At the portfolio transfer event, the new Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, repeated more than once, apart from endearing references to his mother, the concept “with head and heart”. He says it’s his philosophy. It was also Mariano Rajoy’s election slogan, “Con cabeza y corazón” in 2008. And it didn’t end well for him.
He didn’t win. Also because things, in addition to saying them, must be practiced. This did not appear to portray the candidate or his PP. And is putting things head and heart compatible? Of course. Do ladies practice it? Not so much.
Most of the time, in the political story, the dialectic of emotional shock prevails over what is reasoned and reasonable. Do they have one? Certainly. Do they pretend? little And instead of looking for the right combination between feeling and reason, they choose to choose, and almost always opt for the most effective.
It’s like another dichotomy that came to mind this Christmas watching a shocking film: Saltburn. Not to the new generations, but to many it will have reminded us (vaguely) of that Return to Brideshead which, based on Evelyn Waugh’s book, succeeded as a series decades ago. And a sentence from this fiction revisited me: “Those who have charm don’t need brains”.
There are those who do have it, but who, knowing for a long time that they have too much charm, don’t bother to use it. Why put one, when what works best is attraction through the generation of emotions for or against? And they are like that because a social majority is like that (or adapts to it). let it be known
In this context, 2024 looks like it will be the year of truth in Catalan politics. For Pedro Sánchez we have already seen that this truth offers a wide sleeve in which for the moment he moves like a fish in water. Right now, having others do it worse allows him to do it with charm and the broad feeling of rejection that the villains generate. But, for independence, this no longer works and will not work for it in this (again) election year. Little charm Little perception of lesser evil, already.
Before the end of the course we will have European elections. In the previous elections, in 2019, Carles Puigdemont won in Catalonia with one million votes. The post-trauma of 2017 was recent and so was the mystique of the confrontation with the State. Now, five years later, the plot jump we’re in seems several decades old.
We do not know if the former president will be a candidate in these elections. We also don’t know if it will be the case in the Catalan elections that will come a few months later and that will have colored this entire campaign. But when he gets down to it, he (or his brand, Together, without him) will be warned of what others suffered before when they got out of the trench (where they got into or were pushed) without knowing how to find the balance right between head and heart.
They are warned, which does not mean warned. 2024 will be their year of truth and, with them, perhaps for a long season, that of independence as a whole and that of Catalan politics.
