Laura Borràs has snacked on Jordi Turull without chewing it. The negotiations between the two to reach an agreement and avoid a double candidacy in the JxCat congress have been, in reality, a submission of the second to the conditions of the first. The Chinese tale about dividing the command fifty percent is nothing more than a stomach protector for the institutional and militant positions of JxCat who have a hard time digesting the triumph of Torrismo without Torra. The president of the Parliament, as soon as the fix was closed, has already announced that the party will submit the government pacts with the ERC in the Generalitat and with the PSC in the Provincial Council to a vote of the militancy. In a party, whatever the agreements and statutes say, who – among other things – makes the announcements that provide headlines is in charge.
Turull has been sandwiched between Borràs herself and the organization secretary proposed by her, Badalona councilor David Torrents. This was the hardest pill to swallow in the negotiating process. The organization secretary is a key piece of any political organization. Turull swallowed it tasted like gall late on Monday, but he gobbled it down. Neither the support of a large majority of the group’s deputies, nor the support of the territorial structures of JxCat in the veguerías, nor that of the majority of the party’s mayors have been enough for Turull to see himself as muscular enough to stand up for truth in the negotiating process. She has not been afraid, he has. Or if you prefer, she didn’t mind breaking up the match, he did.
The president of the Parliament lives from the legend of being an unbeatable Pokémon in the melee since she won the primaries to be a candidate for the Generalitat in the 2021 elections without hardly ruffling her hair. At that moment, the myth was forged – true, it seems – that JxCat militants will follow her Joan of Arc wherever she wants to take them. Hence, no one, not even Turull, has dared to confront him on this occasion. Or that there has not even been a minimal reflection on the extent to which it is reasonable to place oneself in the hands of someone who is going to be tried in the TSJC for serious crimes –alleged, of course– that only from cynicism can they be attributed without blushing with shame to a supposed revenge of the sewers of the State. Passing off, depending on what issues, repression is, after all, a lack of respect for those who have suffered excessively. But nobody in public in JxCat has yet said the mouth is mine on the subject. There is fear of Borràs, his belt of Praetorians and his Twitter hordes. Turull defends, Borràs attacks. VAR was not needed to guess the result.
The party has avoided blood by building a pedestal for Borràs. The president gains height and is already almost a giant. JxCat will be forced to close ranks with its leader, whatever her judicial future may be, and any strategic move by the party will be impossible without her endorsement. The turullismo has given ground with the old argument – already used other times – that in one way or another the moderates will end up controlling the party, because they have more experience behind the scenes and more support among the cadres. For that there is also a phrase: more moral than the Alcoyano. Borràs has more energy, ambition and courage than all the turullismo added together and has much better internalized what the rules of discourse and political attitude are in this era of populism coated with democratic empowerment of the bases.
We must take for granted a plus of tension and deterioration – even more – in relations with ERC and an increase in bad humor on the Catalan political agenda. And a foreseeable devaluation of the political use value of JxCat, to the extent that agreements outside the pro-independence spectrum are going to be more difficult. But Borràs is not suicidal. Her main interest has been herself, as she demonstrated in the management of the Juvillà case in Parliament, where she openly lied saying that she would do (disobey) the opposite of what she had already done (comply with the sentence). So everything will depend on what is most convenient for you at all times. She always in the name and for the good of the militancy and of Catalonia. The latter also of course.
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