When a bank's life is at stake

A fascinating marketing duel in the Spanish financial sector. BBVA launched this well-intentioned ad that said, "It doesn't matter where we come from, whether Madrid or Bilbao, the important thing about a bank is that it catches mice," starring two sensible customers who could have ended up meeting for dinner. It was a way of turning the punch of a takeover bid into a song from La Marató and explaining it in a Catalan way, that is, suggesting dialogue and appealing to the concrete meaning of the things attributed to us. An interesting way of bringing an operation of economic and political power down to the street level, stripped of its ugly sides, and inviting us to imagine the fantastic advantages of a European-sized bank as a service to society, even if the fine print entails the collateral damage of the disappearance of a Catalan bank.

Obviously, Banc Sabadell is on a roll, and it's been doing so strongly, much more so than usual in the sector. In its view of grief, this friendly takeover bid is a dragon that must be slain. And if BBVA makes its customers speak, Sabadell gives the floor to all of Catalan society, and involves it in a kind of existential cause: guys, a monster is stalking us; what should we do with the takeover bid, should we slay it as if it were a dragon? They remind the experts that the final decision will be put before Pedro Sánchez, who has no interest in stirring the waters of a normalized Spanish-speaking Catalonia. And so, Banco Sabadell itself, which moved its headquarters out of Catalonia due to the Process, has returned and embraced the image of Sant Jordi, as in the poem by José María de Sagarra: "With her, he has more blood in his veins to defeat all the dragons in the world."