made on Monday by the leader of Sumar and vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, when she traveled to Brussels to talk about the conditions for the investiture. “Of course” there will be more meetings, Diaz said. Like it or not, whether it is viable or not, the way out of the Spanish political labyrinth is through Brussels.
At four in the afternoon, Pedro Sánchez had a working call with the President of the European Council, the Belgian Charles Michel. On the agenda, the summits that will be held in October under the Spanish presidency. Michel was aware, through the press, of what was raised by Puigdemont, but he only spoke about the Spanish political situation with Sánchez in passing, at the beginning of the talk. It is "an internal matter", they say in Brussels, where today the only concern is that, whatever they talk about, it does not affect the presidency.
