He is the man of all Spain. He was born in Buenos Aires, but he speaks Catalan "even better than Spanish", Galician fluently and defends himself in Basque . At 76, Juan Carlos Pallarols, the goldsmith who created the symbolic baton of the presidential in Argentina for more than 40 years, is again in a storm: will his cane be used in the transfer of command of 10 December or will live again the controversy and disappointment of four years ago?
Everything is possible. Argentine politics became an earthquake in the last minutes of last Sunday, when a primary election, which in theory does not define anything, devastated almost everything. Alberto Fernández, the candidate of Peronism, obtained 47% of the votes against 32% of the current president, Mauricio Macri. The "real" elections are October 27, a very distant date after a week in which the peso was devalued by 30% and the stock market and Argentine bonds sank.
Macri says he will fight to reduce the difference and reach a ballot on November 24. Fernandez says that who rules is Macri and that he is just a candidate. But Pallarols works since December in a cane that these days will come to Fernandez.
"Alberto (Fernández) asked me to go to his office, which is very close to my studio, so that we can see together how the cane is," Pallarols tells Crónica. The goldsmith has still choked on what happened in December 2015, when the presidential staff that Macri received was not his. «People do not have the slightest idea of the strength of this symbol. Poor who does not accept it, so it goes ... ».
The history of Pallarols is that of one of the most Spanish Argentines that may exist. He has it in his fantastic goldsmith's workshop in San Telmo, the colonial neighborhood of Buenos Aires. «My father, born in Barcelona, Catalan of pure strain, arrived as a baby in Argentina. Spain never set foot again. Five days before my parents got married, the Spanish Civil War begins. They waited for a better time to return ... and never returned.
Although in his Argentine speech the distant cadence of the Spanish is intuited, the one of Pallarols goes much further. «I speak Catalan better than Spanish, because I grew up in a house where they spoke Catalan all day. My mother, of Galician origin, must have learned Catalan. But I also speak Galician. And a little Basque, because I had two Basque grandmothers by my dad's mother's side. Irazustabarrena and Urretavizcaya. When King Juan Carlos came to my workshop we talked for a while in Galician and Catalan. And then the prince made a very nice buckle that said FBG, Felipe de Borbón and Grecia ... ».
LOVE THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
Box of surprises, his love for Spain does not prevent Pallarols from declaring himself a Catalan independence worker. «I deeply love the entire Iberian Peninsula. And I believe in independence , but not the moment today. The world has to unite, not fight anymore. September 11, 1714 is far away ... ».
Pallarols' plan is for each of the six presidential candidates on October 27 to strike a blow to help chisel the symbolic wand of command: "All who want to be part." The goldsmith, who already in 1973 made the baton for the assumption of Juan Domingo Perón, began working on this version of the symbolic object since December 2018.
Pallarols believes that the Casa Rosada must respect the tradition begun in the 70s, but he is not sure that it will be so. Darío Lucas, national director of ceremonial, says that everything is still open: «There is nothing resolved, although it is true that there is a proposal from Pallarols, as always. But nothing was decided yet.
Pallarols distrusts. And then he rescues an amazing story, that of the afternoon when the president's mother , lady of Argentine high society, phoned him .
«One day Alicia Blanco Villegas calls me, a lady I respect and who for a time was a client. He called me and said: "Can I visit him, can I ask him a question?" He came to the workshop with the excuse, it seemed to me an excuse, that he wanted a tulip. I showed him the cane that his son should have used, I had it kept in a safe ». The dialogue, according to Pallarols, continued as follows:
-Why didn't you give Mauricio's cane?
-But what are you asking me ...
-Why didn't you give it to him?
-I delivered it on December 5, 2015, five days before the assumption. And I left it at the headquarters of the Buenos Aires Government, on Uspallata Street, Jorge Vidaurreta, ceremonial director, and Susana Martinengo, who was one of your son's secretaries.
-And why didn't he use it?
-I don't know, they'll know why, but they never told me.
-Would you give Mauricio's cane?
-Clear.
-And would you give it to me now?
-Do not...
Pallarols says today that that dispute over the cane, in the midst of an even greater dispute, Cristina Kirchner's refusal to hand over command at a ceremony at the Casa Rosada, had serious consequences for him: a pancreatitis in January 2016 and an operation of vesicle.
«I waited until May 25 of that year, because from the Casa Rosada they told me that the president had both canes, and that maybe he used it on that country date. He did not, and then I called Anita, Mauricio's secretary. I told him that if he wasn't going to use it, I owed myself to the people who had worked on the subject. The next day they sent it to me. When Alicia came I showed it to her ».
«Shortly after the visit of the president's mother, Valentín Díaz Gilligan called me , who was then Assistant Secretary General of the Presidency. "The president wants the cane," he told me. I took him at six in the afternoon, I thought Mauricio was going to attend me, but he was very busy. We had coffee and I left it to Gilligan and Darío Lucas ».
DECEPTIONED WITH MACRI
Pallarols is disappointed with the president and not just because of the cane. «I don't think Macri has done such a bad management, but I think he has behaved in the ass with people. When you are shy, you go through a bad person, even if you are not. There are new roads and highways, gigantic works, but if you do not accompany them with a kiss, a hug, a nice phrase ... Look what happened in Villa 31, where it lost overwhelmingly despite everything that was improved there: people He doesn't want money, people want a kiss! Macri's style is not that of simple people ... » .
To shape a cane like the presidential one requires about five million strokes, and that figure includes about 500,000 that gives people of all kinds, mostly anonymous citizens. Pallarols does not want to repeat his particular nightmare of 2015, but the decisions taken are not always rational. He gives as an example a call that he claims to have received from an assistant of Juliana Awada, the first lady.
"He told me that Juliana wanted to know if I had given Cristina Kirchner the cane to make a macumba." Was it because of that suspicion of a curse that Macri chose to assume with another cane? Four years later, superstitions follow the order of the day. Alberto Fernández wants to see the cane already, although he has some restlessness.
«His secretary called to tell me that Alberto wants to hit the bat already. But I wonder if doing it so early cannot give bad luck.
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