The former president has been disappearing from the Catalan political scene and becoming a luxuriously forgotten figure. Sometimes he reappears, but it's more a matter of form than a profound reality. Like Lladró ceramics or retired public officials, he's there and only someone remembers him from time to time, highlighting that some things are conditional on him still being in Waterloo. Even if he does speak out, he means little and has become a dead weight in the country's politics. His rapid move from the crest of a wave to the most humiliating of oblivion shows us that tempus fled and that people's capacity for amnesia is inversely proportional to their willingness to praise mythologized leaders and swear eternal love to them. It is obvious that until the amnesty that some judges resist is applied, he will remain in the way, like a stone in the road that forces walkers to go around in circles, but which is now almost history. Together, however, he remains politically trapped. Although some Puigdemontist leaders appear, the party needs and strives to return to the realpolitik, redo the itinerary of recent years and join CiU, as interest groups demand, and return to worrying about the real world as a conservative alternative linked to old Catalanism, even if the language is sovereignistBut it's necessary, above all, to make this possible, for Puigdemont to be removed from the equation and thus be able to renew faces and policies. Paradoxically, it's the judges who are so bellicose toward the trial who keep them stuck in their 2017 positions.
The PSC, but also the possibility of recovering a more conventional political dynamic, require that Junts return to form the opposition or be a possible realistic and reliable partner for the country's issues, that it abandons once and for all the drift insurrectionary which began fifteen years ago. The results of this gamble could not be more disastrous; it must put an end to an adventurism that has already tired even its most dedicated supporters. Salvador Illa's government has normalized Catalan politics, eschewing optical illusions but also resentments, making the management and progress of Catalonia its main political objective, calming the Catalan identity controversy and avoiding confrontational dynamics. Its project and attitude have won over Catalan society and have been embraced by many people who are not precisely located in the socialist or leftist camps. However, it needs an equally normalized opposition that acts as such, one that does not hark back to a recent past that has little to show for it. The few yellow ribbons that remain on the streets have withered, deteriorated, and soiled, and almost no one maintains the long-held slogan "We will do it again." No one believes in a new edition of a very expensive adventure in the economic sphere and in terms of political and social cohesion, not even among the separatists. The current government doesn't reproach its protagonists; it looks ahead and assumes a reconciliation that hasn't been verbalized, but that has occurred. de factoPardons and amnesty have helped.
The amnesty law passed a year ago in the Congress of Deputies was passed for this very reason, despite the political cost in terms of tension in Spain. However, it is paradoxical that it is the judiciary that is working against overcoming the tense and stalled political situation that had developed. They say justice is blind, but is it really that necessary? It is a measure to overcome a conflict, not to rule on whether the beneficiaries were ethically and morally worthy or not. Parliaments, when passing laws, are making policy, and it is not the judges who should rule on the intention and purpose behind them. Amnesty is always a measure of grace granted by those who can do so. What is being done now is to maintain the image of Puigdemont in Belgium as a determining factor in Catalan and Spanish politics, even though its role is increasingly more marginal than real; it is unnecessarily delaying a normalization that is essential for all. Carles Puigdemont, I'm sorry, no longer has a central role in politics, whatever people say, beyond a devalued symbolism. About his exile No leadership or political project will emerge for the future. He is the first to know this, but his legal impasse paralyzes a definitive exit from the pro-independence screen he represents. He gains nothing, nor does a party trapped in a strategy based on an illusory past. Surely, the former president himself is the one most interested in getting out of the way, returning, and enjoying a long return to political anonymity and, who knows, maybe even indifference. Catalan politics needs to overcome this recent past of epic proclamations that lead nowhere. It seems the judiciary doesn't want this.
