Salvador Illa wants to be like Pere Aragonès (in a few years)

BarcelonaNo one would say that Salvador Illa was Pere Aragonès's leader of the opposition for three years. No one would say that judging by the praise that the President of the Generalitat showered on his predecessor this Friday to thank him for handing over the documentary fund of his three-year term to the National Archive of Catalonia. Illa has underlined the republican's "institutional sense" –"He always put the institution before everything else," he assured– and has once again valued the "exemplary" handover that Aragonès made him when he left the Palau de la Generalitat. A handover that Illa takes as a "reference" for when it's his turn. "I hope there are still a few years left," he admitted with a half-smile at the event he presided over this morning at the National Archive.

Now that Aragonès is ex-president, Illa can afford to highlight his qualities. And also some of his projects to which he has given continuity, such as the National Pact for Language or the Statute of Rural Municipalities, the president remarked. He can do it now, too, as ERC has handed him the governability and stability of the legislature: last week the republicans, along with the commons, approved the first budgets of the legislature for him. "The documentation I received was exhaustive, detailed, and filtered, not by weight [...] Well prepared and worked on," Illa remarked, before recalling that the handover conversation with Aragonès lasted "several hours".

An "inclusive" Generalitat"

"I saw in President Aragonès a non-patrimonial concept of the country and the institution," Illa defended. Words that connected with what Pere Aragonès had previously defended: "May the Generalitat continue to be an inclusive institution, to preserve the idea of Catalonia as one people." This thesis makes more sense than ever, he said, at a time when democracy is "questioned" in various parts of the planet. But also because it serves to defend what has defined Catalonia as a nation throughout history: "A group of people who share a collective project around a culture and a language" and who have "demonstrated the will for self-government and freedom" over the centuries.

It is when talking about what the Catalan nation represents that Illa allowed himself to disagree with Aragonès: "The concept of country and nation is a collective project with different visions, that's why there is democracy, that's why we have to contrast where the country should go. But there is a common basis that makes us feel part of this nation and the Catalan people." He did not go into further detail. This morning it was time to focus on Aragonès's virtues.