To hinder: "To hinder or prevent from acting, from functioning," says the dictionary. After the National Pact for Language drama, there's no longer any doubt: if Junts wants to aspire to occupy the space on which Pujol built the hegemony of Convergència, the hindrance must be removed. President Puigdemont must make way. He hasn't been an asset to Junts or the country for some time now; he's more of an icon of melancholy. If there was any doubt, his return, transformed into an escape, has been definitive. Coming to leave, what's the point?
Puigdemont chose the option of exile; others chose to stay, knowing full well what the consequences would be. I don't wish jail on anyone; I understand what the president did. But days pass and situations evolve. And distance—even in the digital age—has costs. Puigdemont isn't here physically, but neither is he mentally. His rhetoric is increasingly out of touch with the current situation. His appearances merely sculpt a figure for the memory. A footnote to Catalonia's recent history. And with each passing day, he seems further away. The current situation bears little resemblance to the situation when he left. Junts' submission to his demands is extinguishing the party, which needs renewed momentum. It does, however, serve as an alibi for those currently managing it to indefinitely postpone the necessary renewal.
The president's expression, somewhere between sad and melancholic, in his on-screen appearances contaminates the coalition, trapped in a parenthesis. And his remote presence means no one dares to open a new era. Everything is going uphill for Junts, trapped in a bureaucratized resistance, full of clichés and devoid of ideas. And so it is difficult to imagine that it will be able to articulate a broad majority government in the short term.
Puigdemont should learn the lessons of the countries he currently visits: the right-wing vote is increasingly shifting to the far right, and it won't be a surprise if the same thing happens here. Immersed in his distance, he acts as a brake on the internal life of a party in which no one dares to break the self-destructive cycle in which it is trapped, when what it needs is a jolt of ideas and a renewal of leadership.
The Catalan national right must abandon its fixed-gear politics and enter into the complexity of a period in which the independence movement's maximal program is no longer the order of the day and, instead, there is still a long way to go in the face of repeated attacks that weaken democracy. If she remains stuck in reverential fear of the exiled president, she will struggle to find the numbers to govern again, under the pressure of Silvia Orriols, who is bringing to Catalonia the fascist impulses sweeping across Europe.
