La Vanguardia and El Periódico
The front page of La Vanguardia opens, apparently happy, with the good moment of the stock markets following, above all, the good results of the Wall Street indices. El Periódico (also that of Ara) warns that Catalonia and Spain are losing productivity compared to the European Union, according to a report from the Cercle d’Economia -which La Vanguardia echoed this Thursday-. In the economy everything is connected in one way or another and these two phenomena are not alien to each other, but it is funny that one newspaper highlights the good time for investors “despite the geopolitical instability”, and the other highlights the decline shape of the economy in general due to the loss of efficiency of workers and companies.
The clichés and the reality
The difference between the two covers would confirm the clichés about the character of these two newspapers: La Vanguardia, bourgeois newspaper; El Periódico, popular newspaper. Clichés are just that: trivial and synthetic expressions that generalize and adapt to different contexts and meanings. The reality, however, is not so simple. The main cover photo of La Vanguardia is Xavi, a symbol of Barça’s tribulations. It is a more popular and street subject than the one in the photo of El Periódico: the Cannes film festival, a space of glamorous and sophisticated culture.
Politics in the foreground
Politics is the main theme of the first pages of the rest. El Mundo i l’Ara opens with the situation of Esquerra Republicana, which has not only just opened an internal debate – a crisis, depending on how you look at it – about the leadership and the program, but must suffer the pressure of forces that want to compromise their 20 deputies. The Socialist Party is waiting for them to invest Salvador Illa president of the Generalitat. Carles Puigdemont is asking for republican votes – and the PSC’s abstention – in support of his candidacy.
Pedro Sánchez and Puigdemont
In the middle appears the front page of El País, which highlights the firmness of Pedro Sánchez in denying the exiled president any chance to be an effective president. It’s carom billiards against the backdrop of the European elections. Sánchez cannot make any move in the direction of Puigdemont because he runs the great risk that his voters will turn their backs on him in the next elections – the European elections of this June and any other -. Puigdemont brandishes without brandishing it the threat of withdrawing the support of the seven deputies in Congress and killing the legislature in an electoral context so far not favorable to the PSOE. Both need Esquerra, and in Esquerra, right now, there is no one at home: Marta Rovira from Switzerland is in charge and consultations with the militancy will decide everything. It is a political puzzle of which the newspapers offer us a new piece every day. On top of that, the director of this holy house has a well-founded suspicion that complicates the situation even more: Is Sánchez preparing to call early general elections?