Puigdemont's electoral asset

Today marks 86 years since President Lluís Companys was executed by the Spanish army at Montjuïc Castle, in Barcelona.

This morning, his figure was the subject of a tribute at the foot of his grave. Attendees included the presidents Illa and Rull and party representatives, and there have been interventions with a hint of inevitable pre-campaigning.

President Companys, twenty months before his assassination disguised as legality, with a Court-Martial farce typical of dictatorships, had embarked on the path of exile, one more from the massive retreat of February '39. He crossed the border line through the Coll de Lli and went to live in France, where he would be arrested a year later by the Germans and handed over to the Spanish police.

In a few weeks, another president of Catalonia will cross the border, this time, fortunately, on the way back home. Carles Puigdemont will not cross the line on foot, but will return on a commercial plane to resume his life in Catalonia nine years after having left. His return will have an emotional and personal dimension: returning to Amer, where his parents are buried, whom he could not accompany in their final days of life, returning to live in his home in Girona, starting to work in his office as former president in Barcelona, and responding to the affection he has received from thousands of people who have written to him or visited him during these years. But, evidently, his return will be political. It is certain that he will be protocolarily received at the Palau de la Generalitat by Salvador Illa and that he will sit in his seat in Parliament (it is another matter whether he enters or not, rather not much, into the day-to-day parliamentary activity). And it is logical to think that he will want to address the country just as he will want to touch and smell it, just as he said.

Puigdemont's return will be closely watched, and not just by the Mossos, who will obviously have to protect him from the threats he receives, but it will also be heavily watched politically. Because no matter how much the country has changed and how everyone has processed 2017 in their own way, Puigdemont belongs to the category of politicians who make things happen, and after having held his ground against the State for nine years, he will not return now to lock himself at home to write his memoirs, but to engage in politics and continue the independence process. And everyone knows that Puigdemont is an electoral asset. Puigdemont has always said that he sees the project as a process and, in this sense, we must expect more vindication of 2017 than apologies or self-flagellation. That is why he will not return until after the November 29 elections, so that his dialogue with the people is not subordinated to the urgencies of a campaign in which he will not be a candidate.

Good morning.