The ex-advisor of Chávez who got rid of Mas and who also didn't want Puigdemont

BarcelonaJosep Manel Busqueta (Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, 1972) was one of the CUP deputies who most opposed the investiture of Artur Mas in 2015, and the CUP's refusal to invest him led him to leave Parliament in compliance with the agreement with Junts pel Sí for the investiture. The other resigning deputy was Julià de Jòdar, who leaned towards voting in favor of Mas. The two departures sought to balance the different sectors of the CUP, amidst great internal tension.

Busqueta refuses to say that he brought Mas down. "I would like to think so, but it was more people," says the former deputy, who after a few months as an advisor in Parliament returned to being a baker at the Bellpuig bakery, in Urgell, which he still runs. "All my institutional experiences have been ephemeral," he adds, laughing, recalling that as an economist he also advised Hugo Chávez for just one year, from 2004 to 2005. "A European wasn't going to tell them what to do," he concludes.

He also holds no grudges for his brief stint in the Catalan chamber: "It wasn't my life project to be a deputy or a professional politician; resigning didn't come at any personal cost." The investiture debate did take its toll. "When I left Parliament, I stopped being a member of the CUP, but I didn't make it public so as not to give fodder. Fighting to defend such obvious things as that the president of the cutbacks couldn't be invested wore me down," says the party's former economic guru.

In fact, he wouldn't have even invested Carles Puigdemont. "With a strong CUP, a convergent president wouldn't have been accepted, and we would have opted for Raül Romeva, who was the lead candidate and was an option closer to republican Catalonia, or gone to elections," he makes clear. Be that as it may, if he didn't shake Mas's hand (he hasn't spoken to him since either), he did with Puigdemont. A few days before the handshake, he summoned them as president of the AMI to dissuade them, unsuccessfully, from voting against Mas. "You little thought on Wednesday that on Sunday you would be the president," Busqueta told him. Puigdemont, "overwhelmed," shook his hand but did not reply.