Can politics be heartless? It's probable that some years ago, I would have found the answer trickier, significantly trickier. Heartless is too strong a word to be used in the political scuffle where sometimes voices get raised, part of the parliamentary game or the dispute between parties. Not so many years ago, maybe one or two decades, you could see the leaders of different electoral choices talking somewhat amicably in the Catalan Parliament's bar. That has gone on to a better life. And today, yes, politics can be heartless.
This Sunday evening, former Spanish prime minister Felipe González was on a programme on TV channel La Sexta. Beyond the possible interest simply in his presence on Jordi Évole's Salvados programme, his shamelessness analysing the situation in Catalonia, the release of the political leaders in pre-trial detention, Oriol Junqueras's prison situation and the application of article 155 is a very clear example of why the Catalan movement has cast off from an outdated politics, full of lies and disconnected from reality.
But none of González's lies was as heartless as when, talking about Oriol Junqueras's pre-trial detention, he said: "Some of his government colleagues prefer to have him in prison. Among other factors, because Mr Puigdemont abandoned ship and at least Junqueras stayed on the front line and is paying the consequences." No, Mr González! Oriol Junqueras is in prison because they wanted to teach the Catalan independence movement a lesson, they have violated the law by inventing stories of non-existent violence and because people like yourself have worked day in, day out propagating the lies around Spain.
Four states, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland, are questioning all judge Pablo Llarena's legal work and everything suggests that the game is slipping away from the great farce put up by the Spanish state. Don't come here, Mr González, with lessons and with lies. The work which, as a democrat, you had to do, you didn't do. The work you had to do as a former prime minister neither. And today, the image of Spain is slipping dangerously in European ministries. Leave Junqueras alone, because you've been one of his jailers too.