Alberto Núñez Feijóo remodels and renames the PP think tank, which will be called Reformisme21. Among those called to provide ideas for the conservative leader is Josep Piqué, who was minister with José María Aznar and leader of the PP of Catalonia. His role will be important – it is said – when drawing up the economic proposals of the new popular leader. At the moment, Piqué has made some very interesting statements about the need to rethink regional financing in order to improve it, which – it is worth remembering – was not listened to by Mariano Rajoy at the time. The frontal rejection of the then president of the central government to the demands of president Artur Mas to improve the coffers of the Generalitat gave the starting point for the new Catalan independence, which was already motivated by the emptying made by the Constitutional Court of the Statute from 2006.
“Go around the world and come back to Born”, they say. Piqué does not rule out opening this melon: “The autonomous communities provide most of the services that are of interest to the citizens: it is in everyone’s interest that they are well financed and the same system has been in place for too many years”, he argues. Is it a sounding balloon or is there something else? Will Feijóo take this approach? With the audacity of those who have been first in their class, Piqué also allows himself a bit of ideological bullfighting and points towards a federal model: “Many civilized countries are federal states. This should not scare us. The limit is that this does not involve what independenceists call building State structures”. One hot and one cold.
During his first stage as an independent in Aznar’s cabinet, in 1996 and when CiU’s votes were essential, Piqué already demonstrated a great dialectical skill. The goal now is clear, according to the former minister: that the PP make “inclusive” proposals to the Catalans to stop the pro-independence temptation. In other words, for the Spanish right to assume a reformist agenda that serves to channel the so-called Catalan problem. But the balances of the PP are very complicated and any opening that sounds like something vaguely Catalanist would take its toll. Feijóo himself verified this when, after landing in the new responsibility, he dared to use the term “nationality” – neatly constitutional – and all the watchmen – including the media cave – of the orthodoxy of united and uniform Spain.
For now, there does not seem to be room for a right-wing party in favor of a new fiscal pact for Catalonia and a federalizing revision of the Constitution. If anyone knows this, it is Piqué, who knows perfectly the heart of the State and its dynamics. Does it make sense in this context to create expectations of reform? All this happens in the same week that Fèlix Millet died, the pro-hom impostor who was, at the same time, an achiever of Convergència and a member of the provincial section of the Aznar FAES. The Catalan sinia of Feijóo seems to be the same one where his predecessors were tied.
