It is no coincidence that, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the independence referendum of October 1st, 2017, three former Spanish prime ministers have come out in unison preaching about Catalonia around the Spanish state; and that two of them, José María Aznar and Felipe González, have done so in their rudest and most insulting tone, far short of a basic level of respect and politeness. Out of control and taking advantage of their status as mere statues and bulls in the china shop. From that enormous 2017 defeat, which left Spain on the verge of ridicule due to its inability to find the ballot boxes that were placed by the thousands in all the polling stations around Catalonia, the deep state has not recovered. That is why, on these dates, they wheel the old glories out of the closet, unrecognizable and disoriented, to insult and defame, left, right and centre.
Indeed, there is no other description for Aznar's speech in Seville, accompanying his replacement in the Popular Party, Pablo Casado. Accustomed to taking up all the space he wants with his inflamed discourse - while still unable to shake off the 1996 Majestic pact with Jordi Pujol, when he made the largest concession ever by a Spanish prime minister to prevent the government palace from escaping him! - he left these sentences for the headlines of the day: "Spain is one nation, not seven, not four, not twenty-one. It is not a pluri-national state, not multi-level, nor any other damned thing of the sort." Of course, Casado found it difficult to better that insult, as whatever he could say would inevitably just be an annotation at the end of the journalistic report. The opening acts, for one reason or another, have been robbing the party leader of protagonism at the PP convention. Just look at the former president of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, his companion the previous day, who was praised and feted by the conservative party leader, and today is making large headlines in the French press for his new corruption conviction.
If Aznar spoke in Seville, Felipe González did so in Galicia at the Forum Toja, a discussion forum for the "Atlantic axis", where it should not be easy to talk about Catalonia. But González achieved this by comparing Franco with the Catalans and Basques under the heading of "inquisitors" in a monologue very reminiscent of his prime ministerial days. He also had time to bring in the political prisoners and exiles, amid ironic statements about liberty and those who call for more liberty. It must be because he, no matter what he does, is guaranteed liberty, since the blanket of Spain's post-Franco transition, which covers up almost everything, has already taken care of it. Mariano Rajoy, his discussion partner, had a similar experience to Casado and also failed to make the headlines.
The leading men of a united Spain coming out fighting to overshadow the 1st October referendum while king Felipe VI, without any repercussions, visited the 'Automobile', the Barcelona motor show, amid institutional ostracism while he pretended everything was normal. Territorial unity maintained by force implies such things. It was not, however, the bitterest flavour of the day for the Spanish monarch, whose reading for the coming weeks is the book Mon roi dechu, written by historian Laurence Debray in cooperation with Juan Carlos I, and which puts in evidence the rupture between father and son and the opinions of the fugitive king about his successor. That'll keep him on the run.