Clara Ponsatí has ??returned to the casino of Catalan politics. We played poker and bluffed, she said in June 2019 to refer to the events of October 2017, in what was probably the greatest act of sincerity carried out by a member of Carles Puigdemont’s government. Now she is back –we are happy about it– to play after-dinner cinquillo betting chickpeas while the dialogues from the TV3 soap opera are heard in the background. Ponsatí is the one who best represents the absolute deception of the final stretch of the process. She assumed the position of Minister of Education on the eve of 1-O believing, blindly, that there was a plan to make the ghostly republic that she had promised herself a reality. She thought, after the activation of the declaration of independence, that the Government would take refuge in the Palau de la Generalitat to quickly approve decrees like hot cakes that would consecrate the existence of a new State. She imagined more. In her head, the citizens took to the streets to defend the validity of the republic.
For this reason, in March 2022, he confessed to Gemma Nierga in an interview on RNE that the independence of Catalonia was worth human lives and compared the passive attitude of his fellow citizens with that of the Ukrainians in the face of Russian tanks. Ponsatí meant the arrival at the Government of the Generalitat of someone convinced that killing us in the streets in 2017 would have been the logical, natural and inevitable consequence of everything that had been done up to then. And that it would have been worth it. Ponsatí was the most consistent of all those who walked the red carpets of Catalan institutions during the years of the process: she was willing to reign even over the ruins of a cemetery.
I haven’t come back to negotiate anything, says Ponsatí now. TRUE. The negotiation has already been done for her by the ERC and the PSOE. The modification of the Penal Code has not served for everything that was intended, but it has served to guarantee their return without the threat of imprisonment. Also Marta Rovira, the general secretary of ERC and, in her case, the most incoherent of the process, could leave Switzerland tomorrow and settle again in Catalonia.
Only that would mean leaving the exile narrative solely in the hands of Carles Puigdemont. And that if not. ERC must keep someone with their feet abroad, although now it is only really justified for personal reasons and family logistics.
The return of Ponsatí also serves as a battering ram for Carles Puigdemont in the test on the scope of European parliamentary immunity. Yesterday’s arrest is the prelude to the one that will take place again after April 24 – the date on which Judge Pablo Llarena has set his appearance in the Supreme Court – and that the MEP has announced that she will disobey again. The item on the immunity of the former president is relevant. He still retains enough muscle to change the course of the political game with a movement and torpedo the exercise of political realism that the majority faction of his party is trying to carry out, both on the national and social axis, the latter to the chagrin of the most theoretically leftist, such as Toni Comín or Aurora Madaula. But the impact on the municipal elections of the return of Clara Ponsatí will be nil. She is, at this point, a minor political character and totally secondary. The cinquillo does not give much.
The imminent ruling by the TSJC on the corruption case of the president of JxCat, Laura Borràs, and the decision already taken by Carles Puigdemont and Jordi Turull to postpone any decision on their future at the head of the party until after the municipal. In the background, Xavier Trias pondering how long a campaign can be run with a JxCat president convicted of corruption.
