Throughout his political career, Carles Puigdemont has lied many times. The first and biggest of all lies: having tried to convince his people that a Catalan Brexit was possible. Many believed this story and participated in good faith in the immense performance that was the process without the Junts leader ever acknowledging that it was all a formidable hoax to fool voters.
In recent days, CP has once again let slip one of its lies by assuring that it would return to Barcelona to participate in the investiture session of the socialist Salvador Illa. In this way, its gesture would have an institutional meaning and would not be a mere entering and leaving Catalonia to demonstrate that its challenge to the State is still alive. It did not keep its word. After giving the rally at the Arc de Triomf, an emblematic place in Barcelona, it slipped through the crowd with a straw hat, got into a car and drove away from there without the Mossos d’Esquadra being able (or wanting) to stop it.
“The return cannot be any provocation or prank. “I can’t take a photo in Figueras and run away,” Puigdemont said on April 9, 2024. Before the elections (elections in which the independence movement has clearly been defeated) the leader of Junts assured that he was not afraid of the possibility of being arrested. “The verb is not to fear, I do not fear an arrest, but I do not contemplate that it could happen,” he said then. Yet another lie. Last Thursday, when it was time to enter the Parliament to take part in the investiture session, the pro-independence leader decided to take to his heels, not in the direction of the headquarters of the Catalan legislature, but towards the border. The entire discourse of heroism, patriotism and bravery that he had maintained for months was collapsing like a house of cards.
It seems obvious that this Thursday Carles Puigdemont was already contemplating his more than possible arrest. The moment of truth had arrived, to behave like a true mass leader, like a social icon or, on the contrary: like a fugitive who chooses to continue fleeing from Justice. Unfortunately, he opted for the second of the exits, so that the ex-honorable man could “shit his pants”, as already happened when he negotiated with Putin the arrival of 10,000 Russian soldiers to consummate independence, as some of those investigated in the summary of the Russian plot of the process. Much has been written about whether it was planned that the separatist leader would surrender. after giving his rally in front of 3,000 people next to the Arc de Triomf. One hypothesis is that Puigdemont had accepted an honourable exit: to address his coreligionists for the last time and let two Mossos put handcuffs on him to take him to the barracks. This was not the case. If there was such a secret agreement between the top brass of the Autonomous Police and the pro-sovereignty leader, it was broken at the last moment after Puigdemont was gripped by fear and a nervous breakdown. And if this supposed pact never existed, the former president does not come out well either, since he also broke his word to his supporters. voters that he would go to the Plenary.
Everything about this man is pretense, trick, imposture. He has not told a single truth since he proclaimed that Spain steals from us (one of the biggest fallacies ever spread in the history of Catalonia). And the worst of all is that he continues to fool some and others in his fallacies. “My obligation is to go to the Parliament. If there is an investiture debate, I will be there.” He said in July of this year. Lie after lie, artifice after artifice, hoax after hoax. Last Thursday, when he was appointed by the Parliamentary Board to vote yes or no to Salvador Illa, the only thing left was his empty seat. A seat that was like conclusive proof that we are facing the greatest impostor in history. He also said that if he was not president, he would leave politics, and he has not kept his word either. “If it is not as president, it makes little sense for me to return to the opposition,” he proclaimed in April. And this is just looking at the newspaper archives of the last few months, without going back years. For Puigdemont, the great cheater rather than the great Houdini magician of escapism, facts do not mean the same as words.
