As a member of Barça, I still remember with frustration the defeat suffered by the admired Lluís Bassat against Joan Gaspart in 2000, in the first elections in decades without Josep Lluís Núñez as president. The publicist projected himself well as the inevitable president and as the great choice for quiet change. But, against most odds, it was not to be. What seemed to be given and blessed in the media had not really connected with a sufficient base of Barcelonaism. Despite the fact that he is a parakeet, they can sense that now I will tell them about Salvador Illa. But not yet.
Eight years after that unfulfilled illusion, another incipient one that was also growing in me also ended up shattered. Hillary Clinton wanted to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States. After eight years of George Bush jr., she was also sold as a “quiet change”, quite inevitable, which had to calm the waters. It didn’t happen either. In this case, because a Barack Obama crossed his path and took away his candidacy. Disgust, but less.
The upheaval would be immense, here yes, when in 2016 I was re-illusioned with the possibility that Hillary’s turn would finally come, but then it was Donald Trump who unseated her as the favorite in all the polls and defeated her . Many people were shocked. Just like what happened in Spain, not long ago, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo, “the moderate statesman” we had been told he was, ran into Pedro Sánchez’s manual of resistance, also against most odds .
Could something similar happen in Catalonia next 12-M? Because Illa has also been projected, via the media and demoscopy, as “the inevitable president”, well “indispensable”. But, in some cases, as we have seen, this is more a construct in the minds of those who want to believe it, than a social wave that draws votes. Will his “turning the page” really be the great feeling that relates a large majority of Catalans to their main institutions of self-government?
At the moment, with Carles Puigdemont having just burst onto the game board as a candidate, Junts, once again, is beginning to frustrate the majority of polls that until recently underrepresented it (as is tradition). It seems to have passed in front of ERC. But this is not the main comeback with which Puigdemont seeks to excite.
Last Thursday, in Elna, he defended a “raise Catalonia” of Pujolian reminiscences, but with a clear objective of transcending it. Raise it to do what? He didn’t say “to do it again”. He said, “to do it better”. Bringing the country back together, first, to bring back independence later. What will be more attractive and credible in the eyes of a sufficient part of the electorate? Illa’s “turn around” or Puigdemont’s “comeback”? For many, the easiest would be the first. But what is apparently easier and more comfortable does not always end up being imposed.
