Jordi Pujol
Jordi Pujol i Soley (Barcelona, June 9, 1930) is a former Spanish politician of Catalan nationalist ideology.
He is considered one of the main leaders of Catalan nationalism in the last third of the XX century, as well as one of the main politicians of Catalonia in the last decades. He was the founder and first leader of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) party —later integrated into the Convergència i Unió (CiU) federation—, a formation that managed to obtain a hegemonic position in Catalonia after the end of the Franco dictatorship. In addition, he was president of the Generalitat of Catalonia between 1980 and 2003, a position that led him to be one of the most prominent politicians at the national level.
He married Marta Ferrusola in 1956, with whom he has had seven children.
After leaving the Generalitat of Catalonia and the CiU leadership, Pujol withdrew from the front line of politics. However, in recent years he has been affected by the so-called Pujol Case. Both his father and his children -mainly Oriol, Jordi and Oleguer- are linked to different cases of corruption and to the ownership of large checking accounts in different tax havens, although more notably in banks in Andorra. This scandal has led to a serious discredit of his figure among public opinion, as well as the initiation of legal proceedings to derive responsibilities.
Pujol, who practiced the cult of personality, enjoyed significant electoral support in Catalonia and came to maintain an indisputable political leadership in the region during the last two decades of the century XX. Various authors have come to call the political and social movement created around his figure "pujolismo".
Biography
Youth and studies
Jordi was born on June 9, 1930, at number 15 Calle Septimania in Barcelona. In addition to Jordi and María, the parents had a third son, Juan, who died a few months after he was born. The Catalan atmosphere that Jordi breathed in the family from a young age had a decisive influence on him. When he was five years old, looking for a school of quality and not religious, they decided to sign up for the German School of Barcelona,.
When the civil war broke out in 1936, the school closed and the Pujol Soley family returned to live in Premiá de Dalt. Once the war was over, in 1939, they returned to Barcelona and Jordi enrolled again in the German School during World War II. Pujol had perfectly learned German, French and the Spanish language. In 1942 he began to study Catalan —whose official and/or administrative use was not allowed at the time— only with the help of a Catalan grammar from the Barcino publishing house. Later he would deepen his Catalan studies privately at the home of the pedagogue Joan Triadú. high school at the Pérez Iborra Academy.
In 1946 he began his medical studies at the University of Barcelona. During his first university years he was active in various Catholic associations and, above all, those of the Catalan language and culture, annulled by the dictatorship in the post-war years. Among others, the Torras y Bages Group (1947) stands out —where he coincided with the activist Pedro Figuera y Serra—, the Brotherhood of the Virgin of Montserrat de Virtelia (1950 to 1954) and the Crist/Catalunya (CC) group, in 1954. Two people linked to these movements influenced his Catholic and Catalan education: Father Llumá, spiritual director of the brotherhood, and Raimon Galí in CC. In 1948 he met Albert Manent, who became another of his mentors intellectuals.
During his last years at university, between 1950 and 1954, with a career that did not fulfill him, with an insurmountable barrier in the political and cultural field, and with a growing relationship with the brotherhood, Jordi Pujol took refuge in the Christian faith and was about to decide on a religious vocation.
After finishing his degree, he became a manager at Martín Cuatrecasas Laboratories, later Laboratorios Fides, where his father had bought a significant number of shares. There he promoted research and marketed products such as Neobacitrin, an ointment for skin irritations.
In the brotherhood Virtelia meets Marta Ferrusola Lladós, the daughter of some merchants from Queralbs. After making a formal commitment to her in March 1955, the couple married in the Monastery of Montserrat on June 4, 1956. The Pujol-Ferrusola couple, of deep Catholic convictions, have had seven children.
Beginnings in politics
Pujol was arrested in 1960 for his protests against the Franco dictatorship in what became known as the Palau de la Música events. Accused of being the material author of some anti-Francoist pamphlets, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. However, he was released two and a half years later, although he was confined for a time in Gerona. He immediately started a new line of political activity with the slogan "Building the country." With this he intended to increase the level of national awareness of the Catalans and create both cultural and financial institutions sufficient for the development of Catalonia.
The so-called Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) was formed around his figure, originally born in 1974 as a political movement and, since February 1976, configured as a political party. Convergence would articulate as a formation of a transversal nature and that was capable of bringing together various social sectors —from the political left to the right. He was also executive vice president of Banca Catalana until 1976, at which time he decided to dedicate himself professionally to politics. In any case, remained a director of the entity until a year later. Facing the general elections of 1977 —the first since the Civil War— Pujol led the so-called Pacte Democràtic per Catalunya, which would manage to enter the Congress of Deputies with eleven seats.
In 1976, the book Immigration, problem and hope for Catalonia was republished —published clandestinely in 1958—, in which, among other things, he branded immigration from Spanish-speaking people to Catalonia. In reference to the Andalusians, he goes so far as to affirm:
That anarchic and humble man who spent hundreds of years of hunger and deprivation of all kinds, whose natural ignorance leads him to mental and spiritual misery and whose uprootment from a secure community of itself makes him an insignificant, incapable of dominance, of creation. That kind of man, often of a great human fuse, if by the numerical force he could master the Catalan demographic without having overcome his own perplexity, would destroy Catalonia.
After the restoration of the Generalitat, he was appointed counselor without portfolio in the provisional government headed by Josep Tarradellas. In this context, the president of the government Adolfo Suárez —on the advice of the minister of the interior, Rodolfo Martín Villa— decided to support to the political option that Pujol represented to the detriment of that offered by Tarradellas, considering it more in line with his interests. Suárez, during an interview with the banker Manuel Ortínez, went so far as to affirm: «In the next elections, Pujol will get a majority and we will help him. Collaboration with Pujol will be easier than with Tarradellas". During this time both characters —Pujol and Tarradellas— maintained tense relations, not without conflicts and mutual reproaches.
In September 1978, the bases for the constitution of Convergència i Unió (CiU) were signed, through the Convergence coalition with the historic Democratic Union of Catalonia (UDC). In the 1979 elections, Pujol, who ran for under the acronym of CiU, he revalidated his act of deputy. That offered him a springboard from which to jump into Catalan politics.
President of the Generalitat of Catalonia
On March 20, 1980, the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia were held —the first since the Second Republic—, which gave CiU the winning force, with 45 deputies. During the electoral campaign, Convergència i Unió had significant and determined support from the employers, managing to prevail over other historical forces such as the ERC or the PSUC. This allowed Pujol to form a government, although without having an absolute majority. In his investiture speech, Pujol made it clear that the policy of "national reconstruction" [of Catalonia] was going to be the main axis of his government:
Our program will have another feature: it will be a nationalist program. If you vote for us, you will vote for a nationalist program, a nationalist government and a nationalist president. They will vote a determination: to build a country, ours. They will vote the will to defend a country, ours, which is an attacked country in its identity. They will vote an ambition: to make Catalonia not a large country for its material strength, which will always be limited, but a large country for its culture, its civics and its ability to live together.
Upon his arrival at the Generalitat, he found an autonomous administration that was beginning to organize itself after the transfer of powers that had taken place during the previous stage, under Tarradellas. However, Pujol pushed for the enactment of new policies. Among the most important laws approved during the years of the Pujol government are the two related to the "normalization" and protection of the Catalan language. The first was the Linguistic Normalization Law of April 6, 1983, which had majority support from the Parliament of Catalonia. The second of these laws was the Language Policy Law of January 7, 1998, which ran into the opposition of those sectors opposed to the linguistic immersion of minors in schools. Through a cultural and educational policy promoted from the Generalitat managed to build a nationalist identity among the population of Catalonia.
By means of the law of July 19, 1983, the Catalan Autonomous Police was established, which was born taking the Mozos de Escuadra as the nucleus of origin. The new force was progressively deployed throughout Catalonia, while there was a withdrawal of the national security bodies and forces -Police or Civil Guard- The Pujol government also promoted the dissolution of the Metropolitan Corporation of Barcelona, considering it a socialist "counterweight" to the power exercised by CiU from the Generalitat. Said objective would be achieved through the approval in 1987 of the Territorial Planning Law.
When in 1984 the State Attorney General's Office filed a criminal complaint against Pujol for his involvement in the "Banca Catalana" scandal, he was not politically affected; Quite the contrary, an important part of Catalans reacted considering that this constituted a reality attack on Catalonia. the Generalitat, affirmed: «The central government has made an unworthy move; From now on, we will talk about ethics and morality, not them." During the following years, Pujol managed to maintain political hegemony in Catalonia.
As a Convergence and Union (CiU) candidate, he governed Catalonia without interruption for twenty-three years from 1980 to 2003, obtaining three absolute majorities (1984, 1988 and 1992) and three simple majorities (1980, 1995 and 1999). During these years CiU was characterized by collaborating with the governance of Spain, supporting from Adolfo Suárez during the Transition (it should be remembered that Pujol was a key piece in the construction of the Spain of Autonomies) going through Felipe's PSOE González in 1993 and José María Aznar (see Majestic Pact ) after obtaining a simple majority of the Popular Party in the 1996 general elections.
This management has been frequently defended by his supporters, who argue that Pujol "has done a great service to Catalonia and Spain as a whole". However, he also had detractors of his policies, as was the case with Josep Tarradellas, who came to describe his policy as a "white dictatorship".
The party's political strategy corresponded to Pujol's vision of autonomy:
[Self-Governing] responds to the need to institutionally recognize the will in the way of being self-will with the intention of bringing power to the people. Since the peoples of Spain are diverse, the autonomys must be diverse”.[...] [Cataluña] has the moral strength to have contributed in an important way to democracy, to the progress and to the peace of all Spain; it has the moral strength, too, to have sometimes deferred important aspects of its claim in the name of general interest.
In the 1999 regional elections, the CiU coalition won the elections again, although it was not the force with the most votes —on this occasion the PSC, headed by Pasqual Maragall, was the list that received the most votes. CiU se was forced to agree with the PPC, Pujol managing to get elected for the last time. During this last legislature, however, the political decline of the CiU was evident, which since the 1995 elections had been losing votes and seats to the detriment of other forces —PSC and ERC—.
Since January 2001, when Artur Mas, chosen as "successor" Pujol himself assumed the position of conseller en cap of the Generalitat, a gradual change in the leadership of the federation took place. This designation opened a crisis in the CiU coalition, since other personalities such as Duran i Lleida (leader of the Democratic Union of Catalonia) also aspired to that position.
In the 2003 elections, the CiU coalition, led by Artur Mas, failed to prevail and would be evicted from the government by a coalition of parties, the so-called Tripartit. Pujol resigned as president of the Generalitat in December 2003, after almost a quarter of a century in power.
Later Life
After leaving power, he withdrew from the first political line, although this did not mean his complete departure and he retained the leadership of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia.
In 2003, Jordi Pujol donated to the Library of Catalonia the bibliographic collection collected in the exercise of his position as President of the Generalitat, made up of more than 16,000 documents. He held the CDC presidency until 2012, when the 16th Party Congress elected Artur Mas as the new president of the formation and Oriol Pujol —son of the founder— general secretary of the same; Jordi Pujol went on to occupy an honorary position.
When in July 2014 he made public that he had kept a large sum of money abroad without regularizing it, in the face of great internal and external pressure, he resigned from the honorary presidency of the CDC and from his life salary as former president of the Generalitat. On the same dates, his son Oriol, considered his political "dolphin" and implicated in the so-called "ITV Case", was also forced to resign from the general secretariat of Convergence and his seat as a deputy in Parliament.
Disputes
Media
Member of the Board of Directors of Banca Catalana, Jordi Pujol also made several incursions into the journalistic field. In the 1970s, it acquired the weekly Destino and the daily El Correo Catalán. It would have bought both titles, which were then considered prestigious publications, with the aim of convert them into organs of personal expression. However, under Pujol's management, both Destino and El Correo Catalán lost their readership and would end up entering a deep crisis, to the point to stop editing. The financial bankruptcy of the previously prestigious El Correo Catalán, in 1985, was involved in accusations of fraud, with a hole of seven hundred and fifty-seven million pesetas, and its involvement in the "Casinos" case. —a case of illegal financing of Convergence.
In addition to El Correo Catalán, through his own party (CDC) and also through the Generalitat —through public subsidies— he would gain control of the Catalan newspaper Avui, a newspaper that was going through a bad financial situation. However, despite the use of numerous "reptile funds" and public subsidies from the Generalitat, the publication suffered from corporate mismanagement and would end up accumulating a debt of billions of pesetas.
Another journalistic attempt that would have been carried out under the influence of Pujol was the newspaper El Observador de la Actualidad, openly pujolist in nature. El Observador was a project that sought to unseat the hegemonic Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia, an attempt that would end up failing, however. There were also two radio projects, Avui and Cadena 13, which despite having funds from the illegal financing of Convergence, they would also end up shipwrecked.
Catalan Bank Bankruptcy
In May 1984, Jordi Pujol was included in the complaint filed by the State Attorney General's Office, directed by Carlos Jiménez Villarejo, against the former directors of Banca Catalana, and was also the object of harsh attacks in the articles by Alfonso Quintà in the newspaper El País. In October 1984, magistrate Ignacio de Lecea took a statement from Pujol for two and a half hours at his official residence in the Casa dels Canonges, a procedure in which the prosecutor Carlos Jiménez Villarejo and José María Mena, and the defense lawyers Joan Piqué Vidal and Juan Córdoba Roda.
Both Jordi Pujol and his children are linked to different cases of corruption and to the ownership of large checking accounts in different tax havens. Starting in 2012, some media began to publish data pointing to the existence of accounts in Switzerland with irregular money. Following this first information, the Swiss bank Lombard Odier certified that said accounts did not exist, and the Ministry of Interior assured that he did not recognize the report as official and that he was unaware of its authorship. Also, in January 2013, Pujol stated in a television interview that he did not have accounts in Switzerland.
Pujol case
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On July 25, 2014, Jordi Pujol acknowledged in a statement sent to various media outlets that he had hidden "money located abroad" from the Public Treasury for 34 years, according to his statements coming from his father Florenci Pujol. In that statement, Pujol regretted never having found the "right time" to regularize these amounts and apologized to public opinion. According to various media, it would be around four million euros, located in Andorra, which they would have benefited from the tax amnesty (or extraordinary regularization) promoted by the Government of Spain in 2012. Jordi Pujol's confession generated great political controversy.
In reaction, on July 28, the Manos Limpias union denounced Jordi Pujol i Soley and his wife before the courts for the crimes of bribery, influence peddling, tax crimes, money laundering, prevarication, embezzlement and falsehood. The complaint fell to court 31 in Barcelona, where the main judge, Beatriz Balfagón, agreed to open proceedings and notify the Prosecutor's Office of her decision. The next day, July 29, President Mas, after a meeting with Pujol i Soley, announced that he was giving up his salary and the office he had been assigned as former president, as well as the honorary title of founding president of CDC and CiU.
Subsequently, the Minister of the Presidency Francesc Homs clarified that this included renouncing the honorary treatment of Molt Honorable Senyor and the gold medal of the Generalitat. As of November 4, 2015, The plot investigated about the corruption of the Pujol family has expanded notably, including numerous tax havens around the world, the judicial process is much broader and the media coverage is very large.
In May 2017, the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the General Commissariat of the Judicial Police concluded that the Pujol-Ferrusola family obtained an "unjustified economic benefit" of 69 million euros in their accounts in Andorra since 1990, when they began an operation to hide "large sums of unknown origin" that responds to a "preconceived and ordered plan", according to the EFE news agency.
In this 102-page report, the Police believe that the dynamics of concealment of money by the Pujol family falls within a crime of criminal organization, since they acted “as an organized group that they saw developing a presumably illegal activity ” led by the eldest son, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola.
In July 2020, Judge José de la Mata Amaya of the National Court concluded the investigation phase considering that there were indications of a crime to try the entire Pujol family for crimes of belonging to a criminal organization or illicit association, money laundering, fraud against the Public Treasury and documentary falsification. The order stated that "the Pujol Ferrusola family has taken advantage of its privileged position of ascendancy in Catalan political/social/economic life for decades to accumulate an excessive wealth, directly related to economic earnings derived from corrupt activities."
Semblance and ideology
Jordi Pujol has been described as a nationalist, traditional, pragmatic, skilful, astute and determined politician, with a complex and charismatic personality. He has also been attributed traits of demagogy, populism and sectarianism, while the writer and journalist José Oneto went so far as to say of him that he was "the typical product of a characteristic Catalan bourgeoisie, and the most significant example of double personality both in politics and in the world of media." business".
As some authors have pointed out, their policies would have focused more on the homogenization and "Catalanization" of Catalan society.
According to Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, Jordi Pujol was the main champion of the ideological recomposition during the late Franco regime of pre-war Catalan Catholic conservatism, which would manage to reconcile an essentialist conception of the moral and spiritual sign of Catalonia with, at the same time, a reinforcement of the social component, prioritizing, above all, building Catalonia. Pujol, inspired in his early years by the Christian personalism of Emmanuel Mounier, and who according to Ignasi Riera already spoke in his youth of a "personalist nationalism".
Pujol maintained an indisputable political leadership in Catalonia for twenty-three years, during which time a political and social movement was created around him that has come to be known as "pujolismo". According to Enric Ucelay-Da Cal, Pujol's success as a charismatic figure was a contradiction in itself: “small, fat, bald and a bad speaker, he did not fit the profile of a powerful leader. But he had in his favor a cunning personality and a prodigious memory ».
Considered a "half" independentista, he went so far as to say on one occasion:
"independence is a matter of the future, of the next generation, of our children. That is why those of the current generation have to prepare the way with three basic issues: language, flag and teaching."
Abroad, both Pujol and the conservative Catalan movement led by him have shown themselves to be strong supporters of the Zionist cause.
Praised by his defenders as a great politician and a pragmatic negotiator, he has come to be described as "one of the most important Spanish politicians of the last third of the 20th century". The historian Javier Tusell, who would compare the figure of Jordi Pujol with that of Francisco Cambó, praised his time as head of the Generalitat as a "blessing" for Spain and Catalonia. He has also been described as a "statesman".
On the contrary, his detractors have been very critical of his policies. He has been accused of having implemented and developed a policy of indoctrination of Catalan nationalism in the Catalan population, and of having used the Statute of autonomy of Catalonia to acquire greater levels of power. The historic Catalan leader Josep Tarradellas came to describe the political performance of Pujol as a "white dictatorship", while criticizing "the dangerous rupturist, sectarian and victimizing drift that [Pujol] had taken". For his part, Raimundo Boya has branded him as "racist and totalitarian". Historian Gabriel Tortella places Pujol as one of the architects of the Catalan sovereignty process, an event that would constitute the objective of the indoctrination policy developed by the Pujolist governments.
Family and personal life
He was the son of Florenci Pujol and Marta Soley. His father, a Catalan and practicing Catholic, worked as a bellhop at the Banca Marsans establishment on Rambla de Cataluña in Barcelona and would later work as a stockbroker. His mother came from a peasant family. His paternal grandparents were cork makers from Darnius (Gerona), and his maternal grandparents were farmers from Premiá de Dalt (Barcelona).
Jordi Pujol married Marta Ferrusola Lladós in June 1956, with whom he has had seven children: Jordi (b. 1958), Marta (b. 1959), Josep (b. 1963), Pere (b. 1965), Oriol (b. 1966), Mireia (b. 1969) and Oleguer (b. 1972). The Pujol-Ferrusola couple maintain their main residence in Barcelona.
Works
- - (1976). Immigration, problem and hope of Catalonia. Barcelona: Nova Terra.
- —— (2008). Memòries: història d'una convicció (1930-1980). Barcelona: Edicions Proa.
- - (2009). Memòries: temps to build (1980-1993). Barcelona: Edicions Proa.
- - (2009). Memories (1980-1993): time to build. Barcelona: Editions Destination.
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