Clara Ponsatí has returned to the casino of Catalan politics. We played poker but it was all crap, he said in June 2019 to refer to the events of October 2017 in what was probably the most sincere act performed by a member of Carles Puigdemont's government. Now he's back in Catalonia - we're glad - to play fives on the table betting cigronets while the dialogues of the TV3 series are heard in the background.
Ponsatí is the one who best represents the extreme deception of the final stage of the process. She assumed the position of Minister of Education on the eve of the 1-O believing, with blind eyes, that there was a plan to make the ghostly republic that had been promised a reality. He thought, after the declaration of independence was activated, that the government would be strong in the Palau de la Generalitat to approve decrees as churros that would consecrate the existence of a new State. I imagined more things. In his head, citizens took to the streets to defend the validity and reality of the republic.
That is why in March 2022 he confessed to Gemma Nierga in an interview with RNE that the independence of Catalonia was worth it even if the bill was human lives, and he compared the passive attitude of his fellow citizens with that of the Ukrainians at the front of Russian tanks. Ponsatí meant the arrival in the government of the Generalitat of someone convinced that killing us in the streets in 2017 would have been the logical, natural and inevitable consequence of everything that had been done until then. And it was worth it. Ponsatí was the most consistent of all those who stepped on the red carpets of the Catalan institutions during the process: ready to reign even over the ruins of a cemetery.
I have not returned to negotiate anything, says Ponsatí now. right The negotiation has already been done for her by the ERC and the PSOE. The amendment of the Penal Code has not served all that was intended, but it did guarantee their return without the threat of going to prison. Also Marta Rovira, the general secretary of ERC and, in her case, the most incoherent of the process, could leave Switzerland tomorrow and settle once again in Catalonia. Except that this would mean leaving the narrative of exile solely in the hands of Carles Puigdemont. And that's not true. The Republicans have to keep someone with their feet abroad, even if it is now only really justified by personal matters and family logistics.
Ponsatí's comeback also serves as Carles Puigdemont's battering ram in the test on the scope of European parliamentary immunity. Yesterday's arrest is the prelude to the one that will take place again after April 24, the date on which Judge Pablo Llarena has fixed her appearance at the Supreme Court and which the MEP has announced that she will disobey again .
He still retains enough muscle to modify the course of the political party with a movement and torpedo the exercise of political realism that the majority faction of his party is trying to carry out, both in the national axis and in the social one; the latter despite the displeasure of the theoretically more left-wing like Toni Comín or Aurora Madaula.
But the impact on the municipal elections of the return of Clara Ponsatí will be nil. He is, at this point, a minor and totally secondary political figure. The five does not give much.
The imminent verdict of the TSJC on the corruption case of the president of JxCat, Laura Borràs, and the decision already taken by Carles Puigdemont and Jordi Turull to postpone any decision on their future at the head of the party until after the municipal In the background, Xavier Trias talking about how long a campaign can take with a president of JxCat convicted of corruption.
