Antoni Bassas' analysis: 'Puigdemont, the Junts mayors, and trailing the far right'

We begin the week with the news that tomorrow's European Union General Affairs Council (there is one every month) will not discuss Spain's demand to make Catalan, Basque, and Galician official languages. Spain itself has decided not to include it on the meeting's agenda, because Germany's position remains the same:No!", and unanimity is necessary to make the change. Conservative Chancellor Merz is making common cause with the People's Party (PP) group in the European Parliament and won't budge from the "no" vote. The Spanish People's Party (PP) (Dolors Montserrat) doesn't want to give Sánchez this victory because it would strengthen his pact with Junts.

All this, of course, European conservatives explain it with the argument that there are much more important issuesYes, it's obvious, but that argument wouldn't discuss anything other than Gaza, Ukraine, or Trump's tariffs. There are always more important issues, especially if you're the one deciding what's important and what isn't.

This means that one of the points that led Junts to vote for Sánchez's investiture will have to wait, just as the special funding, the immigration delegation, or the amnesty itself have not been advanced. This affects Esquerra, but Junts even more so, which has never been heard of forming part of any left-wing bloc alongside Sánchez, and keeps Puigdemont's August remark hanging in the air: "In the autumn, things will happen that have never happened." So far, nothing has happened.

This is on the Spanish front. Internally, Junts is trailing the Catalan Alliance in the polls. And yesterday, in a meeting with the party, Puigdemont referred to it as a fad:

"We know that pendulums come and go. And in recent times, as a result of globalization and the evolution of information technologies, these pendulums move at a very rapid speed and with very drastic movements. True. And sometimes there is the temptation to succumb to these fashions. There are people who look at this way, but this must remain a look. Of nation-building that never ends and is permanent."

Context for these words: Puigdemont will meet today with Junts mayors in Waterloo, concerned about the effects of immigrant registration on social services, repeated offending, and, as a result of all this, the loss of votes in favor of the Catalan Alliance. And let's not forget that mayors will be the first to go to the polls, in May 2027.

The shift toward conservative authoritarianism isn't a passing fad, it's an underlying current. Just look at the state of Europe and the United States. It's a consequence of the general impoverishment of society with the disappearance of the middle classes. Another thing is that the largest parties are no longer feeling self-conscious about the far right, as if they were waiting for the barbarians to arrive and saying there's nothing they can do. Clearly, there are things to be done, and they have to do with laws, the police, social services, and combating the lies and hatred of the far-right's catastrophic propaganda. Riding the far right on these issues is bad business, because we already know that the far right has no solutions, only culprits, but above all because between the original and the copy, people tend to prefer the original.

Good morning.