Pedro Sánchez has one thing to do with the pro-independence process, and it is not just his complicity with the application of Article 155 of the Constitution by the government of Mariano Rajoy. What most unites Sánchez with the process is the recurrence with which his adversaries decree them as dead. And if you don’t believe in the resurrection, it is physically and metaphysically impossible for something to die several times. One would be enough. But it can be seen that with Sánchez and independence this is not the case.
It is not strange, then, that with this burial frenzy, even in the PP they have problems with public discourse with the umpteenth (non)death of the process in the middle. In fact, it would have been news if Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the leader of his party in Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, agreed on something. Asking them to agree on a version of this metaphysical challenge would have been for the record. The temptation, at the outset, could have led them both to affirm the new death, but it did not happen. Feijóo resisted the temptation, but Fernández could not.
And Salvador Illa resorted to this generalized inertia this weekend, in a very interesting conversation with the director of this newspaper, Jordi Juan. Nor could he avoid it, in his case in line with his political account of “turning the page”, and assured that “Catalonia has voted not to leave and yes to a plural and diverse Spain”. In an underlying way, he wanted to tell us that the Catalan elections, now yes, had a plebiscitary character. Implicitly, but also quite clearly, it confirmed that the dynamic of blocs persists in Catalan politics. And indirectly, but also in a crystal-clear way, he gave the process as dead, now with 53.43% of the total votes in a non-independence key.
The only thing he misses here is the detail that if in 2021, with a pro-independence 52% of the total vote counted, he did not conclude anything regarding Catalonia’s relationship with Spain, he should not do so now either. But who will retract it, when it is a trend, also among sectors of independence, to give as dead a process towards independence that, logically, is burning stages, but these are not its whole, despite what many would like?
Of course, among these “many”, the key that will give the real thrust to the process will be independence itself. Its social base and its representatives. Herein lies the real (not just discursive) risk to the process. And in the coming weeks or months we will experience a crucial moment for the health (or illness) of the independence movement. If the classic hateful dynamics are imposed, the bases and the management of ERC will shoot the cause, in the skull of Junts. And if Carles Puigdemont’s people get lost in his maze, they will shoot themselves in the foot.
Both projectiles (together or separately) could be lethal. Or not, because the process already accumulates (and for now holds) a lot of lead, especially from friendly fire.