Puigdemont in campaign for the Spanish [elections], yes or yes

The parties try to control the tempos and play them to their advantage, but then the media avalanche decides otherwise. Junts is reflecting on whether it is more convenient to separate Carles Puigdemont’s return from the Spanish elections, but the press has decided it will be one of the elements of the electoral campaign. El País, which years ago had considered him little less than an ogre, now announces with great fanfare the Constitutional Court’s decision to send a double message: to Catalonia, that Sánchez delivers, and to the rest of the State, that de-escalating the independence tension is possible. On the other side of the Rubicon, however, his figure is used to further stir up the hornet's nest. “Puigdemont celebrates his victory and the defeat of the public powers”, they write in La Razón. But, if we look at the original statement by the Junts leader that justifies this headline, we see that a key word is missing. Puigdemont spoke of “the strategy of the Spanish public powers”. It is not the powers that have been defeated, but their strategy, which means their perversion, because they are supposed to function without political parties putting their paws into them. And this includes public powers like the police and the judges, but also private ones like the Ibex-35 or, cough, cough, the media. This idea of the “defeat of the Spanish powers” also appears in the headline of Abc, in this case with a quote that once again skips the key word.

It is not an accidental omission or one that can be attributed to the need to condense it into a headline. These forgetful newspapers were and are part of this strategy that they silence. And, precisely because they still act as an armed wing, they will milk Puigdemont’s return and sell it as a scandalous political decision, as if the trial of the Procés had been a mere technical, surgical, and sterile application of an aseptic Penal Code.