Carles Puigdemont appeared at eleven yesterday morning in Arles to announce his intention to undergo an investiture debate in Parliament. He was not seen with eyes, nor with a bad appearance. He felt as if he had fallen asleep in one fell swoop. There are people who have the immense fortune that neither sorrows nor failures awaken them. The man could not be more proud, probably because he believes his own words, according to which he is the candidate with the most options to be invested as the 133rd president of the Generalitat.
Certainly, not everyone understands reality in the same way. There is even a whole literary movement, known as magical realism, that tries to show unreal or inexplicable events as if they were everyday or commonplace things. The electoral result could not be clearer: Puigdemont clearly lost Sunday’s elections, as he was seven seats and 200,000 votes short of Salvador Illa. In addition, independence was defeated at the polls by being in the minority in the future Parliament. And most importantly: he personalized the campaign by warning that in these Catalan elections it was about restoring the president who was dismissed by article 155 of the Constitution, but the voters did not buy his story.
Puigdemont advanced that he had maintained the first contacts with ERC, with whom he said he wants to recover the relationship, despite his mistreatment. A year ago, he was the one who gave the order to his party to leave the Government to weaken the Republicans, who found the complicity of the PSC in not opening a crisis.
In Arles, the Junts candidate recalled that their votes are key to the governability of Spain in what was a warning to sailors. He also stated that he is committed to forming a government of purely Catalan obedience, as if the PSC were a franchise of Mars. And he still commented that, if there is a repeat election, he will have more options than ever, since he will be able to campaign in person.
The feeling of his words is that he thinks more about his future than that of the Catalans. And that, after making us believe that he was the message of these elections, he does not know exactly how to manage the day after the defeat.