Pasqual Maragall already went through the Autonomous Communities commission, in which the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, will speak today. It was May 2006, when the Upper House had to approve the new Statute and the veto presented by the Popular Party was discussed. The regional presidents were invited, as today, but with the exception of the ineffable Cantabrian president, Miguel Ángel Revilla, all the regional governments, those of the PP, but also all the socialists, decided to send second-level representatives.
Pasqual Maragall, who had already lost the brilliance of his long vision, defended the pact between Spain and Catalonia, that pact which, from the beginning, had illuminated his impulse to renew the Statute.
In the old Senate room – this time Aragonès will intervene in a more nondescript seat – the president claimed the recognition of the Catalan nation as a guarantee of Spain's political stability. "Would Spain gain anything by refusing to recognize this clamor? I would lose there. He would lose his sense of reality and lose the respect of millions of Catalans", said the president.
Maragall already knew then that the word nation would only appear in the preamble of the Statute as an expression of the will of the Parliament of Catalonia. Spain would continue to call it nationality.
The president of the central government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the leader of CiU and future president, Artur Mas, had agreed to this on that famous January night in Moncloa when, in the absence of Maragall, the agreement was closed for the renewal of the Statute of Catalonia.
But Maragall, obstinate, did not give up in the attempt to explain himself in front of some political opponents who, in all probability, in today's session, will use words not very different from those then. The president did stay to listen to them, if not all of them, a good part of them. They hadn't lost their form yet. But that was a sad session. cold The PP veto on the Statute was rejected by 25 votes against 24. As always, by hair.
