Maricarmen or the appropriation of a symbol

Allow me to start the analysis by going off-script, but it is great news that yesterday 55,000 people attended the first farewell concert by Oques Grasses at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium. Filling an Olympic stadium is not within everyone's reach, and even less so doing it four days in a row. Do not miss the chronicle written by our musical specialist, Xavier Cervantes. Music sung in Catalan reaches people, it has an audience, an audience of all ages, including many young people, and when there is good news for our culture it must also be said.

Today the news is the death of Maricarmen Abascal, the woman from Madrid whose eviction has caused, for the moment, the early call for general elections that Pedro Sánchez assured many times he would never call early and an announcement of a general strike for two days before the start of the electoral campaign.

The death of this woman just 14 days after her eviction has unleashed a sincere emotionality on the street and political interest, insults included.

The level of political appropriation of Maricarmen's death is illustrated by this message from Pedro Sánchez last night on social media: “A hug also to all those who feel this loss as our own”.

Sánchez needed a pretext to change the conversation about Ceuta and have any chance of winning, and the general strike needs a just cause, almost a martyr.

In reality, the problem of evictions has always been here: in Catalonia since 2020 there have been more than 36,000 evictions. And in all of Spain about 170,000. The electoral exploitation of the Maricarmen case is crystal clear.

I'll finish. The PP and Vox have many chances of ending up obtaining the absolute majority that allows them to govern. And, right now, it is their only opportunity to do so. The PNV said yesterday that it does not intend to invest Feijóo if he goes with Vox. And Miriam Nogueras was clear on Catalunya Ràdio: "If our votes don't count and the PP and Vox win, then they will govern. With our votes, the PP and Vox will not govern. We cannot be more explicit".

But, just in case, yesterday Junts, through the mouth of Jordi Turull, clarified that they will not invest in Pedro Sánchez either: “Pedro Sánchez and we are already burned. He is a person who has not fulfilled his promises, he is a person who only looks out for himself, he is a person who plays day by day and who makes policies to look good. We will not invest in Pedro Sánchez”.

Something similar was told to us here, at ARA, by Carles Puigdemont in 2023, and in the end they did indeed invest in him. In any case, Junts wants to combat the mental framework of the blocs that President Illa brought up yesterday at the control session in Parliament. Either with the progressive bloc or with the PP and Vox. But the truth is that the Spanish legislature is over, and apart from the pardons and the amnesty, Catalonia does not have a new financing system and Rodalies de Catalunya is a company that still does not have the papers to operate.

Good morning.