Jordi Pujol until the end

On one side, there were not one, not two, but three medical reports concurring that Jordi Pujol was unfit to stand trial. On the other side, there were judges eager to try him who didn't trust the reports, and a defendant eager to testify. And so, despite everyone who considered such documents grounds for dismissing the case against him, Jordi Pujol will be tried.

There are lawyers who know the Spanish high courts very well (high (due to the quality of the courts where it is held) and who assure that Pujol's determination to testify will ultimately work in his favor, because it has become clear that the former president felt compelled to defend an innocence in which he believed.

But Pujol's attitude goes beyond a legal defense strategy. Pujol wants to testify because he wants to defend his name to the end. He wants history to be unable to say that neither age nor declining cognitive abilities saved him from a conviction, but rather that he faced the trial without flinching. And if in the end he couldn't testify (his turn will come in the spring, when he'll be almost 96, and logically, he won't be in any better shape than he is now), and even if he died before being questioned, it would be clear that he didn't hide, because that has never been his way of going through life, not even now when, referring to his physical condition, he says, "fucked up." Fucked up enough to make one doubt that he can continue the trial or answer the questions when the time comes (if it comes), with the attention required by the years of prison they're seeking for him and his children.