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Some editorials are a shot into the air. A warning. Like the one in Spanish newspaper El País this Tuesday which aims to pressure ERC to ditch "Puigdemont and his immediate circle" and force them to propose a "viable" president. The first argument they wield works rhetorically like a punch in the stomach: "[President Puigdemont's] individualist stubbornness", writes the newspaper, "secures [vice-president Oriol Junqueras's] long stay in pretrial detention: a situation which, from various points of view, it would be desirable to reverse but this is made impossible in the eyes of the judge (and his rulings) by Puigdemont's continued support of the unilateral path". Puigdemont's JxCat will need the votes of Junqueras's ERC to invest whomever they nominate for president.

In other words, turning the argument around, Llarena is keeping Junqueras in prison to punish Puigdemont's political action: whilst the president continues doing his thing, the vice-president will remain locked up. According to El País, then, Junqueras is a political hostage with whom the state is blackmailing the pro-independence leaders in exile and aiming to scare pro-independence activists. The ransom it demands is to drop Puigdemont, leaving him alone, rejecting him, etc.

Junqueras's release, according to the newspaper, isn't dependent on his own behaviour, but on a third party's behaviour, whatever a basic principle of justice might say: that everyone is accountable for their actions, not for other people's. Whoever talks about Junqueras also means the rest of the prisoners and exiles. What will the German, Belgian and Scottish judges who are to decide on the extradition warrants against Puigdemont, Comín, Serret, Puig and Ponsatí think?

 

Gonzalo Boye, one of Carles Puigdemont's lawyers, has remarked on the viciousness of the thing:

Translation: It's very serious what El País is saying: that judge Llarena is keeping Oriol Junqueras in prison for Puigdemont's political decisions... Is that true?

So far, neither the judge, nor the Supreme Court has come out to refute this mafioso explanation for their actions given by the Madrid newspaper.

Earlier, the newspaper spurns the intention to invest Puigdemont again (they call it a "presidential enthronement", sic) as "unprecedented", "untimely", a "waste of time", "futile", "esoteric", "nonsense", a "show", "follies", etc. - always that administrative, inflated and pompous solemnity, so common when the newspaper applies itself to humiliating someone or some idea.

 

So, from the get-go, who wants to support an initiative which merits such a negative evaluation from the spokesperson for the deep state? The very title itself (Esquerra tiene miedo - "Esquerra [aka ERC] is scared") is a warning in the form of an evaluation of intentions, using a model of politics as a chest-thumping contest. Trumpian politics.

With the preliminary bombardment over, the editorial grabs Esquerra by the neck and shakes them with two further reasons.

One is that if ERC doesn't ditch Puigdemont, it won't "regain its credibility as a party of government". Translation: we won't believe the political turn you set out clearly in the political report Fem República ("Let's make a Republic", link in Catalan), in which you abandon the unilateral path, among other things.

The other derives from the first: if ERC doesn't do as expected, it will be accepting "a provocation of its elected officials (like the Parliament's speaker) and the party itself". Translation: Roger Torrent and other elected officials from the party could also end up badly.

Maybe what's happening now is that the deep state is using this path to send messages: an editorial like a horse's head.