As I wrote I expected it to be something I overlooked and it was.
If you replace
esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $big ) )
with
html_entity_decode( get_pagenum_link( $big ) )
it does what it needs to do.
As I wrote I expected it to be something I overlooked and it was.
If you replace
esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $big ) )
with
html_entity_decode( get_pagenum_link( $big ) )
it does what it needs to do.