Turning to the Basque way by Kepa Aulestia

The Andalusian elections of December 2 not only demonstrated to what extent the Catalan crisis can generate antibodies in Spanish politics; They have also come to demonstrate the degree of dependence that the independence movement itself maintains regarding what happens to that other side. As if it were a boomerang effect, the challenge launched by the secessionism to constitutional Spain institutionally emerged a formation aligned with the extreme European rights -Vox-.

But its own outcrop has forced the ruling independence movement to be relocated in coordinates of greater prevention and sanity. If on October 27, 2017 the supporters of the DUI had reasons to end the day thinking that they had gone under, today the fear of having caused a kind of uncontrollable involution in its effects on Spanish politics is felt in many of the independentist silences. 

Once the government of the Generalitat chaired by Artur Mas managed to ignore its pioneering policy of cuts in the face of the crisis, around the Day of 2012, the image of a Catalonia imprisoned by a State that was little more than failed because of two consecutive recessions and the autonomic collapse. Independence won the whole because the Catalans had every right to free themselves from such a burden and, because in the face of the state's turmoil, it was the Generalitat that guaranteed such an option, as a guarantor of risk-free investment. Partisan fragmentation in the Cortes Generales would contribute to rooting that vision of a Catalonia legitimized to cut ties with respect to a State adrift. But as that State did not go under, and the 155 did not change the tables in Catalonia, the independence movement continued to rely on the nutritional source of the Spanish recentralization and the endless spiral of conflict to keep the flame of a neighboring republic alive. All while secessionism was united in the field of feelings, but unable to thread the same policy.


If the 155 showed that the State continues to exist, the result of the Andalusians warned of the possibility that it could experience a turn contrary not to the secessionist vindication, but to the "really existing" self-government. The rise of Citizens and their initial response to the system of concert and quota that governs in the Basque Country and Navarre led to the governing nationalism in Euskadi to prioritize the defense of our unique autonomic regime in the face of other, more ambitious purposes.

The rise of Vox and its consequences in the Spanish ecosystem that goes from the center to the right have led to the divided independence in Catalonia to a greater confusion than experienced previously, and an implicit resignation of impatience and unilateralism that also did not go anywhere before . Andalusia has been a concurrent but definitive factor for the official Catalunya to turn, even in disgust, towards the course set by the Euskadi of Urkullu. Because although they have not agreed to appreciate the autonomy, the heirs of Convergència and the republicans of always know perfectly well that even the Independence Chimera depends on the power of the Generalitat as part of the State. 

The Andalusians elections have made Vox appear, at the same time, as the most implacable threat of Sanchez's socialism and his best circumstantial ally. The displacement towards the right of the general political panorama with identity impulses makes it difficult for the PSOE to remain in the government of Spain with the consent of independentist parliamentary groups. But these have no other choice but to get close to Pedro Sánchez to prevent a current of centralist involution from breaking through. Among other reasons because neither the look of events in the rest of Europe nor the electoral trends in Spain seem to arouse reactions capable of taking advantage of these involution announcements to reactivate the independence movement or grant it a greater degree of unity and political sense.

It is possible that the ruling secessionism clings to bilaterality to abound in the illusion of two analogous powers negotiating on the conditions of a provisionally shared future. This may contribute to the maintenance of the independence imagery. But the future of self-government does not depend on the bankruptcies with which the Moncloa and Palau try to show off their tactical skills, but on the disposition that shows the policy now channeled to give a charter of nature to an integrating catalanism.

(Underlined by ProU)

https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20181226/453754797114/viraje-a-la-vasca.html