Sant Jordi's festive day in all Catalan cities with the rose and the book as undisputed protagonists, but for the candidates in the May 12 elections another day of pre-campaigning. Messages from the Palau de la Generalitat or Strasbourg, walks along La Rambla, book signings or visits to party stands. There is no rest day for politicians before the start of the electoral contest, and yesterday they took the opportunity to make a ferocious defense of Catalan and also to throw some flowers at each other, not a rose, as tradition would have it .
Nothing to do with the harsh statements made on Monday in Congress by ERC and Junts against the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, in the commission for the sale of masks. A small truce in which they all wanted to stop for a few hours the melee against the rest of the opponents. Today they will return to the trenches. The first secretary of the PSC will give explanations this afternoon in the Senate about his contacts with Koldo García and the PP has already announced an offensive against the socialist candidate.
The political day of this pre-election Sant Jordi started with the reception from the Palau de la Generalitat of President Pere Aragonès, who called on citizens to "redouble their commitment to the language", which he emphasized is a "tool of "social lift" and cohesion. The ERC candidate, who has proposed if he wins the election a ministry to defend Catalan, took advantage of Sant Jordi's day to reaffirm this commitment and encouraged to maintain the language "in all day-to-day actions", but also in all professional fields.
Illa, who was in the tent that was set up on Rambla Catalunya, also assured on this issue that his party puts "Catalan as the center of gravity of education in Catalonia". That is why he recalled the participation of the socialists in the law that regulates the use of official languages in compulsory education and added that he felt "co-participant in all the politics that have been made in defense of Catalan".
Faced with the criticism launched by Junts or the CUP in which they assured that the PSC "will not lift a finger" if Illa becomes president of the Generalitat, the socialist candidate reaffirmed again that his party has a "commitment for Catalan".
The language was the link that united the different discourses in Barcelona, but also outside Catalonia. In a video conference from Strasbourg with Junts officials who were at the Rambla Catalunya stand, Puigdemont warned that "the language, like the country, can be left in our hands if we don't defend it". The leader of JxCat assured that his training will not stop "until Catalan has the European status it deserves and occupies the central place in Catalan society". Puigdemont also urged that this be the "language of integration of the newcomers".
For her part, the candidate for Comuns Sumar, Jéssica Albiach, used St. George's Day to bring water to her mill and affirm that in the 12-M elections the citizens will have to choose between a model country " with more Catalan language and culture or another with casinos and inefficient management of the drought". The leader of the commons, who closed the door to the approval of the budgets due to his refusal to the Hard Rock, made a "closed defense of linguistic immersion in the face of certain occurrences, such as those who ask for a segregated network or those who advocate a trilingual education".
Politicians also had time for book signings. The organizing secretary of Junts went to Rambla Catalunya and José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero had a day of events spread throughout Barcelona. In the morning he visited the RAC1 stand, where he presented his book Crónica de la España que dialoga, a compilation of conversations with La Vanguardia journalist Màrius Carol, and launched a criticism towards the current leaders of the PP. “I didn't think I would miss Pablo Casado, but I listen to Feijóo and I miss him. And I used to listen to Casado and think of Rajoy".
