Carles Puigdemont flatly refuses to close the process folder. This episode has seemed unbearably long for us Catalans. The former president may say, with reason, that he likes more, but citizens are saturated with listening to excessively emotional speeches, which place us within an inch of glory and which want to be tinged with epic. Three phrases uttered in Elna illustrate these statements: “This time we are going to do it better”, “today the countdown begins”, “we must finish the work started in 2017”. Puigdemont boasted about the amnesty that the Government has ended up accepting, although he previously considered it unconstitutional, and predicted “a self-determination referendum in this legislature” if he is invested, since the argument of the Spanish Executive is the same. And putting his chest out, he identified himself without mentioning it with Theseus, capable of defeating the Minotaur: “We have dragged the State to the position we defended.”
No one can deny that Thursday’s speech was powerful and well structured. He has been thinking about it for six and a half years and at some moments he believed that he was never going to formulate it. But history plays with its own dice and chance offers opportunities. What is essential is knowing which bets you should make and which ones you shouldn’t, when the wind blows in your face.
At times, his words sounded a little vintage, but you have to understand that time passes at a different speed when you are an expatriate. It often passes with the softness of a Dalinian clock. Catalan society is plural enough for the recipe to be another cup of process. We are not at the same point as when he fled in a car bound for Brussels. Catalonia has been remade and there are many people who had a dream who today have their feet on the ground and want a better country, but without adventures that will lead them to the abyss. The same EU that Puigdemont praised for its progress in the recognition of Catalan has two wars at its doors and does not want more sovereignty tensions.
As a child, the former president dreamed of being an astronaut coinciding with the arrival of Apollo 11 to the satellite. But today it is not advisable to ask for the moon, it is better to be a pragmatist on Earth.
