Marchena, Llarena, and their accomplices have already announced that, whatever the Constitutional Court decides about the amnesty law, they will act like they're waiting for it to rain, leaving hundreds of defendants in the process (among whom there is not a single police officer who stole the voters) in a situation of temporary defenselessness. Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras: one cannot set foot in his home, and the other is disqualified. Marchena speaks of "rebellion"; and former judge Martín Pallín has confirmed that we have "rebellious" judges, a contradiction that seems only possible in Spain.
A scandal? It can be counted! This very week, the newspapers are full of police and journalistic maneuvers by the PSOE against the PP, and by the PP against the PSOE, with the security forces and secret services under scrutiny to the highest degree. Spain has grown accustomed to living in a state of permanent systemic crisis, and no one is scandalized by anything. Feijóo, leader of Ayuso and Mazón—to name two—has called Pedro Sánchez "a mafia boss" and asks him to comply, something the president won't do, because the polls show the PP-VOX bloc with a comfortable majority. In other words, things can always get worse, as the old adage goes, and whatever the Catalan parties fail to achieve now, they may never achieve. The PSOE often signs agreements it cannot and will not fulfill, and agreements end up as dead letters in the courts, or in Brussels, or in any office in the bureaucratic labyrinth that is Madrid. And the more far-reaching agreements—the talks in Brussels with a rapporteur, or the dialogue table between governments—have been mummified... unless Zapatero and Puigdemont pull an uncertain rabbit out of a top hat.
And the PSC, meanwhile, is committed to the politics of nerdiness and discretion, which doesn't mean it won't do some things, mind you. Intervening in the DGAIA, for example, was an urgent need after years of incompetent management (at least) by its previous political leaders, mostly from ERC; this is an issue that, once again, and leaving aside cases of neglect or malpractice, shows that regional social policies are not up to the challenges posed by recent waves of migration. For this very reason, the issue must be addressed forcefully, but without fanfare.
Money is needed, and since the potential one-off funding for the Generalitat is taking a long time, ERC refuses to approve the budget, and the Socialists have normalized the practice of governing by proxy. Political debate with a capital P has disappeared from Catalonia as if it were a fresco from Sijena; there is no horizon other than next month, and as a result, we are once again dependent on the maniacal dynamics of Madrid politics, something some desire, because everything is easier against the PP. However, the Spanish-ization of our political life could fuel the growth of extremes and turn the Catalan Parliament into an ungovernable scumbag. Salvador Illa is fortunate that the PP cannot and will not shed its anti-Catalan crust, and that the independence movement is at a low ebb, lacking strong leadership, whose bases prefer to attack each other, and facing a latent threat from the far right. But this is a scenario that could change rapidly if the PP and Vox win the Moncloa. History never repeats itself, as Mark Twain said, but sometimes it rhymes.
