The deplorable intervention of the spokesman of the Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, asserting that the president of the Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, could end up like Lluís Companys, reflects more than any other statement, comment, analysis or assessment the exact moment of the relationship between Catalonia and Spain. A highly qualified representative of the party governing Spain from 2011, declares at the end of a meeting of the direction of the PP that Puigdemont can end up like Companys — who, we remember, was tortured, subjected to a court-martial and executed in the castle of Montjuïc on 15th October 1940 — and nobody from his party with sufficient responsibility shows him the way to his house in Sòria, or immediately demands him to rectify his comment and apologise publicly. Nobody, absolutely nobody, has more clearly expressed from a public position the legitimacy of violence by the Spanish state, and had the audacity to compare what happened under the dictatorship with the present moment. After the police violence of 1st October, the least that can be said of Casado is that he is irresponsible and his statement simply miserable.
Just before the celebration of the Catalan Parliament's most important plenary since the restoration of the Catalan Chamber, in spring 1980, it seems that any threat can be accepted as a measure of pressure to bend the will of the Catalan government. And everything is not acceptable in a democratic framemark. To use Companys as a projectile weapon is unworthy and indignant. In 1990 Germany and France asked for pardon, something that Spain has not yet done. This is their shame, but Spanish democracy can't even rise to pardon someone who, by the way, also gives his name to the Olympic stadium in Montjuïc.
On 1st October, more than 2.3 million people went to the polls convened by the Catalan government. They did so in extreme conditions, not after months but years trying to agree with the Spanish government on a legal referendum, something that the Spanish state always considered unbelievable and not in accordance with the law of the Constitution of 1978. There were constitutionalists who did not share this point of view, others who had considered intermediate ways for years, but all doors closed, one after the other. Contrary to what the Spanish government had guaranteed to the international community, there were ballot boxes and there were queues at the polling stations, and there were also scenes of repression that a very broad part of the Catalan citizenship will never forget. What a paradox: Trump knew what would happen in Catalonia much more than the Spanish government. This action revealed a situation that was not widely discussed: the displacement and storage of the ballot boxes in the days prior to 1st October involved thousands of people. These, probably, commented on it to another thousand. And despite this, they all arrived at polling stations without the police security services being capable of preventing them.
In this framemark of the celebrated referendum and of police violence on the day of the vote, Puigdemont appears today in front of the Catalan Chamber. There will be no stepping back on his behalf - he has suggested so in every possible way. It will be necessary to see, consequently, what steps he makes and how it is made official what the law of the referendum and legal transition state regarding the declaration of independence. Carles Puigdemont, and with him his government, wants that the mediation route does not close, and for some of the initiatives in progress to bear fruit. It is normal for this to be, however much the Spanish government rejects any type of mediation, be it from the Spanish Church, from European governments, from mediation forums of peace processes and human rights. Rajoy does not want this route to open up. And the Catalan government wants to persevere with it, without being a hostage of a negotiation that at the moment is not even seen. This is the Gordian knot that Puigdemont will reveal from 6pm in the Parliament. That is if the Spanish government in the remaining hours do not prevent his appearance.