On the first anniversary of the formation of the Catalan government presided over by Pere Aragonès, the score out of ten that the public has given the Catalan executive is 4.55 and a pass mark has only been awarded by the voters of the pro-independence parties of ERC, Junts and the CUP. Confidence in the Catalan president is "little" or "none" for more than 50% of the population and only 16.4% have "a lot" or "quite a lot" of trust in the administration. This is one of the statistics published this Monday by El Nacional based on a survey conducted for this newspaper by the Institut Feedback, led by professor Jordi Sauret. The disagreements between partners, the lack of a clear political agenda in Catalan terms, the government's poor profile in Spanish politics, the lack of a response to attacks on the language and, in short, a nebulous politics that, in many cases, has no apparent direction, has ended up taking its toll and, as a consequence, it has made possible an eventuality that until now had always been ruled out: that the pro-independence parties could lose the next Catalan elections.
That is also because the party that is taking advantage of the political situation is the PSC, which is in a position to improve the results it obtained a year ago, with the Comuns also benefiting. Socialist leader Salvador Illa's policy is bearing fruit and his role as leader of the opposition is rated reasonably by both ERC and En Comú Podem voters, above 4. A fail mark, sure, but there is no longer such a strong division into power blocs when it comes to assessing politicians, and situations such as that of Catalangate, the illegal mass espionage carried out with Pegasus software which has had the Pedro Sánchez government in its focus, have not damaged the image of Illa.
It is true that one year of the legislature is not much time for patterns to become definitive and a poll is a snapshot of a specific moment. But it does show trends, and it is this that that should be of concern to the parties that sometimes seem more obsessed with satisfying their most active members - by definition, the most activist core of party members are always more politicized and more radical in one direction or the other - than all their voters, who are increasingly permeable and eager for politics to be carried out and that the politicians venture beyond the borders of their partisan territories. For now, it can scarcely be doubted that the pro-independence parties have fallen into a trap that they don't know how to pull themselves out of in order to set the political agenda.
And it is just the opposite that is happening. The political agenda in Catalonia is marked by Spanish justice, state espionage, police persecution, Catalangate or Villarejo. This whole plot, far from losing strength, has occupied all the media space and left the Catalan executive with an agenda of issues to manage which is, in general, very unappealing. Between some who don't know how to reverse this dynamic and others who don't want to reverse it, the only options for improving positions are in partisan confrontation and fratricidal war. Moves from which the country seldom benefits. Last weekend, for example, the interview given by former police commissioner Villarejo to TV3's FAQS programme was devastating in terms of the accusations he made and the stark explanation he gave of how the Spanish state has acted against Catalonia.
It is true that Villarejo is a criminal. But he has been in many state operations against Catalonia and it seems like just a few days ago that interior ministers were turning to him with enthusiasm, even if it was patriotic enthusiasm. I don't know the degree of truth in all the allegations he made on FAQS, but even if only a small proportion were true, it would be enough to trigger a state crisis. That is, in a normal democratic state, not in Spain, where it has been established as normal that anything goes against the independence movement. If, as he says, everything is in his notebooks, which are under judicial protection, the step you would expect to be taken would be for them to be declassified in order to shed light on what the former commissioner has claimed. Doing the opposite only presents a state on the defensive and suspicious of all accusations.