Of legacies and inheritances
Together, the party ideologically heir to the defunct Convergència finds itself in a rather un-Pujol-esque predicament: competing for the anti-immigration narrative with a far-right party that is eating away at its electorate, according to polls and surveys. Pujol, as an ideologue and as president, knew how to avoid the tempting trap of blaming immigrants for the country's ills: he clung to Candel like a lifeline and offered a message of welcome, integration, and a united effort. "Anyone who lives and works in Catalonia is Catalan," "We are 6 million," "Catalonia, one people."etc. The appeal to unity, to citizenship as an essential source of rights for both those rooted in the community and for newcomers, is one of the political merits that should not be denied to someone who was undoubtedly a key figure in the construction of present-day Catalonia.
Was the seed of supremacism, xenophobia, and racism, however, being incubated within Pujolism? Undoubtedly, and also in Pujol's inner circle, who could not have been unaware of it. The double game, the hypocrisy, were thus served. The rotten seed of hatred for immigrants, for the poor, for the unknown savage who comes to take what we have gained with so much effort, was being incubated not only within conservative Catalan nationalism, but also within Catalan society. And the seed hatched in the post-Process era, when the feeling of defeat transformed into a yearning for revenge against "those who carried the lily in their hand," that is, against those who identified Catalan independence with a transformative ideology, linked to democratic improvement and the conquest of freedom, protection, and progressive rights. They have been denounced as traitors, opportunists, or fools. wokeMeanwhile, from the egg has hatched the toxic louse of Aliança Catalana, which could be caricatured as "Convergence with three rums," but which signifies something deeper and more devastating: the complete identification of Catalan independence with the far right. In other words, the confirmation of the most triumphant dreams of the adversaries and enemies of Catalanism, who rub their hands together watching independence embrace all the beast's tics: exacerbated patriotism, exaltation of the large Christian family, homophobia, contempt for the weak, and general contempt.
In Madrid, at the National Court, a large, Christian Catalan family, a political party, and an entire era are on trial. Everything is intertwined. Convergència was dissolved (much to Jordi Pujol's chagrin) due to corruption. Vengeful, patriotic judges and prosecutors will spare no humiliation those they finally have in their grasp, even if he is ninety-five years old and recovering from a hospital stay. There is no mercy, there never has been. This is something those who blocked the three percent kickbacks and those who used their surnames to benefit from ill-gotten gains should have known. And it is something that those who now embrace the fascism of Aliança Catalana because they "speak plainly" will one day understand.