I thought I would never see anything like this again. And yet, here it is. In many ways, the ayusism is almost indistinguishable from pujolism. Impunity, impudence, family businesses with public money, tax fraud, the clientelist network, submissive justice, the media which makes waves and citizens convinced that this is the natural state of things: the here it is again.
There are of course differences. Jordi Pujol was and still is a cultured man who spent time in Franco’s prisons and accumulated extensive political experience. Isabel Díaz Ayuso displays tremendous ignorance, she had her phalangist moment and was running a dog’s social media. Pujol was the founder and leader of a Catalan nationalist party. Díaz Ayuso leads the most nationalist sector of the Spanish Popular Party. Madrid is not Barcelona either: it concentrates the major institutions of the State, which allows the one who governs in Madrid (in the sense in which the Spanish capital is sometimes given in Catalonia: concept of abstract power which overlaps to the city) to extend its influence well beyond the autonomous borders.
