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Can there be anything more important for a health minister than combating corona?
Apparently already in Spain: Salvador Illa quit his post in the middle of the third wave of infections.
And not because of exhaustion in view of the more than 65,000 corona deaths, the sluggish mass vaccination and the high infection rates.
The 54-year-old socialist feels called to higher things by his party PSOE and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Instead of leading Spain out of the pandemic, he is now supposed to save Catalonia from the separatists.
Next Sunday, Salvador Illa will run as the top candidate for the socialists in the regional elections in Catalonia.
The inconspicuous man, who comes from a village in the north of Barcelona, is supposed to turn the conflict with the breakaway region.
Precisely because it seems so unobtrusive and level-headed.
And because everyone knows him anyway.
The Catalans are fighting for independence from Spain
Source: REUTERS
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As Minister of Health, he spoke into the cameras almost every day, justified lockdowns, reminded of the hygiene rules, and despite the catastrophic development tried not to slide into alarmism, but to maintain a sober overview.
An attitude very rare in the show-mad Spanish politics.
And for the strategists in the Madrid seat of government Moncloa, a chance: Catalans who have had enough of the shrill, costly independence adventure that has kept them in suspense for years should see the unexcited ex-health minister as a trustworthy peacemaker.
This is the calculation of Prime Minister Sánchez, who, however, did not expect the fears that an election triggers in times of highly infectious virus mutations.
And certainly not with the fact that his government deputy stabbed him in the back.
Initially, the news of Illa's candidacy actually caused a bang in the Catalan election campaign.
Previously the question was at best which of the cooperating, albeit deeply divided, separatist parties would be the strongest, the results of the polls shifted with Illa's appearance.
The socialists improved by several places, some forecasts even see them at the top, at a little over 20 percent.
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The fact that Salvador Illa made mistakes, especially in his first months as health minister, and clearly underestimated the corona risk, now no longer seems to play a role.
As a kind of quota catalan in Sánchez's cabinet, the silent party soldier had taken over the unpopular Ministry of Health, not realizing that just a few weeks later he would have to fight a pandemic of the century as the supreme general.
Opinions in Spain differ widely as to whether he could have done better.
But the conscientiousness with which Illa knelt into his task met with great sympathy.
He reminds the writer Javier Cercas of “social democrats of northern countries”: In politics there are enough “charismatic rock stars, what we need are the people who do the work silently and efficiently”.
Compare to Joe Biden
The Madrid media scientist Aurelio Medel even compared Illa's new task in Catalonia with the challenges of Joe Biden: After all, both Trumpism and the Catalan independence movement were characterized by the fact that they divided society, disregarded the law and consciously used lies.
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In a survey by the polling institute CIS in early February which prime ministers the Catalans would like, Salvador Illa came off best.
Catalonia had little luck with its last heads of government: Carles Puigdemont proclaimed the independent Republic of Catalonia in 2017, was deposed and fled abroad from the judiciary.
From the Belgian Waterloo he now leads his party JxCat.
His successor Quim Torra, for many a puppet of Puigdemont, was also dismissed because he insisted on advertising the independence movement at his official residence.
Therefore now the new elections.
Oriol Junqueras, head of the separatist Left Republicans and coalition partner of PxCat, has been behind bars since the failed declaration of independence.
Illa, who many trust that he can at least negotiate a course of reconciliation with the Left Republicans, speaks of a "lost decade" for the 7.5 million Catalans.
He doesn't just mean social strife, friends and families have fallen out over the question of independence.
The region has also suffered badly economically, with more than 5,000 companies moving away.
And now Corona.
27 percent of those under 30 are unemployed.
Illa wants to create 140,000 jobs in three years.
Elections with protective clothing
The fact that a former health minister of all people is expecting his voters to go to the polls in the middle of the pandemic makes Illa difficult to explain.
Buckets of disinfectants, protective clothing and tens of thousands of law enforcement officers are supposed to ensure that there is no infection.
But the prospect of standing in line with infected people puts many off.
The regional government has now declared that the 14,000 corona positives might do well to stay at home, but they have the right to vote.
The heads of the polling stations are also worried: one in three of their electoral workers chosen by lot has already applied to be exempted from the obligation.
If Illas socialists win, they will have to form a coalition in order to govern.
The logical partner is the left-wing alternative Catalunya en Comú-Podem, a sister party of Unidas Podemos, with which Prime Minister Sánchez governs in Madrid.
However, the left alternatives have their very own view of the Catalan drama.
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Podemos boss Pablo Iglesias, without a doubt one of the “rock stars” of the Madrid political scene, said a few days ago that there is no real political and democratic normality in Spain when the heads of the two Catalan government parties are out of the country, one in Belgium and the other in jail.
Outrage in Madrid
Remarkable words for a vice-premier whose job it should be to ensure “democratic normality”.
There was great outrage in Madrid, especially since Iglesias was referring to the scandal during Josep Borell's visit to the Kremlin, once the Spanish foreign minister and now the European Commission's external representative.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wiped away criticism of the detention of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny with the remark that the Spaniards also had political prisoners in their prisons.
A view shared by the Sánchez government's coalition partner?
The latest turmoil will be of little use to Illa, the separatists will be happy, as will the supporters of a party that is calculating opportunities for the first time in the once liberal Catalonia: the right-wing populist Vox is five percent in the polls.