Jordi Pujol to Carles Puigdemont on their reunion in 'Northern Catalonia': "You still have a lot to do"

Just 10 kilometers from the border between France and Spain, the former presidents of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol and Carles Puigdemont met again yesterday in Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste, a town in the department of Pyrenees-Orientales, in the region of Occitania.

In this area of ​​what Catalan nationalism calls Northern Catalonia, the Casa Macià museum project was inaugurated, right on the centenary of the Prats de Molló plot (also known as Fets de Prats de Molló).

This attempted military invasion from the south of France to make Catalonia independent during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera was planned by the politician and military man Francesc Macià and the management of Estat Català. The plan, organized in the historic Villa Denise now converted into Casa Macià, failed because the French authorities discovered it and arrested those involved.

A few years later and established as a symbol of Catalanism, Macià became the first president of the Generalitat in the Second Republic and was the protagonist of the proclamation of the Catalan Republic, which he finally resigned after an agreement to provide self-government to the region.

One of the most significant moments of this Sunday's event was a brief conversation between Pujol and Puigdemont, while they shared a seat, which the vice president and spokesperson for Junts per Catalunya, Josep Rius, shared on social networks.

"Listen to me, you still have to do many things; I don't," says Pujol, to which the neo-convergent leader responds: "Yes, yes, yes, and important ones, president, you did a very important thing on the day of the speech with the JNC."

A reference to the act of tribute paid to him last June by the Joventut Nacionalista de Catalunya, the former youth of Convergència Democràtica and now JxCat.

"Do not expect politics to solve everything, strong nations are those that have a strong civil society," Pujol questioned that day with a speech that was read by the president of the National Council of the JNC, Carlota Monfort.

A text with which the founder of CDC and president of the Generalitat between 1980 and 2003 wanted to draw distances with exclusive messages such as those of Aliança Catalana: Our strength has not been uniformity, but the ability to integrate, add and make very different people feel like participants.