The Catalan trilemma - Lluis Amiguet

We have evolved to tire us justly. And think the least. That's why we like football. And the experiences that reduce the complex reality to binary logic: win or lose; command or obey; them or us. 

 We tend to reduce the intricate problems posed by our coexistence in diversity to dilemmas with two solutions. And two sides. And before we tired reasoning we decided that ours is right.

In politics, however, dilemmas often become, as the mathematician and logician Nicolas de Condorcet demonstrated, in trilemes. And, in addition, unsolvable.

One of the best known is that of David Ben Gurion, who, after proclaiming the independence of Israel, faced the impossibility of making it a state only for Jews; also, on Palestinian land - that is, with a majority of its Arab population - and, in addition, democratic.

The three things at once proved impossible. Because if Israel was an identity state only for Jews, it could not be founded on Palestinian land, since it would not include the Arab majority; and if it did not include the Arab majority, it could not be democratic, since it would require the force to be imposed.

 In the Soviet era another paradox became famous with revealing trilema: God proposes to the Soviets to choose between three options, but they can only enjoy two. They can choose to be honest and intelligent or members of the Communist Party. Because it is clear that if you are honest and smart, you can not be from the Party; And if you're a communist and honest, then you're not very smart.

A trilemma similar to that of Ben Gurion catches us today the Catalans - the Spanish state also faces its own - after six years of tensions between the 47.8% who voted for the independence options as a whole and 52.2 % not. The independentistas, thanks to the electoral law and their territorial compensations by the law D'Hondt, are majority in the Parliament, but never they have obtained it in votes. So the creation of a Catalan state today faces the same paradox: if the independentists found a State for themselves alone in a territory where they are not a majority, that State can not be democratic. 

So the independence movement has two options: either it stops being democratic to be imposed by other means or works within the legality to expand its electorate demonstrating its management capacity. The most intelligent independents have already understood the trilemma.

https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20181219/453641894459/el-trilema-catalan.html