I don’t know if President Aragonès has read the memoirs of Canadian Michael Ignatieff, who tried to become Prime Minister and failed. I say this because the ERC leader has followed advice that appears in the pages of the very instructive Fire and Ashes: “No true politician can afford to make eternal enemies. He needs to turn adversaries into allies if he wants to do the job that democracy demands.” The Republicans govern the Generalitat in a minority and need the votes of the socialist group to approve the budgets, you have to dance with Salvador Illa. And we must forget the PSC’s support for article 155 and other things. The 29th ERC national congress, held on Saturday, has endorsed the policy of the lesser evil, which is, for them, assuming the B-40 project to connect Sabadell and Terrassa, an essential point for the Socialists. The militancy has acted with a discipline that, for an organization that was a constant focus of brawls, is more than exemplary.
The lesson of these days is interesting: the meanwhile (until the status quo in Catalonia can be voted on) that ERC manages from the regional institutions (from which Junts has removed itself) will be a not short period of gray prose, inspired by the most accurate reading possible of that ethic of responsibility that Max Weber – more than a century ago now – contrasts with the ethic of conviction. Could it be otherwise with the one you’re falling for? In a Catalonia with doctors and teachers demonstrating, the attachment to the lyric is waning. The immediate effect is very important: the bloc policy has been dissolved by the pressure of an unpleasant reality, marked by the crisis. The ERC-PSC agreement for the regional accounts redefines the playing field for all formations. But not only gray prose lives. Those of Oriol Junqueras continue to bet on an agreed referendum, a promise that tries to speed up the digestion of internal contradictions.
From Lleida to Lleida. From the refounding of the ERC to its coming of age as a government independence party, with the presidency of the Generalitat in its hands for the first time since 1980. In the 16th congress, held on November 18 and 19, 1989, the old Initials founded in 1931 officially converted to independence, under the impulse of Àngel Colom and Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira. That was a hectic conclave, with fights and whistles, which ended with the defeat of the pro-government sector headed by Joan Hortalà and a message from the new leaders: prepare the alternative to pujolismo. A lot has happened since then and ERC is today a cohesive party that seamlessly assumes the strategy inspired by Junqueras and applied by Aragonès from the Government. Meanwhile, pujolismo has mutated so much that its heirs have forgotten about Weber.
The next municipal elections will be a thermometer to measure whether the forced pactism of Aragonès punishes or rewards the independentistas who recognize that we are in a very different stage from that of 2017.
