- Politics: Jordi Pujol toasts the King and the Constitution at the Círculo Ecuestre de Barcelona
- Interview.Dolly Van Doll: "The worst thing that has happened to me is being a neighbor of the Pujol"
Thursday, March 12, 2020. They have just decreed the closing of schools and the suspension of the Sunday soccer day. The Fallas go down in history and the Easter processions are settled. The records of coronavirus are becoming alarming and staff are being asked to overturn reserved tables. But in a restaurant in Barcelona's Ensanche , an illustrious diner is expected to visit, of which there is no cancellation.
At about 2.30 p.m., an elderly couple arrives , accompanied by a burly young man and a middle-aged lady. The marriage is much older, both are shrunken and wearing austere clothing. From the beginning, few recognize them, except for the instructions of the owner of the premises: "Passi president". Then, everyone falls into the account: "They are Pujol and Ferrusola". Customers who are already eating whisper among themselves: "How old he is, what dark circles!" or "She has the same harpy face!". No disrespectful voice is raised, nor does anyone ask for a selfie . Not even a courtesy greeting. Then comes the son Oriol, who no longer sleeps in prison and joins lunch. Interestingly, the son also calls the father president. None of the five diners appears to be afraid of the coronavirus, despite the risky age of marriage. He will be 90 on June 9 and she will be 85 the same month.
The anecdote illustrates the modus vivendi of who was everything in Catalonia. There was a time, from the 2014 confession, that Jordi Pujol was vilified on the street. Not to mention his wife, to whom the sovereign people quickly conferred the role of evil in the film. Four days after publicly confessing his crimes, the Generalitat took away the office he had as a former president on Passeig de Gracia. The July 2014 statement was a cataclysm for many followers of the character. When you asked for a Pujol rum, you asked for "an honorable" and now you ask for "a chorizo" .
The people have these evils. In addition, that man who ruled Catalonia for 23 long years, had been left without an office. They had to leave the old goal of the Ronda General Miter building where he has lived all his life. But that community that used to laugh at him and tolerated Christmas baskets occupying an entire seven-story service staircase, now urges that his passage through the cubicle on the ground floor end as soon as possible. The neighbors are beginning to choke that illustrious tenant.
WITHOUT FRIENDS, WITH ASSISTANT
Pujol is rebuked on the street (not excessively either) and they do not want him in his community of owners. But he does not want to work in his house , despite the fact that it has two attached apartments (in total about 240 square meters), the children no longer live with him and he has plenty of space. The ex-honorable needs to leave. He has never been a homey man . However, some friend remains. The pharmacist Antoni Vila Casas goes to the quite and leaves him a small office in Calabria street. In the heart of Barcelona, behind the Industrial School. There Pujol begins to regain freedom and goes morning and afternoon in a Seat Altea, driven by that burly character in the restaurant, who makes him a driver, secretary, bodyguard and assistant. He greets the doorman, who is in the elevator and writes there, receives visits and schedules his agenda. Monday through Friday and even many weekends.
It is a mystery why he spends so many hours. The Center d'Estudis Jordi Pujol also closed and only the Serviol Association remains, where the former president produces his writings. Writings on his eternal obsession: "the construction of a country". Pujol has not been an intellectual either. Neither his polygloty nor his bibliophilia were as he boasted. Manuel Trallero , in his work Pujol: everything was a lie (1930-1962) , tells the anecdote that he boasted of having read El quadern gris by Josep Pla at the age of 20, when the work was first published in 1966, when he had turned 35.
Pujol's credibility is not on the rise, but time heals everything and now he circulates around Barcelona like another old man. It has even caught on with the fashions of syncobatism. Another thing is his family. For now, time has pardoned the old patriarch and continues to condemn the Mother Superior and her offspring. Marriage reaches a projected age with more than reasonable health. An old age that will soon restore the matriarch's honor. And perhaps later that of the immense brood. That brood for which the father immolated himself. That austere father, who in General Miter had the same pictures that he hung when his wedding, while his children owned valuable works of art and cars of the highest range.
That father who always looked the other way and got many to look the other way, simply because he ordered it. And he was still complaining! Pablo Planas and José Alejandro Vara in the book La familia Pujol Corporation (Ed. Stella Maris), highlight their phrase: "One of the things I have suffered from politics, what has hurt me the most is the systematic attack on the family . Being a son, family member or friend of mine has sometimes been a disadvantage and too often an inconvenience and a reason for denunciations and slander. " 90 years of lies. Now he is walking down the street like another old man and with the satisfaction that the separatist process has been attributed in recent times to his Catalonia 2000 plan. With what he deceived, he can consider himself lucky.
The judicial future of the Pujol family
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The 'Pujol case' faces its final stretch after eight years of investigation. The summary investigates the entire family as a criminal organization dedicated to collecting commissions in exchange for public contracts and laundering funds with investments in different parts of the world. The Police already quantifies the fortune amassed by the clan at 290 million, which makes this matter, if these figures are finally confirmed, one of the biggest scandals of democracy in Spain. However, it is not all bad news for the family. The Treasury has declared the patriarch's tax crimes for hiding money in Andorra prescribed, and the judge still cannot prove the illegal origin of the undeclared money. Jordi Pujol Soley denied, when the case began, that he had money outside of Spain and went so far as to ask the famous question "what the hell is that about UDEF?" to despise the police unit that was investigating him. During the summer of 2014, the publication of his Andorran accounts in EL MUNDO forced him to apologize and to regularize the money with the Treasury. Of course, he said that the money came from the inheritance of Grandfather Florenci and that, in no case, were commissions. The Police maintain, however, the opposite: that the origin of the money is political corruption and that he used his children and his wife to launder the money. The manuscripts with code names that they used to move their money in the Principality will go down in history. Marta Ferrusola was "the mother superior", the millions of pesetas were "missals" and "the chaplain" Jordi Pujol Ferrusola. Next week the first trial related to the family will be held, but in which the family will be as an accusing party against the former police leadership for introducing in the summary a 'pendrive' with a stolen copy of the computer of the first-born of the Catalan clan. To see the family on the bench of the accused, a process that seems inevitable, it will still take at least a year. The investigation has not yet been closed, several rogatory commissions remain to be answered, the most important one for the umpteenth time in Andorra, and Judge José de la Mata continues to carry out proceedings. Meanwhile, and as this newspaper revealed, the Pujols have asked to appear as victims in the 'Villarejo case' because they maintain that illegal entries were made into their homes to steal sensitive information from them. These operations are directly attributed to the Ministry of the Interior during the Rajoy government, which they also accuse of having coerced Andorran banks to filter their bank accounts. If these pathways prosper, they could dream of nullifying the cause for having been victims rather than guilty.
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