The lack of maintenance of the drains of Catalan politics is starting to take its toll with overflows on all fronts. The list of subjects on which we need to fix our eyes after a whole decade of being blinded by the powerful light emitted by the five-pointed star that symbolized the process is expanding.
Health, education, renewables, infrastructure, drought, public safety, taxation. Let’s go back to the classics. The PSC anchored in that bay in 2020, when Salvador Illa replaced Miquel Iceta in the leadership of the Catalan Socialists. All the ships have followed him to end up anchoring there. The noise of the Congress disguises the state of the sea in Catalonia. The north wind of independence is no longer blowing. The air is now being lifted by the master of sectoral policies. Even the CUP has organized some camps to reorient themselves.
The lure of independence does not ease the growing chasm between public and published opinion. The conversation no longer revolves around identity politics, but about what the hell is going on in schools, in healthcare after the collapse of primary care, general water restrictions, whether one life is enough or They need a few to get permits to start up a photovoltaic installation, or the growing sense of public insecurity that the Department of the Interior is trying to combat with the usual barrage of official statistics. And point out, because until now it was left out of the equation, immigration. It is on all these issues that the parties will have to differentiate themselves before the regional elections. This is the fish that is now in demand and that is why the competition is accelerating in the fishing grounds.
Having drawn the framework, it is understood that Raquel Sans, spokesperson for ERC, has accused Junts of imitating the speech of the far right on the subject of immigration to endorse, from the direction of the party, the speech and requests of the mayors of this training in the Maresme region. Led by gang leader Marc Buch, mayor of Calella, a dozen Junts gangs had requested more police presence, reform of the Penal Code to put an end to multiple criminal recidivism and, oh!, the expulsion of immigrants who have of theft his particular and usual way of life.
ERC has used, to discredit these councilors and Junts, the usual argument: they dehumanize the immigrant and promote racism. From here to the accusation of ultra-rightists it was enough to put the automatic pilot. But for Junts, ERC’s overperformance is a gift. Aragonès leaves his right side unprotected so that they can hit him as hard as they want on account of an issue in which statistics and public convictions are separate. That is why this same week, both in Parliament and in Congress, the members have brought up issues of multiple recidivism and security.
In the same way that the CUP moved the axis of Catalan politics to the left, the mayor of Ripoll and leader of the National Alliance, Sílvia Orriols, is moving it to the right without still having representation in the Parliament. But it would be a mistake to think that the only thing that explains the blow to the table of the joint mayors of Maresme is the need to prevent a hypothetical irruption in a national key of Joan of Arc del Ripollès. The truth is that there is a serious problem with multiple recidivism and also with a certain immigrant profile. And if a phrase like the previous one serves to place us on the extreme right, let’s take it for granted that almost all of Catalonia will end up being so and that the ultras detector will collapse.
The reorganization of the pro-independence political space, now that the star is kept in the closet to appear only in places where smoke without fire can be sold, is widening the ideological rift between the sovereignist acronyms. Immigration, once the Catalan ban on this difficult issue is over, will be one of the battle fronts. And the result, we fear, will not be dictated by official polls, but by the opinion, perception and also citizen knowledge. Junts has taken note of it. Back to basics.
