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 (at the head of the Puigdemont x Catalonia candidacy) will regain the presidency, which he already held between 2016 and 2017. The current holder, Pere Aragonès (ERC), obtains in the polls less intention to vote than the two aforementioned rivals. In any case, the Catalans will choose on 12-M between trying another option for the future or remaining trapped in the one that was wrecked in 2017.
If Illa becomes president, it is possible that he will do so leading a tripartite of leftists, made up of PSC, ERC and Commons. If Puigdemont gets there, he would do so at the head of a pro-independence coalition, with the support of a proxy ERC and, perhaps, the CUP. In the first case, the social axis would recover its traditional preponderance; in the second, we would continue to join the national axis, this time with a strong personalist accent.
At least this is indicated by the way in which the Puigdemont campaign is presented. In the header of his candidacy website we read, in capital letters, PUIGDEMONT x CATALUNYA, and below, in lowercase and in lowercase letters, together. In other words, Puigdemont, whose candidacy was hailed with a volume of support with Bulgarian resonances, has minimized the weight of Junts, the party that supports him, reducing his proper name to an adjective.
It is true that the dress of conservative Catalan nationalism has been patched up and retained so many times –CDC, CiU, PDECat, Junts per Catalunya, Crida Nacional per la Repúbica...– that it is no longer recognizable. But it is also the case 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 looked like 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 Algiers, where he holds daily meetings, unabashedly colonizing the collective republican memory. And he exhibits as a supreme merit his supposed status as the only leader capable of standing up to Madrid. This, he thinks, would be enough to improve Catalan society in the current complex situation. As if in the last 12 years we haven't seen what this strategy can do.
If the presidency does not fall to his side, he has announced that he will leave active politics (generating hope among his rivals, sovereignists or not, and despair among his stalwarts), arguing that the opposition means little to him. And also that if a hypothetical PSC-ERC coalition in Barcelona does not please him, the Government of Madrid has its time. Puigdemont wants to make a country to his size, to obey him or, if not, to break. This is their idea of a country.
Meanwhile, Salvador Illa is cautious, avoids explicitly disqualifying the rival and summarizes his motto in two verbs: "Unir i servir".
Campaign slogans are usually predictable, hyperbolic, hackneyed and, worse, sometimes reek of cynicism. But Illa's, despite evoking that of the New York police - to protect and serve - is attractive. Because it proposes to overcome the division of Catalonia caused by a plan that was revealed 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 European unitary spirit.
After winning the election, candidates usually say they will govern for everyone, trying to heal wounds, seeking a more cohesive society. Some even say it earlier, like Illa, with its song of union and service. But not Puigdemont, who offers us to insist on the division and do it again, as if it were a great plan.
It is also often said that the Puigdemonts, with seven deputies in Congress, hold the key to the governability of Spain (for now). But it will be his nemesis ERC that will hold the key to Catalonia's governability. Hopefully he makes her go smart.
