Bezos and Puigdemont’s Journey

Among the thousands of unpleasant consequences of the judicial process today after the pardons, new problems are forthcoming from the hand of the increasingly evident mediocre and festering Spanish justice system.

I am disappointed that at the height of privatization, there is now a space race between private billionaires. They spend what is so badly needed here on Earth on rockets so they can have fun with weightlessness and enjoy champagne and oysters with friends, while they look down without seeing us from the hatch. Spending some 10 minutes in space just for the pleasure of it, without journeying to the Moon or Mars, Jeff Bezos then fell neatly into a capsule lowered by a parachute. He emerged laughing, and boasted about doing it again. He had prepared well. He has the means to do this without risking his homes, his yachts or his lifestyle. He is anything but a braggart, even if I am ideologically opposed to what he has done.

As a Catalan, it is impossible to avoid the comparison with another trip into the atmosphere that Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont made in haste during the last decade with no advance preparationg and without explaining how we would live after the trial of millions of people they wanted to share sausage and wine with during the journey to Ithaca, and ignoring the other millions of people left behind. The collapse of this balloon was pathetic; the president of Catalonia fled Spain without warning that he was not going to show up for those who had followed him. The rise and fall of the judicial process has coincided with an impoverished Catalonia, overwhelmed by a Madrid that destroys everything it touches, from goods to the law.

Among the thousands of unpleasant consequences of that irresponsible and illegal trip by Mas and Puigdemont, even today after the pardons, new problems are emerging from a mediocre and festering Spanish justice system, problems that are increasingly evident. It is a pit from which either the European Union and its tempered justice will pull us out of, or it may last for several more decades. The accounts of the Gran Capitán made by the Court of Auditors are abusive and constitutionally questionable. The only similar testimony in its favor are from those who assure that the Catalonian government neither spent nor should return a penny of its anti-Spanish foreign propaganda.

Who will return whatever money was embezzled in the form of services to the people? The all too familiar moments during which the judicial process failed to support the Spanish government are behind us. Given the current state of deflation, without credit to pay back the bonds linked to the alleged embezzlement (no thanks to the banks which spent considerable money to move their headquarters), the legally fearful Catalonian government does not want to spend any more money and seeks to organize a massive fundraising effort. This threatens to turn into serious amounts as time continues to pass from those days when things were possible and free, despite the fact matters have settled, and the future powers are well financed albeit challenged by the forces of independence and the decisive left-leaning wing of the Catalonian Popular Unity Candidacy party.