Although the campaign for the Spanish general election on 28th April officially starts at midnight this Friday, in practice, nobody will notice. In reality, it started weeks, months ago. In fact, it started when Pedro Sánchez toppled Mariano Rajoy and won the first motion of no-confidence in Spain. Over these nine months in the Moncloa government palace we first saw a Sánchez who was tolerant of and even minimally understanding of the Catalan independence movement, with whose votes he had reached the Moncloa. Then, since December, an arrogant and aloof prime minister, keeping his distance, in fact, not from any negotiation but from any dialogue. On the topic of Catalonia, Sánchez today doesn't have any public response to give or any initiative to propose. Just the observance of the law, something which, by the way, was already Rajoy's message.
Catalonia is today the great excuse of Spanish politics. The refuge in the absence of a minimal conversation on any manifesto issue. As such, men or women take to the podium anywhere around Spain and set to insulting Catalan independence supporters. The days go by, they get on stage somewhere else and the rhetoric is repeated, whether they are the warm-up act for Vox, PP or Ciudadanos. Then, their leaders Casado, Rivera and Abascal come and all the headlines are about Catalonia. The seven plagues they're going to bring if they reach power. With softer tone but with a very similar result, PSOE rounds out the four: there'll be no negotiation and by not talking there's no new Statute of Autonomy, nor even the transfer of the Senate to Barcelona, which was quite the PSOE classic.
In this way, Catalonia and the independence movement become the everyday smokescreen for their lack of ideological or political proposals. But also to not tackle enormously serious topics like the "state's sewers", now that former police commissioner Villarejo has increased the scope of his putrefied exhaust vent to take in not just politicians, judges and bankers, but also journalists in the scheme of the harassment and persecution of Podemos, as previously of the Catalan independence movement. It's unlikely for this topic to see the light of day in the print media or on TV since there are too many interests (of the real kind) on the table. Or, for example, is it normal that the name of a prosecutor from Spain's National Audience court should appear in the Belgian police report on the tracking devices placed on president Puigdemont's cars?
I imagine they're very uncomfortable questions and the best thing is to focus everything, exclusively, on the topic of Catalonia. Not on proposals but on different degrees of repression. To meager and too little. It's not surprising that minister Borrell, through Global Spain, should have asked a consultancy firm for ideas to stop or counter the independence movement's momentum in Europe. It's his only portfolio.