Jaume Asens, candidate for Comuns-Sumar in the elections to the European Parliament, has just declared that the Hard Rock macro project in the Tarragona counties will not be a red line for his party's support to the candidacy of Catalan Socialist (PSC) leader Salvador Illa for the presidency of the Generalitat. Since no one from the alternative left party of Ada Colau and Jéssica Albiach has come out to correct his statement, one can draw the conclusion that this is more than a personal opinion and that the Comuns have decided to take a pragmatic path. Well, well, well! They won't block Illa from reaching the presidency just because of something so insignificant! It's one thing to defeat the Pere Aragonès government's budget in which the project was not even present and thus trigger an election in Catalonia, and another very different thing to derail a Catalan government in which they aspire to have ministries and place their people.
Sometimes there are things in politics that are as real as they are inexplicable, and it's all too easy to see that, in the end, the words are blown away in the wind. That Groucho Marx has never had so much relevance to Catalan politics as at present and that it would not be such a bad idea to do a proper search to unmask all the identities behind which he appears to be hiding. The Jewish-American comedian's famous phrase that "these are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others" is a perfect way to justify the unjustifiable. It isn't enough to talk the talk, one must also walk the walk.
Sometimes, in politics, it's all too easy to see that, in the end, the words are blown away in the wind
How radical must have been U-turn made in this alternative left party, to make someone like Pablo Iglesias respond, when faced with Asens's statement along with others arguing that electoral programmes cannot be written in stone like the commandments of Moses, by recalling the recent past of the Comuns with regard to Catalan budgets: "You bring down the Catalan government because of Hard Rock, you have the worst electoral result in your history in Catalonia and now Hard Rock is no longer a red line and you are asking for a seat in Illa's government...". These are not words of sweet innocence, obviously, and less so after the falling-out between Sumar, the Comuns and Podemos. But that's doesn't mean that the former Podemos leader and Spanish deputy PM is any less right.
Not so long ago, during the Spanish general election last July, the morning host on radio station Onda Cero, Carlos Alsina, questioned Pedro Sánchez after he had said that he had not lied to Spaniards, but had changed his position. In his explanation, Sánchez asked rhetorically what it was to lie. And he himself answered that lying is saying something that you know is not true with the intention of deceiving. His changes of opinion are therefore not a lie, but a rectification. To sum it up: Catalan pro-independence people needn't worry, because he won't deceive them. Another thing is for him to rectify his position. It doesn't seem very reassuring, but in Sánchez's mouth it must have a lot of value, even if it's hard for some of us to see that.