I'm not surprised at all. Rather, I enjoy the petty satisfaction of having been one of the first – allow me the immodesty for a day – to denounce some of the outrages that are now definitively coming to light. I tell you this in relation to the formidable report by Manel Pérez on the Catalunya operation, published in these same pages and which brings light and method to a communication system overloaded with self-serving verbiage. In the end, as Goethe said, the truth always shines through. Too bad everyone is gone by then.
Because there is nothing new in the finding that the former Minister of the Interior, Mr. Fernández, even by the undemanding standards of his profession, has turned out to be an exceptionally mendacious person. Nor that the relations between the senior officials of the ministry, the police leadership and the multi-purpose commissioner Villarejo have ended in a frenzy of betrayals, duplicity and backstabbing worthy of the last Spice Girls reunion. Nor that the processes against the Catalan independentists and their entourage have been based on trickery that is incompatible not only with the law, but with a minimum sense of decency.
In the end, the brutal and inept policy of recent years regarding the Catalan issue has been nothing more than the logical consequence of the elevation to positions of responsibility of a series of subjects who, unfortunately, have only turned out to be foolish means: with a little effort they could have aspired to be complete idiots. I refer to the results of his political action and the content of La Vanguardia's investigation.
Do not see frivolity or the slightest moral indifference in this. It is often said that people who have reached a certain age are bitterly cynical and misanthropic, but it is not true. The only thing that happens is that we have had more than enough time to listen to the repetitive and sad music of humanity, as always performed by a mediocre band screaming after the audience. This must be why those of us who have lived since the second half of the 20th century are more or less resistant to disappointment, have lower expectations and tend to despise any promise of political content. In the end, experience amply shows that nobody learns anything, nobody rectifies or apologizes and, with a little luck, all that happens is that the next day someone passes by the slaughterhouse and hoses them down.
Even so, I wonder without much enthusiasm what the State will do now with the dirty past that has been crudely exposed, with those investigations tainted by illicit evidence and abuses of power, with those judicial procedures – fueled by false police reports and bought witnesses – ossified by delaying tactics, prolonged for years to strip their victims of energy or until they end up dying and their cases die with them. I wonder what will be done with cases, for example, like Pujol's.
Because whatever one thinks of Pujol (who can be hated more than a tofu soup for his political actions, that is not the point), it is difficult to find in the history of judicial precedents a greater compendium of blunders: from false statements of witnesses before the UDEF requested by Commissioner Villarejo, even pen drives with evidence so illicit that the judge had to remove them from the case and for which the previous deputy operational director (DAO) of the Interior was tried and convicted; from the extortion of Andorran banks to the congratulatory messages from Jorge Moragas to Victoria Álvarez; from the bream dialogues of Fernández Díaz with his associates to the assault by hooded men on a van that contained objects seized from the family. Surely it seems to you that I resort to black humor, but I assure you that I am limiting myself to telling the truth.
This has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the accused. The rule is different: the State has all the means in its hand, Police, Treasury inspectors, Prosecutor's Office and courts, and can use the full weight of that power to do justice with a single limitation, play fair and appear as honest as possible. can expect in a world where that is out of fashion. If not, everything is null.
At least that's what bad-tempered old liberals doomed to discouragement believe.
