No one was counting on the eruption of the volcano to bring us back to Puigdemont smeared among the lava. At least not the judge Llarena that last Sunday he had lunch happily and relaxed with a member of the CGPJ, another friend from the judicial field and their respective wives at the Asia Gallery of the Palace. The Euroorder against the fugitive was still alive, but nothing brought it to the fore of their concerns.
Neither could the Minister of Justice imagine it, Pilar Llop, when on Thursday he sat in the Royal Box of Honor accompanying a very elegant and highly applauded Queen Sofia, together with the president of the Senate, Ander Gil, the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, and the president of the Theater, Gregorio Marañón. It was in the second act of ‘La Cenerentola’ when disturbing messages began to enter his cell phone, which capricious and unexpected script changes launched by the deified Rossini from the cloud he occupied on stage.
Only Puigdemont himself could foresee his arrest. It was as simple as traveling to an EU country by air, knowing that the computerized passenger control system would automatically jump with the mere introduction of your ID. His trip to Sardinia was not also a discreet private visit, but a publicized political displacement aimed at promoting Mediterranean pan-Catalanism at a folk festival.
The spokesman for the trompe l’oeil republic of Waterloo, this Alay, who is so topical due to his relations with the Russian espionage plots, did not even refuse to put a solemn and emphatic tweet, imitating the “Ja soc here” of Tarradellas, in the historic moment when Puigdemont set foot on Sardinian soil. It was a “stop me!” belt out. And, naturally, their pleas were heard.
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Puigdemont sought above all to recover the spotlights of prominence and return to the center of the Catalan political board. He had to make up for the battered situation in which he had remained after the failure of his attempt to sabotage the Dialogue Table between the Government and the Generalitat.
Neither his convicted and pardoned lieutenants participated in the meeting, refusing Pere Aragonés to go through that hoop, not even the subsequent Junts boycott had any significance. Sánchez managed to make the Table survive only with Esquerra without haste or deadlines.
The more the demobilization of Catalan society is accentuated in the face of the demand for the unilateralism of the ‘Procès’, as it could be verified in the Diada, the more inexorable will be the fate of Puigdemont to fall into the limbo of irrelevance.
He says that Spain has once again “made a fool of itself” by requesting the execution of the Euro-order in Italy, but the grotesque shadow of the wandering fate of that last pretender to the legitimacy of the Stuarts – the aging handsome Bonnie Prince Charlie – hangs over him. with which I compared it in my article ‘Bonnie Carles’, underlining its obvious reminiscences with reactionary Carlism.
Since, after ERC’s sorpasso, it is not within his reach to be the groom again at the wedding of the Catalan institutions, Puigdemont has tried to achieve the status of dead at burial or rather of inmate in prison.
In what prison? In whatever. Of course, with all the guarantees that his imprisonment would be as comfortable and ephemeral as has been the case.
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Just listen to the sinister Boye -to such a client such a lawyer- to realize that they had everything planned. Although the Euroorder remains in force, although the Strasbourg Parliament has granted the request that would allow its delivery to Spain, although its immunity as MEP has been suspended, Puigdemont had a very explicit legal safety net.
The very resolution of the European Court suspending that immunity, contemplated restoring it provisionally, by way of precautionary measures, if it is a matter of executing the euro order, as long as it does not issue a judgment on the merits of the matter in the double front of the appeal against the request and the Preliminary question raised by Llarena in front of the Belgian Justice.
It all seems like gibberish and actually it is. Especially when it turns out that the European judicial area is a chimera because each judge and each court decides, at their discretion, as we saw in the case of Schlesweig-Holstein when the recently fled was arrested in Germany and immediately released without being a MEP yet.
Puigdemont therefore did not stop running the risk that, amid the jurisdictional chaos, Italy would end up handing him over to Spain. If that had happened or could still happen, Llarena would dictate his admission to prison immediately.
Actually, that was Puigdemont’s favorite setting, since would have carried his victimhood to the peak. From “president in exile” he would become “honorable political prisoner”. With the expectation of a media judgment from which to try to manipulate public opinion; and with the final assurance that the more than probable conviction would be followed by a pardon by analogy to that of his subordinates on October 17.
The apathy with which the Italian Justice, has left the operation halfway. Puigdemont has come out winning by regaining prominence, monopolizing the debate and removing the embers of ‘Procés’, but only for a weekend. The submission of Aragonés has once again been evident with his hasty trip from solidarity and homage. Not to visit a detainee in the dungeon, but to go on a festive protest walk with him. But, in the meantime, only four cats have been thrown into the streets again in Catalonia, even when Puigdemont was considered a prisoner.
As much as he calls the protest again on Friday, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of 1-O, Puigdemont will not be able to relight the bonfire of one-sidedness. What you can do is block understanding between Sánchez and Aragonés just during the critical weeks for the processing of Budgets. You have lacked a few hours of precautionary prison or at least a few days of prohibition to leave Sardinia to make Sánchez a political hostage to his arrest.
His imminent return to the cotolengo of Waterloo With no more baggage than some photos of the imposition of victory in a not yet disputed legal battle, he will ultimately leave everything as it is. Or maybe a little worse. If winning Esquerra’s vote was already going to cost the PSOE “sweat” – according to Rufián’s cynical warning – the price is now going to rise until he is dehydrated. But Sánchez is already used to paying impossible costs with fictitious currencies.
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We are not talking about just any Budgets but about those that should serve to strengthen the shaky recovery, to put European funds back on track and give credibility to our economy after the puncture of the second quarter reflected in the accounting of the National Institute of Statistics.
It is very disturbing that these state accounts, essential at a time when inflationary tensions force the European Central Bank to rethink the current free bar in the purchase of public debt, hang on the latest pirouette of a fanatic in permanent boiling like Puigdemont.
The resolution of the Italian Justice, limiting itself to summoning him to appear on October 4 for a hearing exempt from any suspense, has the disadvantage that reaffirms the freedom of movement of Puigdemont throughout Europe, as long as the withdrawal of his immunity is not final. But it has the advantage of releasing Pedro Sánchez, also temporarily, from the political bars that suddenly seemed to separate him from the budgetary arithmetic in which Esquerra is essential.
In addition, everything coincides with the critical moment for the negotiation of the two key reforms that the European Union: the efficiency of the labor market and the sustainability of pensions. In both cases, Brussels and the CEOE ask for measures in one direction and Podemos and the unions in the opposite direction.
It is a pity that neither the PP, nor even Citizens, have the political creativity necessary to unbalance that scale or at least snatch the key to the situation from Esquerra. But for that, it would be necessary to extinguish volcanoes that have been erupting for too long. We have not even reached the halfway point of the legislature and it is already sadly clear that the lava of dissent will continue to flow from the left and the right until their slimy tongues reach the electoral sea. What have we done to make our leaders waste our time like this?
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Reference-www.elespanol.com