The PATIENT man

A “strange” child

Aragonès him­self ad­mits that from an early age he was not in­ter­ested in the same top­ics as his class­mates at the Chris­t­ian school Mare de Déu del Roser, the town’s only pri­vate school. He re­calls being viewed as the “strange” boy, be­cause his tastes were far from those of other boys, like sports. His­tory and, as one would ex­pect, po­lit­i­cal books were soon added to his fond­ness for Tintin comics. Some of his rel­a­tives speak of his early at­trac­tion to the world of pol­i­tics. “Dur­ing din­ners, when the plates were taken away and it was the time for con­ver­sa­tion, he’d al­ways be there, watch­ing and lis­ten­ing.” The lat­ter, lis­ten­ing, is pre­cisely one of the great virtues that both his po­lit­i­cal ad­mir­ers and de­trac­tors ac­knowl­edge in him. The for­mer see it as the great virtue of an in­di­vid­ual who must gov­ern a coun­try as di­verse as Cat­alo­nia; the lat­ter ac­cept that it is a good strat­egy when it comes to con­tro­ver­sial is­sues and not want­ing to show your cards too early. Ei­ther way, Pere Aragonès has him­self ac­knowl­edged on more than one oc­ca­sion that he is not a man for mak­ing judge­ments with­out hav­ing all the in­for­ma­tion, which adds cau­tion to his list of at­trib­utes.

The lack of charisma and aura of hero­ism that has sur­rounded pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers over the past five years is one of the most com­mon crit­i­cisms also lev­elled at him. It is often said that he is a great pro­fes­sional and a bet­ter back­ground man­ager who has been forced to lead the party in a sce­nario where prison and exile have been forced upon the nat­ural can­di­dates. How­ever, those who know him well do not agree. They admit that, as a good party man, Pere Aragonès has ac­cepted his new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, adding that cir­cum­stance has only brought for­ward an in­evitable fu­ture. “I was con­vinced that he’d go far, that he’d take on po­si­tions of great re­spon­si­bil­ity, be­cause he’s qual­i­fied to do so and won’t shy away from re­spon­si­bil­i­ties,” says an­other friend. As for re­li­gion, he de­fines him­self as an athe­ist and had a civil wed­ding.

JERC, the be­gin­ning

At the age of 16, he joined the ranks of the Joven­tuts d’Es­querra Re­pub­li­cana de Catalunya (JERC – the youth wing of the Re­pub­li­can left), where he oc­cu­pied dif­fer­ent roles be­fore be­com­ing its na­tional spokesper­son in 2003. He was 23 and it was the era of long side­burns, a raised fist, a Pales­tin­ian scarf and brazen speeches. Young Pere did not miss any demon­stra­tion against the Span­ish Con­sti­tu­tion, the word “in­de­pen­dence” form­ing part of his daily dis­course, and as the head of the youth branch he came into di­rect con­tact with ERC lead­ers. As he climbed the lad­der of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and wit­nessed strong di­vi­sions within the party, it be­came clear to him that dirty laun­dry should never be washed in pub­lic, and he made dis­cre­tion one of his by­words.

Par­al­lel to his po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­ity, Aragonès has a Law de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­tat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), a Mas­ter’s de­gree in Eco­nomic His­tory from the Uni­ver­si­tat de Barcelona (UB) and stud­ies in pub­lic pol­icy for eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment from the Har­vard Kennedy School, be­long­ing to the pres­ti­gious Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. Pro­fes­sion­ally, he has worked as a re­searcher at the Ig­nasi Vil­la­longa In­sti­tute of Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness and as an as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Per­pig­nan.

Over the years, ac­tivism on the streets and in youth in­sti­tu­tions led to a po­lit­i­cal strat­egy that brought him to par­lia­ment as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the JERC in 2006, of which he re­mained na­tional spokesper­son until 2007. He soon felt at home and was re-elected in 2010 and 2012. In this sec­ond term, he be­came deputy spokesper­son of the ERC par­lia­men­tary group and spokesper­son of the party’s Eco­nom­ics, Fi­nance and Bud­get com­mit­tee.

Local pol­i­tics

Aragonès mainly in­volved him­self in pol­i­tics out­side his home town of Pineda in his early years. Al­though his fam­ily is well known lo­cally and his name has an ob­vi­ous elec­toral ap­peal, he did not make a firm com­mit­ment to local pol­i­tics until 2011, when he was ap­proached by the local ERC branch to lead the can­di­dacy, de­spite this mean­ing he would have to com­bine his work on the town coun­cil with his work as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. His much broader vi­sion brought with it major change, as wit­nessed in an in­ter­view from March 2011: “We be­lieve that what is miss­ing is a medium and long-term vi­sion of what we want Pineda to be. Imag­ine what a mu­nic­i­pal­ity should look like in 20 years’ time, one that has the po­ten­tial to be­come the cap­i­tal of Alt Maresme. We do not want a Pineda that has be­come a dor­mi­tory sub­urb of the met­ro­pol­i­tan area,” the then can­di­date said. Local vot­ers re­warded him by dou­bling the num­ber of ERC coun­cil­lors.

Aragonés was one of the first and main pro­mot­ers of the now so well known, and so widely crit­i­cised, con­cept of the “broad path”. He had the chance to launch it and see its pos­i­tive ef­fects for him­self dur­ing his time as town coun­cil­lor. The con­cept was pre­sented as Junts per Pineda (To­gether for Pineda). The goal? To unite peo­ple who, al­though not in agree­ment with the en­tire Re­pub­li­can ide­ol­ogy, felt com­fort­able with and rep­re­sented in joint pro­pos­als. It brought to­gether a hand­ful of in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates, some from CiU and oth­ers from PSC. Many see this as a first at­tempt to join to­gether com­mon in­ter­ests, and the em­bryo for what has be­come ERC’s motto in re­cent times: “A broad path with room for all, avoid­ing ster­ile con­fronta­tion with the Span­ish State and putting it­self at the ser­vice of the cit­i­zenry.” When Aragonés ran again as a can­di­date in 2015, ERC won five seats and be­came the sec­ond largest party in the mu­nic­i­pal­ity. The for­mula was work­ing.

Aragonès makes no se­cret of the fact that he would have liked to have been mayor be­cause of the con­tact with the peo­ple. Faced with the dis­tant image that seems to con­tra­dict this de­sire for prox­im­ity, the new pres­i­dent says he feels very com­fort­able shar­ing pro­pos­als and pro­jects with peo­ple. “Pere is one of the few peo­ple ca­pa­ble of trans­form­ing the coun­try, re­build­ing bridges and mak­ing Cat­alo­nia a Re­pub­lic,” ex­plains Mònica Palacín, a Pineda coun­cil­lor and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, who also in­sists on high­light­ing one of his main qual­i­ties: the abil­ity to man­age the di­ver­sity of the party and the coun­try. Oth­ers con­firm the need to try to un­der­stand his rea­son­ing and not just see the outer layer. “He’s not some­one who kisses kids and grand­par­ents dur­ing an elec­tion, but when he stops to talk to peo­ple, he does it to re­ally lis­ten to them,” they say. Ra­tio­nal­ity in the face of emo­tion, an emo­tional dis­tance that some link to in­tel­lec­tual su­pe­ri­or­ity, has been the stone in Aragonès’ shoe, and his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents have tried to take ad­van­tage of it, al­though with lit­tle suc­cess.

Two sides to the coin

Dur­ing the 1-O in­de­pen­dence vote in 2017, Aragonès could be found form­ing a human chain to pro­tect one of the polling sta­tions with other cit­i­zens of Pineda. And 1-O left its mark on him both pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally, fol­low­ing the ar­rest and sub­se­quent im­pris­on­ment of most of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment and the exile of the rest. He ac­knowl­edges that the Supreme Court rul­ing hit him hard. Fol­low­ing the dis­band­ing of the gov­ern­ment and im­po­si­tion of the 21-D elec­tions, he found his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­creased, be­com­ing Vice Pres­i­dent of the Gen­er­al­i­tat in June 2018. Then, after pres­i­dent Quim Torra’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from of­fice in Sep­tem­ber last year, he be­came act­ing pres­i­dent, al­though with lim­ited func­tions.

The new pres­i­dent has also tasted the darker side of pub­lic ser­vice due to the oc­ca­sional pub­lic mis-step being used by both po­lit­i­cal ri­vals and gov­ern­ment al­lies. Pos­si­bly the most fa­mous was his at­tend­ing the wed­ding of the daugh­ter of a well-known banker, where sev­eral pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers found them­selves along­side for­mer Span­ish PM José Luis Rodríguez Za­p­a­tero, Pres­i­dent Artur Mas and lead­ing Cata­lan and Span­ish busi­ness­peo­ple. Such mix­ing of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic in­ter­ests is not al­ways viewed favourably, and it gen­er­ated sus­pi­cion among the more rad­i­cal sec­tors of the pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment. They linked it to the State’s favourable treat­ment of Pere Aragonès in Sep­tem­ber 2017, when any move­ment of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment was being viewed under a mag­ni­fy­ing glass dur­ing the tense weeks lead­ing up to the in­de­pen­dence vote. This treat­ment man­i­fested it­self in the Civil Guard en­ter­ing dif­fer­ent de­part­ments of the Gen­er­al­i­tat, in­clud­ing Aragonès’ De­part­ment of Econ­omy and Fi­nance, and de­tain­ing the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the Vice Pres­i­dency, Josep Maria Jové, and the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Lluís Sal­vador, but not ar­rest­ing Aragonès. As he ex­plains, this was be­cause the ERC lead­er­ship wanted to keep some­one in place in case the State in­car­cer­ated all of the lead­ers, which is what ended up hap­pen­ing. Party leader Oriol Jun­queras in­formed him that he must re­main un­in­volved in case he needed to take on new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Sub­se­quently, Aragonés be­came the sub­ject of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions into fi­nanc­ing the vote, but things were not taken any fur­ther, lead­ing to some sus­pi­cion over his ties with Span­ish po­lit­i­cal and busi­ness in­ter­ests.

Hus­band, fa­ther and cook

The more per­sonal and pri­vate side of Pere Aragonès re­mained hid­den or, rather, lit­tle pub­li­cised, as he grad­u­ally as­sumed lead­er­ship of the party. His posts – first as fi­nance min­is­ter, then as na­tional co­or­di­na­tor of ERC, and later as vice pres­i­dent and act­ing pres­i­dent – have re­quired him to take greater con­trol over his pub­lic image, es­pe­cially on so­cial media. Any mes­sage or image goes through a fil­ter­ing process to avoid bi­ased or ma­li­cious in­ter­pre­ta­tion. But it is pre­cisely on In­sta­gram where we can find sub­tle glimpses of the man. Aragonès has up­loaded im­ages of events and the peo­ple he is clos­est to, in­clud­ing his wife, Jan­ina Juli, and his daugh­ter, Clau­dia, who is two years old. He does his best to get home on time every day and is one of the few well-known politi­cians to have taken pa­ter­nity leave, a de­ci­sion that demon­strates his will to bring equal­ity to do­mes­tic roles.

Aragonés com­pen­sates for the long work­ing days with a hobby that he is pas­sion­ate about, cook­ing, which he com­ple­ments with car­ing for his gar­den, a pas­sion he shares with his fa­ther. His love of cook­ing comes from his grand­mother, and there are many im­ages of him mak­ing all kinds of dishes on the so­cial media. Al­though he usu­ally opts for the more tra­di­tional Cata­lan cui­sine, it is not un­com­mon to see him try­ing new dishes to sur­prise his guests... per­sonal traits that could be a sign of his fu­ture in­flu­ence on Cata­lan pol­i­tics?