The Procicat, this administrative committee which in a way that is not very clear was handed the keys to power in Catalonia by the Catalan government last March in the face of the sudden expansion of the coronavius pandemic, agreed this Tuesday night, at 9pm, to impose a perimeter closure on the counties of Cerdanya and Ripollès, which was to come into force at midnight on Tuesday night and will last for two weeks, that is, until January 6th, Reis - the day of the Three Kings.
There are experts of all shades of opinion in the Catalan administration and I'm not going to criticise a measure which right now must have as many defenders as detractors. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a politician... and I'm not a member of the Procicat either. I am from neither the Cerdanya nor the Ripollès, and nor am I proprietor of one of the businesses that will be literally devastated by this decision. These are usually the holidays that help save a season when it is looking exceedingly difficult. The curfew and perimeter closures at weekends had left these winter tourism areas deserted, except for the people who could travel on Thursday and not return until Monday.
Having said what I'm not, what I am is a political analyst and an inquisitive observer of how a government defends its position in such a complicated situation. If last week the government of Catalonia, through the Procicat, offered the sensation of being a malleable executive which had bowed to economic interests - we are a poor country, the ministers repeated like a litany, one after another - this Tuesday night, rather than giving a sense of finding a balance, they offered a sensation of improvisation and a certain chaos.
The day chosen to implement these measures could have been last weekend and we would have avoided, on the one hand, many cases of illness; on the other hand, the sectors affected would have known, in terms of time and form, what they were dealing with. And finally, thousands of families would not now be hastily dismantling their trip to those two counties which they began organizing three days ago when it was already known what state La Cerdanya and El Ripollès would be in this Tuesday. If we journalists know several days in advance the figures offered - the famous Rt index - then the Generalitat of Catalonia could do better than a press conference at 9pm on Tuesday. I'm sure of it.