Lluis Foix
Spanish journalist and writer, specialized in international politics.
6/3/2019 La Vanguardia
ENGLISH
In the harshest years of the cold war there was a joke in Budapest in which someone asked what is the worst thing about communism, and the answer was "what comes next". The future is invented and fear is not usually formed by the misfortunes or concerns of the present, but from the uncertainties of the future.
In his chronicles about the falsification of history, the Italian historiographical essayist Paolo Mieli recalls how, at the end of 1943, when the Germans sensed that they may be defeated, a phrase was spread in Germany that was like a premonition: let's enjoy the war because peace will be terrible. And it was not just in defeated Germany, but also in Europe, as it was strewn with corpses and destroyed, morally and materially.
Each era has its own version of the past, looking for that slant that best suits current policies. There is more talk about historical memory than about historical truth, as the cultural activist Albert Manent liked to mention. The historical truth sticks to the mistakes and successes of all parties at all times without trying to repeat situations that are entirely different.
It was Manent himself, militant nationalist and faithful to Jordi Pujol (President of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003), who in the last months of his life, he died in 2014, told me that in order to avoid the frustrations that had so often shaken Catalan society and politics, you must: do things in time, master the calendar and foresee the consequences of the actions taken in any decision of public nature.
We are in full turmoil; with a trial in progress involving half of the previous Catalan Government, with the usual struggles and backstabbings to make the lists in the Spanish electoral system to choose the members for Congress, Europe, municipalities and communities where parliaments are renewed. We will arrive in the summer and the political map may have turned upside down or, in any case, it will be very different.
You have to prepare for the day after, in Europe, and in Spain and Catalonia. In the European Parliament, according to the polls, extremism is going to increase, more from the right than from the left, which no longer want to destroy the European Union but to change it in questions of principles that affect the dignity of the people and respect for those who think differently. Democracy must protect minorities.
Whatever the outcome of the afore mentioned elections that will take place up to the 26th of May, Spain and Catalonia will need to find a common ground that will restore as much confidence as possible within the discrepancies and disaffection that are here to stay for a very long time. Whatever the judgments of the trial, what has happened since Artur Mas (president of the region of Catalonia from 2010 to 2015) became pro-independence hasn't been positive. Whom can settle the chaos present in Catalonia; a president who depends on another one that is self-exiled in Waterloo (Brussels), several ex-members of his government on trial, plus two social leaders also prosecuted, a few self-exiled politicians and a parliament that is practically inactive? I think no one, not even those who have grown exponentially in Catalan politics as a result of collecting hundreds of thousands of anti-independence votes.
The leaders of the Process will have to accept that things have not gone well in Catalonia and that continuing with the confrontation with the Spanish state won’t lead anywhere. It has not had the support of Europe or the Western democracies, it has not achieved a sufficient social majority needed to take the steps in order to break with Spain and, above all, as is being demonstrated in the trial, there was a firm plan that enabled them to carry breaking up with Spain with a minimum of guarantees. The State will also have to admit that it did not know how to politically manage a conflict that couldn't end up in the courts.
Rajoy did not think that the separatists would go as far as they did, and the Catalan sovereignty aims did not calculate that Spain would react with all the instruments at its disposal to avoid a unilateral secession. People with as much legal experience as the former member of the Constitutional Court, the pro-secessionist and strategist Carles Viver Pi-Sunyer, knew that the famous white book promoted by him had nothing to do with some sort of formula for the disconnection of Francoism, law by law, that was intended to be promoted in Catalonia. It was hoped that Europe would opt for Catalan independence, thinking that the breakdown of legality would be accepted by the pressure of the multitudinous demonstrations.
The first thing that should be done in the day after, in my opinion, is to restore the internal complicities in Catalonia so that, at least, the institutions function with shared rules of the political game. It is also necessary to return to the Parliament the function of being the center of the national debate. Crises are discussed and resolved in Parliament, as it's being demonstrated these days in Westminster. See, in short, what's the place of Catalonia in Europe and in the world knowing that, today, its unilateral rupture is impossible. Borrowing the title The Conspiracy Of The Irresponsable, from the book of Jordi Amat, we must flee from useless acts, although they may seem heroic.
ESPAÑOL
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