The "wild card" Samaranch trap

Perhaps one day Feijóo will be president of the Spanish government, but for now, it doesn't seem like he's going to get there. He continues to be a gray, sad opposition leader, incapable of generating enthusiasm or hitting the right strategy, dependent on Vox's crutch. He had asked for Junts' support for a motion of no confidence, Turull brushed him off by telling him that if he wanted to talk about it, he should go to Waterloo to meet with the party's president and, of course, Feijóo had no choice but to dismiss the offer. The PP would never let him speak with Puigdemont, so, as Rajoy would say, "end of quote." But, apart from his frustrated move, Feijóo spoke at the Cercle d'Economia and said the following: "Catalonia should not continue aspiring to achieve things either by coercion or by collision, but by conviction." What a beautiful sentence, if it weren't for its great hypocrisy. I can imagine that when he talks about "collision" he is referring to the Procés and October 1st. But I wonder what Mr. Feijóo calls "coercion." Is negotiating when people's votes have given you the power to be influential "coercion?" And what conviction can be displayed when nothing that Catalonia proposes is acceptable in principle? We only need to see the rejection by the autonomies governed by the PP to accept the financing model proposed by Esquerra that benefits them all because the Spanish government will put billions of euros more into it.

And the name of Joan Antoni Samaranch appears unexpectedly, whose memory was the subject of a tribute yesterday afternoon in Barcelona pressing and discussing the use of CatalanAnd he convinced the king and the government of the time that he could achieve the Games for Spain and that it could be a 'win-win' for Catalonia and Spain. And the Spanish government believed him (perhaps because they thought Barcelona's bid would not win) but above all, because if the Games came from Samaranch, a Spaniard, ex-Francoist, monarchist, they were not suspect. For Catalonia to convince, it must find a receptive audience. And Spain is not. It is a pity, but it is not. We only need to see the mess we have organized with the use of Catalan by the Pope on his upcoming visit to Catalonia.

The Spanish episcopate, organizer of the trip, cannot be less receptive to the use of Catalan by the Pope and in the presence of the kings of Spain. And among the least receptive, a key man, the cardinal of Barcelona, Joan Josep Omella. That 34 years after the Barcelona Games we still have to be pressing and discussing the use of Catalan in Catalonia in a ceremony of global scope is a demonstration of how much, in Spain, political, economic, and, most sadly, ecclesiastical power only feels itself worthily represented by one language, and that hearing the Pope speak in Catalan in the presence of the State authorities is a kind of symbolic affront. By the way, a few steps are underway. Let's see how the matter ends, but the imposition is unacceptable.

Good morning.