A good friend, a runner, told me yesterday to what extent the mark that Salvador Illa had set on Sunday in the Zurich Marathon Barcelona was a good result, not so much because of his age and physical build, but above all because it has not been so many years since he set to run in this type of race. He has made good marks in his category (152nd on Sunday), also in the Valencia marathon or the legendary Behobia de Sant Sebastià. He has set his sights on it, with method and determination, and the results are coming to him. As in politics, according to the polls, although in this arena with certain luck added to his undoubted personal effort.
It is obvious to him that they have dressed him as president, literally, refining his style, now more presidential and less perceptible as old, but circumstances have also “dressed” him as president in the political sense of the term. A low-intensity presidency of the Generalitat has helped, as well as the unknown headliner at Junts, where Carles Puigdemont has been explicitly reigning again since the summer.
This has helped, as has a Catalan media ecosystem, which for example (and rightly) has not made the noise that the media Brunete does promote in Madrid despite the former minister’s possible links of Health with the Koldo plot. The latter, with no evidence so far of erratic behavior, is good for not eroding the Island. This respect has been earned. What we don’t know is whether he has won with his effort and style is that there are many people who buy his speech due to the sheer absence, during much of the current legislature, of an adversary who competes at the highest level. This has been an added luck that Illa has been able to take advantage of.
But now, in a semi-normalized political arena, with more established leaders or at least with more experience, someone should have been able to answer Illa, from the top of ERC and Junts, when for example a few years ago days the socialist leader claimed that he “saves Catalonia, and not Aragonès”, when he approves the Government’s budgets again, and that the PSOE “doesn’t help Puigdemont, but Catalonia”, with the amnesty.
In a political arena less clueless in the miserable struggles between independentists, someone from the Government would have had to answer Illa that if he helps to approve the budgets it is obvious that he is doing so for an exchange of support with the one that Pedro Sánchez also needs for the your accounts
And, secondly, someone at the top of Junts should have reminded Illa that he followed to the letter, obedient and emphatic as anyone else, the denialist speech on amnesty that Sánchez defended as a single man, Bolaños, Lambán, García-Page and the PP, until from 23-J it suited the PSOE to change. As always, yes, here, Illa helped everyone, but as so far, without a competitor to compete for marks in his category in the Catalan political debate.
