The interest in a press conference can be measured by various factors: by the anticipation created, by the importance of the attendees, by the impact created by their words, by the political moment the country is living through and, obviously, by what is said. The president of Catalonia, Quim Torra, has passed by Madrid and given a speech that, at least, had interest. In fact, in the current political moment, it's impossible for an appearance by a Catalan president to have none. Torra's speech was following in the wake of his predecessors, Jordi Pujol, Pasqual Maragall, José Montilla, Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont. Almost forty years explaining in Madrid that what political Catalanism wanted was political power. The ability to decide on matters which affect the Catalans. There's not been a president who didn't go to Madrid to explain Catalonia, and even the most moderate of all of them, José Montilla, was warning of disaffection from Catalonia towards Spain in November 2007, now almost twelve years ago.
Nobody listened to Montilla and Zapatero's PSOE government attributed it to the double pressure from his colleagues from Esquerra in the government and Artur Mas's Convergència in opposition. Mas arrived in government (the same Mas who, curiously, the same people from the establishment who sent him home today want to rescue) and proposed in Madrid the fiscal pact, an own State and the consultation. The response couldn't have been more definitive: banned from public office and a multi-million-euro fine. Carles Puigdemont also followed this path to preach in the desert. Nobody wanted to hear about what was going to happen in Catalonia. Exile and imprisonment was the response to the government. Repression of those who sided with pro-independence positions.
Quim Torra this Thursday went to say his personal Adeu a Espanya ("Farewell to Spain") to the clamorous absence of the broad Spanish deep state which wanted to show the existing total separation. No minister, no representative of the Spanish political parties, not from PSOE, nor PP, nor Cs, nor Podemos, nor from the unions, nor from the employers' associations, no newspaper editors, no Ibex companies, no members of the legal world, no... A sought-after absence, in some cases even unnecessarily ill-mannered, as a warning for what awaits him if he goes ahead with some of his warnings. Like the one that a condemnatory sentence will not be accepted by the people of Catalonia and their institutions and will trace the path to culminate independence. How? He gave no details.
Some of Torra's remarks sounded more like a personal position than a decision agreed with the whole government and his partners from Esquerra Republicana. That's not a minor question, however loud and strong his voice may have sounded. Almost at the same moment, the president of Esquerra Republicana, Oriol Junqueras, was reiterating that the best response to a guilty verdict would be a government of unity? bringing together the two parties there currently (JxCat and ERC), along with En Comú and CUP. All of that, said Junqueras, without closing the door to the possibility of an early election in Catalonia, a possibility which neither president Torra nor the other leaders of JxCat want to hear anything about.
That's one of the things with the fragility of the Catalan government: each of the two parties has its own strategy and then there's the president who, as an independent politician, also has his own.