There is a pre-campaign video from the beginning of December in which we see Jéssica Albiach (Valencia, 29/06/1979) opening the curtains to let in the morning light while confessing that “if they had told me ten years ago that I would be in politics now, the truth is that I would have never believed it”. Lies have short legs, as they say, because if any of the candidates for the Catalan elections on 14th February has a biography that inclines towards the political caste as a life profession it is this quick-witted Valencian born in 1979 who represents En Comú Podem. Journalist and photographer by training, Albiach belongs to a generation of forty-somethings (I know it well, since it's mine) who are well educated with studies in exile, and made the most of the penultimate economic crisis to escape unemployment via work, in her case, as a municipal communications technician, to end up carving out a salaried niche in the party. The video is a pretentious piece entitled "There's Always a First Time" which seeks to draw us in to voting for Colau-ism as if the mayor's party were still grounded in non-governmental activism, when, in reality, there's nothing sadder than politics raised in the noble causes of the Amnesty International school, which quickly goes from clipping people's microphones on to warming a seat in Parliament.
It's amusing that a member of my year group, who has experienced in first person the twilight of the administration and the sinking of the credibility of traditional media, should be a specialist in such a slippery field as political marketing, the very discipline that has allowed the partitocracy to survive in the same ideology as ever, but with more seductive copy and better colour in the posters. Look at how this Comuns thing is so ancient and lacking in originality that Albiach is pumping the motto "The change that Catalonia deserves", a change that is much more modest than the tectonic and quantum revolution of politics that Pablo Iglesias once promised Spaniards and that, as we know, ended up providing a nouveau riche home in Galapagar and a deputy PM role in the Spanish government which has not quite been enough to stop home evictions or to reduce the cost of the electricity bill. But that's unimportant, because Albiach is only running in the elections in the hope that the Colau-ist vote might enable her to export the Barcelona-Madrid bipartite to the Catalan government so that she can continue transforming Catalonia and change her postal code, like the boss. If to do that you need to choose as president Salvador Illa or Lucifer, don't worry, the marketers will find the right verb.
The candidate Albiach is the perfect Spaniard that the Madrid government needs to secure its regional peace in Catalonia
An agile and intelligent parliamentarian, Albiach has been able to poke her head out thanks to the free space created between the lies of independence's "processism", in which there is always some excuse for independence not actually being implemented, and the clumsy repression of the PP-PSOE axis in the referendum period and subsequently with the imprisonment of the martyrs. Midway between Our holy lie and Their brute force, the Comuns have had free rein to remix a few Greatest Hits from the old PSC songbook, such as plurinational republicanism and the negotiated referendum, which sound very progressive but require more faith than reincarnation does. And feminism, that goes without saying! Because Albiach tells us that Catalonia now, of course, deserves a female president, after so many years of machos and vicars, but she hastily clarifies that the desired Madam President should not carry an Armani handbag like that of Laura Borràs, reeking of three percent commissions and Sarrià snobbery, but rather a backpack and orangey hair colouring, outer suburbs-style, the look that makes the husbands of those Sarrià snobs break into a hot sweat when they see it on a supermarket cashier. A feminism like that of Marçal, but without the "oppressed nation" part, which is too essentialist.
In a campaign in which everyone is playing for a draw and no one risks losing a minimum share of power, it is sufficient for Jéssica to promise a left-wing government that will season the Illa effect with a little purple pepper. The pandemic helps her, because as long as everyone in Spain is a prisoner of the daily figures on deaths and the vaccines doses that the first world will allow us to buy from the black market, the Pedro-Pablo coalition will not yet be damaged by the red numbers, and when I say red, they are bright red, and will sink the Spanish economy for the next decade. That is why the Comuns can still sooth the ears of their voters with sweet tunes about "progressive routes out of the crisis" and an "expansive budget" without having the foggiest idea of how the administration will pay the bills (a very messy business, more appropriate to a Socialist minister in a tie than a gender equality activist wearing a leather jacket). Because if you think that the Catalan deficit can be alleviated by spending more cash, my dear, what you really have to do is toughen up your sales pitch on how the dialogue table is going to resolve this goddamned independence thing.
Albiach tells us that Catalonia now, of course, deserves a female leader, after so many years of machos and vicars, but she hastily clarifies that the desired Madam President should not carry an Armani handbag like that of Laura, reeking of three percent commissions and Sarrià snobbery
The candidate Albiach is the perfect Spaniard that the Madrid government needs to secure its regional peace in Catalonia, as it did in Valencia, but with a much kinder and more progressive face. In fact, there is nothing in the Spanish capital that makes them chortle more than an MP who fills her mouth with talk of protecting the Catalan language and self-government, hiring more nurses for our agonizing and outdated hospitals and all sorts of social transformation, but who, at the moment of truth, and when it is necessary to vote for real sovereignty, holds up the ballot paper of NO to independence with the same passion as the majorettes who announce the next round in a boxing match, and who, in a debate, changes to Spanish in order to be more cosmopolitan or, as the mayor would put it, not to stigmatize anyone for the language they use. And as for the change that Catalonia deserves, dear readers, if it happens that we need the votes of Manuel Valls, as Ada showed us in the capital's city council, then fuck them, babe, in the end you'll always be able to resort to that line about "if they had told me ten years ago, the truth is that I would never have believed it." If we could only learn from our Valencian cousins, from Fuster and Palacios, but for chrissake, they always end up exporting the most charmless Spaniards, the tackiest hair colouring.
Believe it, Jéssica, your career as a viceroy will be long.