It has taken a fifteen year wait to see José María Aznar once again playing a starring role in a Partido Popular meeting in Barcelona. The period of time for which Mariano Rajoy was at the head of Spain's party of the right, when the enmity between the two led Aznar to take refuge in his FAES think-tank and to try to assault the PP from there. Rajoy kept Aznar in check but now the tables have turned, and, for Pablo Casado, it is Rajoy who is dispensable. The passing of the years has not changed either Aznar's discourse or the ghosts he seeks to raise, which are still the same: the unholy Basque trinity of ETA terrorists, kale borroka street violence, and Batasuna radical nationalists... but now with the right's new prêt-à-porter items added: Catalan 'coup plotters', seditious leaders, secessionists... The 2003 menu adapted to 2019. Everything as the script demands.
Aznar feels he is lord and master both of the PP and of its, shall we say, spin-offs: Ciudadanos and Vox. In addition, in the case of Barcelona, the party's candidate, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, has always been one of his protégés. The aristocrat Álvarez de Toledo is a convinced Aznarist and as such represents a sector that can scarcely be labelled as conservative, but rather, of the extreme right. The passage of time can be noted, above all, in one aspect: that the PP is a much less significant party than it was in Catalonia years ago, and its events draw a crowd that is just as enthusiastic but smaller.
The first official day of the election campaign in Catalonia was a continuation of the pre-campaign. The Spanish right against Pedro Sánchez, with the Socialist leader amplifying the discourse of fear of a right-wing Casado-Rivera-Abascal government. All too predictable. Strangely enough, the efforts of the Spanish parties to centre the campaign on attacking Catalan independence can be countered. Their accusations are so exaggerated and inaccurate that the field of play is left wide open. The key, in any case, for the pro-independence parties will be in the mobilization of the 50% of Catalan society which trusts them but which, in Spanish elections, embarrasses them up by not going to the polls or voting for other parties.
This is the main task of the pro-independence parties: to convince their people that the Spanish general election on 28th April is as important as the last Catalan election on 21st December, 2017.