After 23 years of Jordi Pujol’s viceroyalty, in the elections of November 16, 2003, Artur Mas lost the presidency of the Generalitat. Despite the meritorious victory in seats, not in votes, the Pujolist heir could not prevent the socialists from finally jumping to the other side of Plaça Sant Jaume. In those days, the nationalist anger was deafening. The always unfiltered Marta Ferrusola, in April 2004, summed up her tribe’s discomfort with meridian clarity: “Even though we won the elections, they stole the government from us. It’s like going into your house and finding your cupboards ransacked, because they’ve been stolen from you”. Disqualifications of Pasqual Maragall as drunk, Carod-Rovira as traitor or Joan Saura as ecopijo flooded the talk shows of the related audiovisual universe – which we all paid for – and which at that time was hegemonic in Catalonia.
It took the always elegant, balanced and not at all suspicious left-winger Carles Duarte to defuse so much nonsense and remind us that, in a parliamentary democracy, the rules of the game are what they are and that, consequently, the formation of a tripartite government, in addition to being legitimate, was certainly healthy, because of the alternation it had after decades of a monochromatic executive. Duarte had been and is an intellectual committed to language and literature and – for many years – Pujol’s essential advisor. But one thing does not exclude the other.
Since then, it has been common in Catalonia for socialists or even constitutionalist liberals to win elections, but for various coalitions to force them out of government in the name of more or less extravagant redemptive projects. Remember the victory of Arrimadas in 2017 or that of Salvador Illa in 2021. As it should not be ruled out that, despite the more than predictable socialist victory in the next Catalan elections, the formation of a government will not go through Carrer Pallars. This is our political culture and this is how it must be accepted, at least until a new rule puts an end to the possibility of some winning in the offices what they do not get at the ballot box.
In these circumstances, it is surprising the irascibility with which those from Junts have assumed that Jaume Collboni – with whom they practically tied in votes and seats – has in the end been able to articulate a sufficient majority to obtain the rod of mayor of Barcelona. And more so when, apparently, today’s mayor went so far as to offer Xavier Trias to co-govern, a formula that I and many would surely have celebrated, to the extent that it would have been the most representative of the desire for change expressed at the polls and, in addition, the one with the most programmatic coherence. Apparently, Trias was more interested in recovering the frontist idea with a Maragall still hurt by the mishap he suffered four years ago, which, by the way, seems to me much more immoral than what is happening now.
Remember that during the 2019 campaign Valls made a good point of promising that he would not make a deal with Colau even to the death. As it was seen, Valls “wasn’t dead, he was partying”. On this occasion, it is true, Collboni has rudely wrested the mayorship from the winner of the elections, just as an independence coalition took it in Girona who also won it clearly, in this case the PSC. Having said that, is the case of Barcelona a robbery and that of Girona a triumph of democracy? Please!
In my opinion, what the current trends indicate, first of all, that with Junts everyone dares. Too much nonsense on your resume to appeal to the morality of pacts. And more importantly, that little by little we Catalans are recovering the right-left axis in political behavior, as I’m afraid the articulation of a new tripartite will prove in the autumn, no longer with Trias, Colau or Maragall in the Consistory , and with the PP looking where the wind is coming from.
I confess that, although this Junts thing worries me a lot, I wouldn’t have been upset if Trias had been mayor. It is clear that when I saw him flanked by Borràs and Turull on election night, I felt that cold and breathless sadness typical of Joyce’s Christmas stories. And I thought to myself: the fanatics will be eating potatoes for this bonafide! Fortunately or unfortunately, Collboni’s audacity has spared us having to check it.
