Puigdemont in his trap: What is a right-wing man like you doing in a left-wing place like this?

Carles Puigdemont has fallen into his own trap. His personal need for an amnesty has ended up dragging his party and what remains of what was once conservative Catalanism into a critical situation. His plan was surely to swear in Pedro Sánchez to secure a quick amnesty , return to Spain, rebuild his forces to regain ground in Catalonia, and break with Sánchez when this process had matured and Junts was ready to compete in the elections. But it turns out none of this has happened .

What has occurred is a crucial change in Spanish politics and society, which is particularly intense in Catalonia. There, the independence-constitutionalism axis has given way to a highly polarized debate around housing, immigration, and insecurity . These are the three issues Catalans identify as the most important, well ahead of independence or self-government, according to data from the Sigma Dos survey conducted in September on the occasion of the Diada.

It was this poll that revealed a fact that subsequent surveys have confirmed: Junts had emerged with a rival on the pro-independence right . A product of the independence process called Silvia Orriols , but much more closely aligned with current issues. A Trumpian separatist movement that talks more about immigration and security than independence, and which daily denounces the former Convergència as a party sold out to the Spanish government.

Homegrown medicine in huge quantities. Puigdemont, a leader who has been away from Spain for eight years and who can hardly gauge these social and political changes, not only didn't see it coming, but the explosion of the Catalan Alliance has caught him in the worst possible company: a coalition comprised of all the country's far-left parties, from Podemos to Bildu.

The situation is maddening for Junts. Needing to toughen its anti-immigration rhetoric in Catalonia, it turns out that in Madrid it's a partner of the government that thought it was a very good idea to encourage the entry of half a million immigrants a year without any policy to manage their social impact. Called on to provide housing alternatives in Barcelona, ​​it is the ally of those who designed the housing policies that have been implemented, especially in Catalonia, with disastrous results .

It's a trap that's hard to escape: hardening your rhetoric to compete on the right while supporting a government that's increasingly radicalized to the left. And even if Puigdemont were to achieve some of the things he's been demanding from Sánchez for the past two years, it wouldn't change anything. Catalans in Europe, placing a Mossos d'Esquadra alongside a police officer at every Catalan port and airport, or the amnesty itself are issues of very limited impact on the current political debate.

Junts needs to do something, or appear to be doing something. It has come to the conclusion that continuing like this means disappearing . Today we will find out what. Assembly consultations are what they are: a populist instrument to endorse what the leader orders, whether it's swearing in a president or approving a move to Galapagar. Puigdemont himself is who he is thanks to an assembly vote: the one held by the CUP at Christmas 2015, in which they first tied and then decided to oust Artur Mas to elect an unknown mayor from Girona named Carles as president . Perhaps, after all, everything ends where it began.