Killing the father figure is important for life in general, but for politics it is absolutely necessary. Politics is a collective discussion about the nature of good and what we must do to achieve it, and change begins when the feeling spreads that the old vision that explained it to us is running out and a new one is needed. Any political renewal is always a "transvaluation of values," as Nietzsche said; someone who points out that the emperor has no clothes, that what everyone says is no longer tenable, and that where no one is looking is precisely where we should focus our attention. The charismatic leader acts like the modern artist, who denounces the fossilization of the old canon and proposes a new form that challenges it from top to bottom—a scandal. In the feverish moment of cultural revelation, the break with the past anoints the breaker with an aura of irresistible novelty, and then the marginal takes center stage and begins to rise like foam.
I'm talking about Jordi Pujol, the pro-independence parties, and Aliança Catalana, in the week that the patriarch's trial has coincided with polls pointing to a spectacular surge for Silvia Orriols's party, while the three pro-independence parties remain stuck at the same numbers they've been languishing at for some time. And Pujol is a prime example of the cultural and political capital that comes from killing the father figure, which he acquired precisely as a result of another trial: when a Francoist court-martial tried and imprisoned him for the events at the Palau de la Música Catalana, Pujol had broken the boundaries of his time, correcting the prevailing attitudes of the previous generation, which was thus exposed. Thanks to that gesture, the future president was forever defined as something more than just a conventional politician.
Now that we see him on trial again, some will find confirmation that his gesture was as revolutionary as it seemed, while others will find disillusionment: the dispute over the meaning of this trial has nothing to do with what the Spanish courts say, but with how future Catalan politicians will reread, interpret, and use the episode. However, I would say that this trial isn't shaking Catalans much because it represents a step back in time. Because the Process was also a collective debate about whether Catalans could kill the father figure, whether the culture of compromise, the pact-making, and the fear of Spanish violence that Pujol had defined as the limits of our political action could radically change in the name of greater aspirations.
As we know, the Process failed, and in fact, what has followed is a return to the limits of Pujolism, perfectly staged when Salvador Illa himself went to speak with the former president to transfer part of Pujol's development capital to his own presidency. However, something exceptional has happened in Catalonia: the political leaders of a failed revolution managed to ensure continuity instead of a rupture. Instead of witnessing a classic case in which a critical internal faction of the party sweeps away the leaders responsible for a collapse, Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras managed to convince enough members and voters that the best way to fight against Spanish repression was to close ranks, and they aborted any renewal process, first by appointing, and then ultimately by regaining total leadership themselves.
But if the center doesn't renew itself, the desire for change emerges from other quarters: Silvia Orriols is a perfect example of the political allure that comes from killing one's father. Because Orriols is not a outsider of the Process, but someone who, like so many other Catalans, believed in it to the very end, filling all the ANC buses to the demonstrations, and it wasn't until well into 2019 that he had his head screwed on right and, then, yes, rebelled against those he had trusted and became, in practice, the only politician. And perhaps the greatest paradox is that Orriols kills the father of the Process with one hand while vindicating the father of Pujol with the other: from the use of the Convergència navy blue that Junts per Catalunya has orphaned to the active vindication of the Pujol legacy by all its leaders, whether in the form of a return to moralistic vocabulary, the central one. There is no doubt that Aliança Catalana wants to do something new that will not be exactly the same as Pujolism (without going any further, Orriols radically amends the meaning of the idea that "he who lives and works in Catalonia is Catalan"), but there is also no mystery in the electoral anemia of the Process parties and the unbridled energy of Aliança.
PS: To broaden the focus a bit, I find it interesting to explain how Zohran Mamdani, who is currently the only sign of life within the global left and its great hope, achieved his revolutionary pedigree not only by going against Donald Trump (another case of someone who killed the father figure by atoning for the war of the I's, which they dared to criticize), but also against the elites of the Democratic Party. Moreover, he had to fight against his own generation. Mamdani grew up very much identified with the culturalist and identity-based turn of the millennium left, and the shift towards a more economic and universalist left that defines him is something recent. One of the most crucial moments in the construction of his current persona was when, asked about the security problems in New York, he criticized one of the slogans that had become most popular among young Democrats in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement,Defund the police", and he argued, at great risk to himself, that the left should also champion the police and order and, simply, know how to do so in accordance with the interests of the working class.
