New event in honor of Jordi Pujol. Senior executives of the old CiU paid tribute this Friday to the former president of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol, whom they described as “the father of the modern Catalan nation”. Remembering these moments when Pujol harangued his people, the former president spoke to assure that Catalonia “will not be independent” neither now nor in 15 years.
The former president’s confessions about his fortune hidden in Andorra for four decades (which will be judged in a year) and the Convergència corruption cases helped end the nationalist coalition founded by Pujol. For 20 years, CiU was an election-winning machine in Catalonia and a pivotal party in the stability of the PSOE and PP governments.
Times have changed, but not that much. During this Friday’s event, many leaders of the defunct CiU, such as Artur Mas, Núria de Gispert, Xavier Trias and Felip Puig, but also some prominent members of Junts, such as the deputy secretary general, David Saldoni, the former Minister of Economy Jaume Giró or the spokesperson for Junts in the Senate, Eduard Pujol, in addition to the former Secretary General Jordi Sanchez.
The commemoration took place a few days after the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), on November 17, 1974 in Montserrat (Barcelona). Under the name “Il y a du pays”, it is organized by the Friends Association of Enric Prat de la Riba.
At the end of the tribute ceremony, Pujol gave a speech that lasted more than half an hour and in which he declared that “it would have been worth maintaining Convergència.”
The party’s path to survival, Pujol emphasized, was to be “able to overcome a trauma”, for which he felt “responsible”, and for the rest of the party to “move forward”: “It could be saved”. , he indicated.
“It didn’t go well like that, but there’s still time, y’all.” You must continue, as much as possible, to maintain everything we have done and this policy,” said the former president.
According to Pujol, at the age of 19, he had already told his friend Pere Figuera, who was very pro-independence, that this would not be possible: “We can hardly say that now. We can now say something more, because we have seen in recent years that this question of independence is very difficult.”
