Pere Aragonés resists the solemn and transcendent register. Dressed in the suit of the big advertisements, far from showing off his bearing and figure, he rather adopts the awkward appearance of a well-dressed gentleman who is one size too large. Among his political abilities – Carles Puigdemont is not won an election or budgets are approved with 33 deputies without many of them – there is not counting that of an intoxicating leadership capable of altering the monotony of the days. Aragonès is politically somewhat similar to a Vespino, a reliable engine but without reprise.
With the departure of JxCat del Govern, the president of the Generalitat ran out of the joker of the internal confrontation. This gave him rich dividends by comparison: Republican cohesion versus the Juntera pot of crickets. Now, with the entire Palau de la Generalitat to himself, he has serious difficulties in controlling and placing government action at the center of public conversation in a manner consistent with his interests.
He and his closest court seem incapable of taking note that they only have 33 deputies in Parliament. Hence, any attempt to lead the agenda without entrusting itself to prior dialogue with the other political formations founders in the face of the reality of a weak Executive, walled in by the opposition of one sign or another and character. The failure of the recent party summit to tackle the problem of the drought is the best photograph of the anemia that has gripped the Republicans.
The presentation of the calendar of the “clarity agreement” by Pere Aragonès is an extemporaneous attempt to convey the image that there is leadership, conviction and direction among the Republican ranks. The equivalent, in processist language, to a roadmap. We are, in fact, before a case that the Anglo-Saxons would define with the aphorism fake it until you make it. In other words, pretend you have something until – with a bit of luck, one might add – you actually manage to have it.
That the Parliament was opposed in September to what Pere Aragonès is now proposing again does not count for the president. In fact, after the sleeves were cut in the chamber, he insisted on it again in the Christmas speech, setting the clarity agreement as an absolute priority for 2023. Agreement between Catalans this year and negotiation with the Spanish Government in 2024 for a referendum in the terms that are agreed. And they were happy and ate partridges!
We are facing an offer of a more partisan than governmental nature. ERC needs a flag on the national axis with which to go to electoral appointments. Aragonès knows perfectly well that his proposal is unfeasible with general elections in sight that force noisy discrepancy between parties. This being so, why does he insist on it? Well, because what he and his party want is actually to supermineralize and vitaminize thanks to the failure of what they propose. Something like: our proposal is the most generous and the only viable one to solve the political conflict. Only the selfishness of others make it impractical. Give us your support to make it a reality!
Except that the clarity agreement is the relaunch of a show that we have already seen: impossible party summits, academics jumping into the arena from good faith to give intellectual packaging to the proposals and entities and associations also participating in the discussion. To tune up what has already been known in the last decade, a most amusing novelty is now expected: the participation of 800 citizens packaged in groups of 100 per veguerÃa that will reproduce the conversations of the neighborhood meetings when approving a spill. The initiative has an added basic problem: the public that has to buy tickets for the readapted version of the show is reluctant to continue entertaining themselves with tricks that are already known to them.
So the agreement of clarity of Aragonès –impossible, limited to independentistas; utopian, open to socialists and commoners – stillborn. A new universal flood is easier than a happy ending to what the Republican president proposes. Aragonès and ERC risk trying to take advantage of a failure that they already discount. They show stubborn character, yes. Almost as much as the drought.
