Pablo Casado, new leader of Spain's Partido Popular, should be out of politics, not for the master's he came up with and for which prosecutors have exonerated him, rather for the quantity of nonsense he manages to say per hour. The competition he's struck up with Albert Rivera (Cs) is leading them both list ideological, taking them ever further not from the centre both have renounced, but from the classical right. His comment this Monday, "you can't negotiate with independence supporters who have placed a pistol on the table", is not only a great lie, but it's a contemptible way to be in public life and a true threat to democratic coexistence.
Well then. As strange as it seems, PP can still turn its campaign against Catalonia up further. In the end it will turn out that asking for signatures against the new Statute of Autonomy at the petition tables they set up around Spain and encouraging a boycott of Catalan companies and products was only the forerunner of what we're seeing now and which, sincerely, makes you blush with the quantity of lies they manage to spread.
In any case, talking about pistols is a qualitative leap for the leader of a political party. It's not a knee-jerk action. It's plainly and simply the desire to link the Catalan independence movement to violence. With the legal path having fallen apart on an international level following the verdicts by Germany and Belgium and with the withdrawal of the extradition warrants against the pro-independence leaders in those countries and the other two in which some of them are living, Scotland and Switzerland, knowing full well they would also have slapped down Spanish justice, there remains the domestic fight on both the legal and political fronts. The Supreme Court and the Spanish legislature.
The former are defending themselves like a cat on its back, discredited as they have been by their European colleagues. The latest example, this Monday, was the chamber of the court headed by Carlos Lesmes accusing the Catalan political prisoners of trying to tarnish the honour of Spanish justice through an appeal for the recusal of the judges who are to try them. There have to be many ways they could defend themselves from the request from the Catalan political prisoners, but calling on their honour has to be a little on the limit, after what we've seen in Europe.
But between a judiciary that doesn't want lessons from Europe and a PP which talks about pistols on the table, the most sinister Spain is moving forwards resolutely with its sights set on an unjust trial.