Eight years after the collapse of 2017, the Catalan independence movement doesn't have one elephant in the room, it has two: Oriol Junqueras and Carles Puigdemont. The continuity of the two main leaders of the Process completely conditions their respective political spaces and prevents the essential catharsis and profound renewal of the entire movement, without which it is impossible to climb out of the electoral, political, discursive, and cultural hole it is in.
It is an injustice, yes. Puigdemont and Junqueras have suffered harsh repression, one in the form of exile and the other imprisonment and disqualification. They have been denied the right to political participation, punished and dehumanized, and subjected to calculated revenge. Asking them to yield, just now when they are about to regain their political rights thanks to the amnesty law, is simply a way of finishing them off. But that argument, which is understandable from a human point of view, is not politically valid. It's worth remembering that Puigdemont and Junqueras are politicians, not bakers, insurance agents, or singers. Everything they do and fail to do must be judged based on its political consequences.
And judged politically, it's quite evident that these two leaders, who for years represented the hopes and dreams of victory better than anyone, are today the very image of defeat. It's impossible for someone who promised the heavens to shake voters with a partial transfer of the commuter train system in which, to make matters worse, the drivers have ended up having more power than the agreement between the parties, or with a tie-breaking immigration system with oil, lacking regulatory authority, and with the Mossos d'Esquadra acting as the National Police's acolytes at the border. Undoubtedly, we are in a different, absolutely prosaic political moment, but it's impossible for the salesman who sold you the virtues of a Porsche to now convince you of the merits of a Peugeot. Is it time for a Peugeot? Fine, but let someone else sell it to me, please.
Perhaps some strategist will be tempted to think that if Puigdemont and Junqueras aren't good at selling a Peugeot, what they should do is go back to selling the Porsche. That wouldn't work either. If the independence movement has learned anything, it's that, aside from very large majorities, breaking away from Spain—if it never happens—will require infinitely greater determination than in 2017, assuming the risks assumed by any country that truly wants its independence. It's hard to believe that the same leaders who were scared off by a simple private warning of military intervention would behave differently on a hypothetical new occasion. The credibility problem is therefore comprehensive: these two leaders are no longer good at selling either the Porsche or the Peugeot.
Puigdemont and Junqueras remain because their party members have so desired. Those of Junts, overwhelmingly. And those of Esquerra, almost split in half. In public, they pretend to be enthusiastic and convinced, but in private, the arguments in favor of both leaders' continuation are something else: from the human injustice cited above to strictly corporate justifications such as "if they fold, the party will fall apart" or "we have no replacement." Legitimate considerations, but they have nothing to do with what's best for the independence movement or even—tell me I'm naive—for the country. At this point, everyone inside and outside the movement knows that without new leadership, the independence movement won't have the opportunity to think and act clearly again. Perhaps that's not a sufficient condition, but it is necessary.
In the wake of polls boosting the far right in Catalonia, a famous quote by Antonio Gramsci has been widely cited in recent days to explain the phenomenon of the Catalan Alliance. The original quote from the Italian thinker and politician reads: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old dies and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, the most diverse morbid phenomena occur." In the case of the Catalan independence movement, the quote couldn't be more accurate. While the center of gravity of Catalan politics was the hopeful and credible project of a new country, there was no room for a Catalanist far right. We were a European exception. When that hope died, the monster of the Catalan Alliance was born. Puigdemont and Junqueras must step aside to give the new a chance to be born. I dare say it's a patriotic duty.
