Festive day of Sant Jordi in all Catalan cities with the rose and the book as the undisputed protagonists, but for the candidates for the May 12 elections one more day of pre-campaign. Messages from the Palau de la Generalitat or Strasbourg, walks along the Rambla, book signings or visits to the party tents. There is no day of rest for politicians before the start of the electoral contest, which they took advantage of to make a fierce defense of Catalan and also to throw the occasional flower among themselves, other than a rose as tradition would dictate.
Nothing to do with the harsh statements made on Monday in Congress by ERC and Junts against the leader of the PSC Salvador Illa, in the commission for the sale of masks. A small truce in which everyone wanted to leave the hand-to-hand combat against the rest of the opponents for a few hours. Tomorrow they will return to the trenches. The first secretary of the PSC will give explanations in the afternoon in the Senate about his contacts with Koldo García and the PP already announced an offensive against the socialist candidate.
The political day of this pre-electoral Sant Jordi has started with the reception from the Palau de la Generalitat of President Pere Aragonès in which he called on citizens to “redouble their commitment to the language”, highlighting at the same time that it is a “tool of social elevator” and cohesion. The ERC candidate who has proposed, if he wins the elections, a ministry to defend Catalan, has taken advantage of Sant Jordi’s day to reaffirm that commitment and encouraged maintaining this language “in all day-to-day actions”, but also in all professional fields.
Illa, who attended the tent set up on Rambla Catalunya, also assured on this issue that her party places “Catalan as the center of gravity of education in Catalonia.” Hence, he recalled the participation of the socialists in the law that regulates the use of official languages ??in compulsory education and added that he felt “a partner in all the policy that has been carried out in defense of Catalan.”
Given the criticism launched by Junts or the CUP in which they assured that the PSC “will not lift a finger for the language” if Illa becomes president of the Generalitat, the socialist candidate has reaffirmed that his party has a “commitment to Catalan ”.
The language was the link between the different discourses in Barcelona, ??but also outside Catalonia. In a videoconference from Strasbourg with the Junts officials who were in the tent on Rambla Catalunya, Puigdemont warned that “the language, like the country, can be left in our hands if we do not defend it.” The leader of JxCat has assured that his training will not stop “until Catalan has the European status it deserves and occupies the central place in Catalan society.” Puigdemont has also urged that this be the “language of integration for newcomers.”
For her part, the Comunes Sumar candidate, Jéssica Albiach, has used Sant Jordi’s day to bring water to her mill and affirm that in the 12-M elections, citizens will have to choose between a country model “with more language and Catalan culture or another with casinos and inefficient drought management.” The leader of the commons who closed the door to the approval of the budgets due to her refusal to the Hard Rock, has made a “close defense of linguistic immersion in the face of certain occurrences, such as those who ask for a segregated network or those who advocate a trilingual teaching.
Politicians have also had time for book signings. The organizing secretary of Junts did it on Rambla Catalunya and José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero had a day of bowling spread throughout Barcelona. In the morning he visited the RAC1 stand where he presented his book Crónica de la España que dialoguea, a compilation of conversations with La Vanguardia journalist Màrius Carol from which he launched a criticism of the current leaders of the PP. “I didn’t think I would miss Pablo Casado, but I listen to Feijóo, and I miss him. And before I listened to Casado and thought about Rajoy.”