The politician who militated for concord

On March 29, 2022, during the preparation of the Congress that was going to elect me as president of the Partido Popular, I decided to create an external advisory body to enrich our project. For almost a year I was often asked why there was a delay in materializing that idea and who was going to lead it, but I did not see fit to answer. Today I can do so because I no longer harm the friend who accepted my offer to chair the Fundación Reformismo 21, even though he never did so because for many months I waited for an improvement in his health that never came. 
 
The conversation in which I expressly renounced to designate him as president never took place and was replaced by another one in which he encouraged me to resolve the Foundation as it was finally done and guaranteed me his help "however and wherever". 
 
We all have a cast of people who shape our character and our outlook on life. It doesn't matter when they appear on our path, around them are the references that make us who we are. Josep Piqué will always be one of mine. 
 
I began to admire him listening to his press conferences as spokesman of the Government when I was president of Insalud, but it was several years later, campaigning together on the roads of Catalonia, when he captivated me as a politician and a friendship was born that lasted until his last breath. While he practiced constitutionalist Catalanism in his country and I tried to defend Galicianism in mine, I began to realize that, beyond the acronyms, we were united by something much deeper: that way of seeing Spain that prefers to build bridges between different sensibilities instead of consolidating walls. 
 
Of all the praises he will justly receive these days, I believe that one of the most deserved is precisely having been the best interpreter of the values of the autonomous State, that which refuses to make the Nation into something monolithic with the same intensity that opposes questioning the usefulness of the common project. Piqué did it with great intelligence and that is why today we can say that he was a good Spaniard because he was a good Catalan. 
 
We often talk about the role that the fathers of the Constitution played in the consolidation of our democracy. However, the importance of the sons and daughters who, after them, properly managed that legacy, preserved the spirit of the Transition and were always loyal to its principles, tends to be minimized. In the future, this continuous effort from generation to generation should be recognized with greater intensity and Piqué should be included as one of its main supporters. 
 
Like many citizens, the man who left us yesterday was deeply concerned about the drift of our country. As he had always done since we met, even in the last year he generously shared with me many opinions about the future and, as a result, I could see that, despite having left public life in 2007, politics had not left him. He preserved intact a broad knowledge, but above all a deep vocation for consensus and seriousness in the face of the fracture and frivolity that governs us today. 
 
Undoubtedly, Josep Piqué had nothing to do with either the substance or the form that have been installed in most institutions nowadays. He was closeness versus distance with respect to those who think differently, general interest versus private or personal interests, dialogue versus imposition, profound message versus empty content, example of public service versus behaviors that dishonor the exercise of politics. 
 
Whoever deduces from this that his legacy belongs to the old style, I believe he is mistaken. There is a type of discourse that is gradually running out of steam, based on conflict for conflict's sake, not on controversy aimed at achieving a solution. Josep Piqué's legacy is fully up to date because he proposes to break the Gordian knot of confrontation to find ways in which we can walk together. 
 
He was happy in his understanding and it showed. It is a recipe that he knew how to apply to national and Catalan politics as well as to geopolitics, a chapter that he mastered with his great experience, his vast historical knowledge and his prodigious intuition to grasp the great changes. 
 
Piqué participated as a founding member in the first meeting of the Reformism 21 Foundation, which was launched a few weeks ago. He spoke several times in a voice that made his physical weakness undeniable, and yet his great strength and courage prevailed over all those present. I remember thinking that, if in the end he had not been able to be the president of this body, perhaps it was because this political era was too small for a guy like him. Indeed he did not lead the Foundation, but his ideology and the ways in which he defended it until the end of his days will. 
 
As will his beloved Gloria, his children and all of us who loved him, I too must now get used to following the journey without his advice. I know he was well aware that his affection and support were key for me and that is why I am so grateful to him that in his last messages to me he conveyed with great confidence that the PP was going to win the next general elections "without a doubt". 
I say goodbye to a figure of the Partido Popular. I say goodbye to a free Spaniard who did not allow his thoughts to be imprisoned in dogmas. I say goodbye to the man who taught me to love and admire what is Catalan regardless of prejudice and clichés. I say goodbye to the man who had joined the purpose of thinking together about the great reforms that our country needs. And despite the sadness that this produces, I cannot help but feel happy because I still feel part of his team. Let us remember that he was a militant, above all, of understanding and harmony. 
 
Farewell, dear friend.
 
Alberto Núñez Feijoo. President of the Partido Popular