John Carlin
Los catalanes ya han llegado a su límite de aguante tras tres siglos de
agravios, pero la intransigencia del gobierno español es, en última
instancia, la culpable de la crisis actual.
![Imagini pentru rajoy y el rey]()
Poco antes de que el rey de España se dirigiera a la nación esta semana, algunos de sus súbditos más racionales esperaban que, tal vez, pudiera elevarse por encima de la mezquindad de la clase política de Madrid. Pensaban que podía ofrecer una visión generosa de cómo resolver la crisis causada ante el creciente clamor por la independencia catalana. No hubo suerte. Al final de su discurso de seis minutos, Felipe VI sólo había empeorado las cosas.
Poco antes de que el rey de España se dirigiera a la nación esta semana, algunos de sus súbditos más racionales esperaban que, tal vez, pudiera elevarse por encima de la mezquindad de la clase política de Madrid. Pensaban que podía ofrecer una visión generosa de cómo resolver la crisis causada ante el creciente clamor por la independencia catalana. No hubo suerte. Al final de su discurso de seis minutos, Felipe VI sólo había empeorado las cosas.
Rígido en su porte, con frialdad en su tono, no construyó puentes, cavó trincheras. No lamentó la violencia policial durante la celebración del pasado domingo de un referéndum en Cataluña, tan perjudicial también para la imagen exterior de su país; denunció la "irresponsabilidad" y el "desprecio" del gobierno catalán elegido por los catalanes y amenazó con más violencia. La "responsabilidad de los poderes legítimos del Estado", advirtió el rey, es la de "garantizar el orden constitucional", forma codificada de decir que si el gobierno catalán cumple su promesa de declarar la independencia unilateral, se enviarán los tanques.
Hablando en nombre no de la nación, sino del gobierno central, se limitó a imitar cómo el ministro Mariano Rajoy ha actuado durante estos últimos cinco años: abdicó de su responsabilidad y, ajeno a lo que estaba haciendo, abdicó también como soberano en los corazones de los cada vez más amargados 7.5 millones de catalanes, el 80% de las cuales están a favor del derecho al voto sobre la independencia.
Antes del domingo, varias encuestas indicaban que el voto secesionista en Cataluña se situaba entre el 40 y el 50 por ciento. No cabe duda de que esos números han aumentado desde entonces. Como dijo un amigo británico que conoce bien la política española, minutos después del discurso del rey, "aumentó en otros diez puntos el número de los independentistas ". Así es, agregándose. a los diez o más que se habían sumado después de los apaleamientos de la policía del domingo pasado.
Tengo un interés más que académico en este despliegue lento hacia el desastre. Mi madre es española, de Madrid. Viví 15 años en Cataluña hasta que me mudé a Londres, hace cuatro años, pero siempre he querido regresar y solicitar un pasaporte español después del referéndum sobre el Brexit. Me encanta España, así que estoy contra la independencia catalana, pero nunca he amado la política española, especialmente la peligrosa cepa autoritaria representada por la gente en el poder hoy y compartida por gran parte de la clase política madrileña. Nunca he olvidado una conversación que tuve hace 15 años con un hombre que sigue siendo un pilar de ese régimen. "No soporto a los catalanes", exclamó. "Siempre quieren hacer un trato. ¡No tienen principios, por Dios! ¡No hay principios!"
Es el aferramiento de Madrid a sus sagrados principios lo que nos ha llevado al peligroso desorden de hoy. También explica lo que, para la mente anglosajona, parece ser la inexplicable negativa del gobierno de Rajoy a tratar de resolver el problema a través de la mediación internacional o el diálogo de cualquier tipo. "Principios" en el contexto catalán significa la Constitución española, que no permite un referéndum sobre la soberanía de Cataluña. Uno podría pensar que una Constitución, siendo un documento humano, necesariamente falible, estaría abierta al cambio a medida que las circunstancias cambiasen. No en la cuestión catalana; no para Rajoy.
Miguel de Unamuno, célebre escritor español del siglo pasado, lamentó lo que veía como un espíritu político nacional contaminado "por los cuarteles y la sacristía". Mi opinión ha sido desde hace mucho tiempo que el hábito de pensamiento intransigente exhibido por la clase política de España es la herencia de 500 años de absolutismo católico. El catolicismo español era, para la cristiandad en general, lo que el Islam saudí es para el mundo musulmán de hoy: el más resistente a la influencia filosófica, política, cultural o científica exteriores. No creo que sea un accidente que no haya traducción en español, o en árabe, de la palabra inglesa "compromise". El concepto de "cedo un poco y tú cedes un poco para que ambos acabemos ganando" es ajeno a la mente política española.
Es por eso que el imperio español perdió Cuba en 1898, y antes California y el resto de lo que ahora es el oeste de los Estados Unidos. Es la razón principal por la que, sobre la cuestión catalana, el gobierno de centro-derecha del Partido Popular de Rajoy y la clase política madrileña han logrado lo contrario de lo que pretenden: en lugar de trabajar para preservar la unidad de España, alientan al pueblo catalán y echan combustible al camino hacia la independencia.
En pocas palabras, son políticos de tercera categoría. La primera regla para la resolución inteligente de una disputa como la del problema catalán es conocer a tu enemigo: ponerse en sus zapatos, tratar de entender por qué piensan de la manera que lo hacen y, luego, tratar de persuadirlos de que se acerquen a tu punto de vista, o al menos para encontrarte en medio del camino. En La lucha por Cataluña, un nuevo libro del corresponsal del New York Times en España, Raphael Minder, acaba con la siguiente nota: los pueblos de España no se unirán, escribe Minder, mientras la clase política de Madrid no haga ningún esfuerzo por "comprender los sentimientos expresados por cientos de miles de personas en las calles de Barcelona".
Los sentimientos nacionalistas catalanes se remontan al menos a 300 años atrás. El 11 de septiembre de 1714, al final de la guerra de sucesión española, Barcelona cayó tras un largo asedio ante el ejército de Felipe V, el primer rey Borbón de España. Su homónimo actual podría haber tenido un poco más de tacto en su discurso esta semana, y hubiera podido recordar que esta gloriosa derrota, el Dunkerque catalán, marca hoy la fecha de la fiesta nacional anual de Cataluña. Se trata de una conmemoración del heroísmo suicida de los defensores de la ciudad, pero también un recordatorio de la opresión que sufrieron bajo Felipe V, un gobernante absoluto que demolió una quinta parte de la ciudad, cerró el parlamento catalán y las universidades y prohibió al catalán en la administración.
Otro gobernante absoluto de memoria más reciente, Francisco Franco, avivó las llamas del agravio nacionalista llevando a cabo medidas asombrosamente similares después de que asumiera el poder por la fuerza en 1939, después de la victoria de sus fuerzas fascistas en la guerra civil española. Además de las ejecuciones por fusilamiento de los principales políticos catalanes y de otros tantos miles de personas, también suprimió el lenguaje local, principal emblema de la identidad catalana. Bajo el gobierno de Franco, los padres no podían dar a sus hijos nombres catalanes como Jordi o Josep. El generalísimo optó por considerar al catalán como un dialecto, algo tan insultante como erróneo: el catalán es un idioma, tanto como el español, el francés y el italiano.
Una herencia de la era franquista que sigue agitando la olla nacionalista es el desdén por el catalán entre otros españoles. Se acompaña de una aversión por los catalanes en general, que muchos optan por considerar como estirados y creídos, cuando la verdad es, creo, que son simplemente tímidos. Pero el nacionalismo es un sentimiento, un resentimiento a fuego lento hacia un vecino percibido como abusador. El nacionalismo no es un plan. La independencia sí lo es. Lo que vemos hoy es cómo uno ha evolucionado hacia el otro y en una escala nunca antes vista. Muchos de los que en otro tiempo eran simplemente nacionalistas de corazón, plenos de sentimientos, son ahora militantes activos por la independencia.
Los años 2006, 2010 y 2012 marcan la progresión. En 2006, el voto pro-independencia representaba apenas el 15% de la población. Una decisión tomada ese año dio esperanzas de que la cifra se redujera: no sólo el Parlamento catalán de Barcelona, sino el parlamento nacional de Madrid, votaron a favor de un nuevo estatuto que definía a Cataluña como nación y le otorgaba mayor autonomía de la que había disfrutado desde la muerte de Franco en 1975. Esto incluía el dotar a Cataluña de un mayor grado de independencia judicial.
Los retrasos en la aplicación del estatuto dieron tiempo para una reacción nacionalista española. En 2010, el Partido Popular de Rajoy, entonces en oposición, sucumbió a la tentación que provocó la explosión del independentismo catalán y que ha llevado a la crisis actual: buscar votos en el resto de España, haciendo campaña contra el estatuto catalán, llevándolo al notoriamente politizado Tribunal Constitucional, donde fue anulado. La ley derrotó a la política, lo que fue el precedente que sigue obstaculizando una solución del problema hoy.
En 2012, lo que entonces era el gobierno de centro-derecha catalán, sin embargo trató de encontrar un acercamiento a Rajoy, que se había convertido en primer ministro el año anterior. Buscó la negociación para tratar de obtener concesiones fiscales en la línea de las concedidas al País Vasco, cuyo gobierno tiene una autoridad mucho mayor sobre la recaudación y distribución del dinero de los impuestos. Pero Rajoy los rechazó. Si se suma la crisis económica y el alto desempleo a la indignación de los catalanes comunes por el trato despectivos que sentían que habían recibido, el resultado fue la mayor protesta que nadie en Cataluña podría recordar. En la fiesta nacional del 11 de septiembre, un millón de personas salieron a las calles de Barcelona.
Lo que pidieron fue entonces un referéndum de independencia legalmente vinculante, y la esperanza creció después de que el gobierno británico accediera precisamente a tal cosa en Escocia, en 2014. Pero el gobierno de Rajoy no se movió. La ley era la ley. El pragmatismo era para él una palabra griega ininteligible. Era como si se apropiara del consejo que Franco le había dado una vez al editor de un periódico afín: "Haz como yo, no te involucres en política".
Pero los catalanes estaban, al contrario, haciendo mucha política, y en 2015 una coalición pro-independencia, encabezada por Carles Puigdemont, llegó al poder por un delgado margen en el parlamento catalán. Con lo cual la retórica de ambos lados se puso más enconada, y el clima político más hostil.
El gobierno de Rajoy y sus partidarios en los medios de comunicación han retratado al "pelo de fregona" Puigdemont y a sus camaradas radicales como irresponsables e infantiles, pero ha sido difícil evitar la conclusión de que, de ser así, los políticos supuestamente adultos en Madrid han descendido al mismo nivel. El ministro de Educación echó más leña al fuego indicando su intención del gobierno de "españolizar" a los niños catalanes; el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores hizo lo mismo cuando acusó al gobierno catalán de "levantamiento" y "golpe de Estado". Felipe González, ex primer ministro socialista, los superó a ambos en un artículo en El País en el que comparó el movimiento de independencia con "la aventura alemana o italiana" de los años treinta.
Las cosas podrían haber sido muy diferentes, tan fáciles, empezando por que el Partido Popular hubiera reprimido el impulso vengativo que lo llevó a anular el estatuto de autonomía a través de los tribunales. Incluso si no hubiera sido así, las protestas callejeras masivas dos años más tarde dieron otra oportunidad. Si Rajoy tuviera un algo de estadista, podría haber ido a Barcelona, discutido conciliadoramente y ofrecido diálogo al gobierno catalán, menos militante y más flexible, que entonces estaba en el poder. Los aplausos habrían resonado alrededor del pasillo y los radicales de Puigdemont probablemente habrían también aplaudido.
El peligroso enfrentamiento actual entre los fanáticos españoles y los románticos catalanes nunca habría ocurrido si, junto con el cambio en el fondo de la actitud, el resultado de las conversaciones hubiera sido la concesión de un referéndum vinculante como el que Escocia realizara hace tres años. Los catalanes dicen de sí mismos que dos emociones compiten en sus corazones, seny y rauxa : el sentido común y la pasión furiosa. Son, por tradición. mediterránea una antigua nación que negocia. Cuando no están enojados, como ahora, son las personas más prácticas de la tierra. Un referéndum celebrado hace un par de años habría producido con toda probabilidad un "no" sustancial a la independencia de España y, como sucedió en Quebec, el tema habría sido puesto a enfriar por lo menos durante una generación.
En cambio, lo que tenemos ahora es el absurdo cruel del gobierno de Madrid actuando hacia los catalanes como un marido que odia a su esposa y la maltrata, negándose a contemplar como ella le abandona, gritando "¡Ella es mía!".
¿Que pasa ahora? Puigdemont ha dicho que hará una declaración unilateral de independencia, pero su demora en hacerlo indica un miedo completamente realista a las represalias más violentas de Madrid, de ahí su deseo declarado de mediación a la UE, hasta ahora rechazado. Tal declaración no significaría más que el resultado del "referéndum" unilateral: sería más bien teatro político. Cataluña no es una pequeña isla del Pacífico, suficiente por sí misma. Forma parte de España y forma parte de la Unión Europea. Un Catexit duro, en una noche, simplemente no es posible. Puigdemont está jugando un juego de alto riesgo.
El gobierno español podría ver, sin embargo, que está jugando un juego, si lo deseara, y reaccionar proporcionalmente: vigilar y esperar un poco, reconocer que el clamor por la independencia catalana tiene un apoyo significativo detrás de él, y acceder a las conversaciones. La "esposa", en este escenario, podría aceptar aún a algunas proposiciones. Rajoy podría hacer lo que debería haber hecho hace cinco años y aceptar un referéndum vinculante. En el caso de una victoria para el voto "sí", el orden - al menos el orden del tipo que ahora se encuentra en el Brexit de Gran Bretaña - sería restaurado. Madrid, habiendo dado su bendición legal al referéndum, tendría que soportar con los dientes apretados el resultado. En el caso de una victoria del "no", el problema estaría resuelto.
Sin embargo, ni hablar de eso. Tal y como están las cosas, lo más probable es que triunfe la inquietante defensa del "orden constitucional" por "las fuerzas estatales legítimas". Luis de Guindos, ministro de Economía, mostró lo inflexible que es el gobierno español cuando dijo en una entrevista televisiva, el jueves pasado, que la independencia catalana estaba "fuera de consideración" porque era, en primer lugar, "ilegal" y, segundo, "irracional ":" Cataluña siempre ha sido parte de España ".
Una parte de mí todavía se aferra a la mota de esperanza que sentí antes del discurso del rey, que tal vez la UE vaya a intervenir y hacer entrar en razón a los líderes españoles. Pero es más probable que lo hagan sólo después de que muelan a palos a más catalanes, momento en el que puede ser demasiado tarde. Una muerte a manos de la policía del rey, un mártir por la causa catalana, y cualquier cosa podría suceder. Rajoy llama a Puigdemont traidor, pero si el conflicto se inclina hacia la violencia generalizada, y si Catalunya finalmente consigue la independencia, la historia puede registrar que el traidor más grande fue Rajoy.
Catalan independence: arrogance of Madrid explains this chaos
Three centuries of Catalan grievances came to a head this week, but the intransigence of Spain’s government is ultimately to blame for the crisis
October 7 2017, 12:01am, The Times
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| Opponents of Catalonia’s independence referendum displayed their allegiance to Spain in Barcelona last Sunday TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP |
Shortly before the King of Spain addressed the nation this week, some of his more rational-minded subjects hoped that maybe, just maybe, he might rise above the petty-mindedness of the Madrid political establishment. He could, they thought, offer a generous vision of how to resolve the crisis caused by the escalating clamour for Catalan independence. No such luck. By the end of his six-minute speech Felipe VI had only made things worse.
Stiff in his bearing, coldly commanding in his tone, he did not build bridges, he dug trenches. He did not lament the police violence during last Sunday’s simulacrum of a referendum in Catalonia, so damaging to his country’s global image; he denounced the “irresponsibility” and “scorn” of the elected Catalan government and threatened more violence. It was the “responsibility of the legitimate state powers”, the king warned, “to ensure constitutional order”, code for if the Catalan government makes good on its promise to declare unilateral independence, we’ll send in the tanks.
Speaking on behalf not of the nation but of central government, he did as prime minister Mariano Rajoy has done these last five years: he abdicated responsibility and, oblivious to what he was doing, abdicated his sovereign hold on the hearts of Catalonia’s increasingly embittered 7.5 million people, 80 per cent of whom are in favour of the right to vote on independence.
Before Sunday several polls indicated that the secessionist vote in Catalonia stood at between 40 and 50 per cent. There can be no question that those numbers have since risen. As a British friend who knows Spanish politics well remarked, minutes after the king’s speech, “that’s another ten points for the independentistas”. Yes. To add to the ten or more they added after the police clubbings of last Sunday.
I have a more than academic interest in this unfolding slow-motion disaster. My mother is Spanish, from Madrid. I lived 15 years in Catalonia until I moved to London four years ago, but I have always meant to return and applied for a Spanish passport after the Brexit referendum. I love Spain and so am against Catalan independence but I have never loved Spanish politics, especially the authoritarian strain represented by the people in power today and shared by much of the Madrid establishment. I have never forgotten a conversation I had 15 years ago with a man who remains a pillar of that establishment. “I can’t stand the Catalans,” he exclaimed. “They always want to make a deal. They’ve got no principles, for God’s sake! No principles!”
It is Madrid’s adherence to its blessed principles that has led us into today’s dangerous mess. It also explains what, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, seems to be the inexplicable refusal of Rajoy’s government to try to solve the problem through international mediation, or dialogue of any kind. “Principles” in the Catalan context means the Spanish constitution, which does not allow for a Catalan referendum on sovereignty. One might think that a constitution, being a necessarily fallible human document, would be open to change as circumstances change. Not on the Catalan question; not for Rajoy.
Miguel de Unamuno, a celebrated Spanish writer of the last century, lamented what he saw as a national political spirit contaminated “by the barracks and the sacristy”. My sense has long been that the intransigent habit of thought exhibited by Spain’s political classes is the inheritance of 500 years of Catholic absolutism. Spanish Catholicism was to Christendom generally what Saudi Islam is to the Muslim world today: the most resistant to outside philosophical, political, cultural or scientific influence. I don’t think it is any accident that there is no translation in Spanish, or in Arabic, for the English word “compromise”. The concept of “I cede a little and you cede a little so we both end up winning” is alien to the Spanish political mind.
It is why the Spanish empire lost Cuba in 1898 and before that California and the rest of what is now the western United States. It is the chief reason why, on the Catalan question, the centre-right Popular party government of Rajoy and the Madrid establishment have achieved the opposite of what they claim to want: instead of working to preserve the unity of Spain they alienate the Catalan people and fuel the drive for independence.
Put simply, they are third-rate politicians. Rule one for the intelligent resolution of a dispute like the Catalan one is to know your enemy: put yourself in their shoes, try to understand why they think the way they do and then try to persuade them to come around to your point of view, or at least to meet you halfway. The Struggle for Catalonia, a new book by the New York Times correspondent in Spain, Raphael Minder, ends on just this note. The peoples of Spain will not be reunited, Minder writes, so long as the political establishment in Madrid makes no effort to “understand the feelings expressed by hundreds of thousands on the streets of Barcelona”.
Catalan nationalist feelings go back at least 300 years. On September 11, 1714, at the end of the Spanish war of succession, Barcelona fell after a long siege to the army of Felipe V, Spain’s first Bourbon king. His namesake might have trodden with a little more tact in his speech this week had he chosen to recall that this glorious defeat, the Catalan Dunkirk, today marks the date of Catalonia’s annual national holiday. It is a commemoration of the suicidal heroism of the city’s defenders but also a reminder of the oppression they suffered under Felipe V. An absolute ruler, he demolished a fifth of the city, closed the Catalan parliament and the universities and banned Catalan as an administrative language.
An absolute ruler of more recent memory, Francisco Franco, fanned the flames of nationalist grievance by carrying out uncannily similar measures after he assumed absolute power in 1939 following the victory of his fascist forces in the Spanish civil war. Apart from the executions by firing squad of leading Catalan politicians and thousands more, he too suppressed the local language, the chief emblem of Catalan identity. Under Franco’s rule parents were not allowed to give their children Catalan names such as Jordi or Josep. The generalissimo chose to regard Catalan as a dialect, which was as insulting as it was wrong: Catalan is just as much a language in its own right as Spanish, French and Italian.
A hangover of the Franco era that continues to stir the nationalist pot is the disdain for Catalan among other Spaniards. It is accompanied by a dislike for Catalans generally, whom many choose to regard as snooty and superior when the truth is, I think, that they are merely shy. But nationalism is a sentiment, a simmering resentment towards a neighbour perceived to be abusive. Nationalism is not a plan. Independence is. What we see today is how one has evolved into the other and on a scale never before seen. Many who were once merely heart-sore nationalists are now active campaigners for independence.
The years 2006, 2010 and 2012 mark the progression. In 2006 the pro-independence vote stood at barely 15 per cent of the population. A decision taken that year gave hope that the number would drop: not only the Catalan parliament in Barcelona, but the national parliament in Madrid, voted in favour of a new statute defining Catalonia as a nation and granting it greater autonomy than it had enjoyed since the death of Franco in 1975. This included giving Catalonia a greater degree of judicial independence.
Delays in the implementation of the statute gave time for a Spanish nationalist backlash. In 2010 Rajoy’s Popular Party, then in opposition, succumbed to the impulse that sparked the explosion of Catalan independentismo and has led to the present crisis: seeking votes in the rest of Spain, it campaigned against the Catalan statute and took it to the notoriously politicised constitutional court, where it was overruled. The law trumped politics, the precedent that continues to hinder a solution of the problem today.
In 2012 what was then the centre-right Catalan government nevertheless tried to find an accommodation with Rajoy, who had become prime minister the year before. It sought talks to try to obtain fiscal concessions along the lines of those granted to the Basque country, whose government has a much greater authority over the collection and distribution of tax money. But Rajoy rebuffed them. Add the economic crisis and high unemployment to the outrage among ordinary Catalans at the scornful treatment they felt they had received and the upshot was the biggest protest anyone in Catalonia could remember. On the national holiday of September 11 a million people poured on to the streets of Barcelona.
What they called for was a legally binding independence referendum and the clamour only grew after the British government agreed to precisely such a vote in Scotland in 2014. But Rajoy’s government would not budge. The law was the law. Pragmatism was for him an unintelligible Greek word. It was as if he took his cue from the advice Franco once gave a friendly newspaper editor: “Do as I do, don’t get involved in politics.”
But the Catalans were doing plenty of politics and in 2015 a rag-tag pro-independence coalition led by Carles Puigdemont took power by a slender margin in the Catalan parliament. Whereupon the rhetoric from both sides became more angry and the political climate more hostile.
Rajoy’s government and his supporters in the media have portrayed the mop-topped Puigdemont and his radical comrades as irresponsible and infantile but it has been hard to avoid the conclusion that, if so, the supposedly adult politicians in Madrid have descended to the same level. The education minister stoked the flames by stating the government’s intention to españolizar — Spanishify — Catalan children; the foreign minister did the same when he accused the Catalan government of “an uprising” and “a coup d’état”. Felipe González, a former socialist prime minister, trumped them both in an article in El País in which he compared the independence movement to “the German or Italian adventure” of the 1930s.
Things could have been so different, so easily, starting with the Popular Party restraining the vindictive impulse that drove it to overrule the autonomy statute through the courts. Even if it had not, the massive street protests two years later provided another opportunity. Had Rajoy possessed an ounce of statesmanship, he could have gone to Barcelona, made a conciliatory speech and offered dialogue with the less militant, more pliable Catalan government that was then in power. Applause would have rung out around the hall and the Puigdemont radicals would probably have been done for.
Had Rajoy an ounce of statesmanship, he could have gone to Barcelona in 2012, made a conciliatory speech and offered dialogue with the less militant Catalan government then in power
The dangerous showdown today between Spanish fanatics and Catalan romantics would never have happened if, along with the change in mood music, the upshot of talks had been the granting of a binding referendum such as the one Scotland was given three years ago. Catalans say of themselves that two emotions vie in their hearts, seny and rauxa: common sense and raging passion. They are by ancient Mediterranean tradition a trading nation. When they are not angry, as they are now, they are the most practical people on earth. A proper referendum held a couple of years ago would have yielded in all likelihood a substantial “no” to independence from Spain and, as happened in Quebec, the subject would have been put to bed for a generation at least.
Instead what we have is the cruel absurdity of the Madrid government acting towards the Catalans like a husband who hates his wife and mistreats her but refuses to let her contemplate leaving him, screaming “She’s mine!”.
What happens now? Puigdemont has said he will make a unilateral declaration of independence but his delay in doing so indicates an entirely realistic fear of more violent reprisals from Madrid, hence his stated desire for EU mediation, so far refused. Such a declaration would signify scarcely more in substance than the outcome of the unilateral “referendum”: it would be more political theatre. Catalonia is not a small Pacific island, sufficient unto itself. It is part of Spain and part of the European Union. A hard, overnight Catexit is simply not possible. Puigdemont is playing a high-risk game.
The Spanish government could see he is playing a game, if it chose to, and react proportionately: watch and wait a while and, acknowledging that the Catalan independence clamour has significant numbers behind it, accede to talks. The wife, in this scenario, could respond yet to some blandishments. Rajoy could do what he should have done five years ago and agree to a binding referendum. In the event of a victory for the “yes” vote, order — at least order of the type now found in Brexit Britain — would be restored. Madrid, having given its legal blessing to the referendum, would have to abide through gritted teeth by the result. In the event of a “no” victory, the problem would be solved.
Fat chance, though, as things stand. More likely is that ominous royal defence of the “constitutional order” by “the legitimate state powers”. Luis de Guindos, the economy minister, showed just how inflexible the Spanish government remains when he said in a television interview on Thursday that Catalan independence was “out of the question” because it was, first, “illegal” and, second, “irrational”: “Catalonia has always been part of Spain”.
A part of me still clings to the sliver of hope I felt before the king’s speech, that maybe the EU will intervene and knock sense into Spanish heads. But it is more likely that they will do so only after the cracking of more Catalan bones, by which time it may be too late. One death at the hands of the king’s police, one martyr for the Catalan cause, and anything could happen. Rajoy calls Puigdemont a traitor but if the conflict descends into widespread violence, and if Catalonia does eventually achieve independence, history may record that the bigger traitor was Rajoy.
John Carlin writes* for the Spanish newspaper El País. *Used to.
Stiff in his bearing, coldly commanding in his tone, he did not build bridges, he dug trenches. He did not lament the police violence during last Sunday’s simulacrum of a referendum in Catalonia, so damaging to his country’s global image; he denounced the “irresponsibility” and “scorn” of the elected Catalan government and threatened more violence. It was the “responsibility of the legitimate state powers”, the king warned, “to ensure constitutional order”, code for if the Catalan government makes good on its promise to declare unilateral independence, we’ll send in the tanks.
Speaking on behalf not of the nation but of central government, he did as prime minister Mariano Rajoy has done these last five years: he abdicated responsibility and, oblivious to what he was doing, abdicated his sovereign hold on the hearts of Catalonia’s increasingly embittered 7.5 million people, 80 per cent of whom are in favour of the right to vote on independence.
Before Sunday several polls indicated that the secessionist vote in Catalonia stood at between 40 and 50 per cent. There can be no question that those numbers have since risen. As a British friend who knows Spanish politics well remarked, minutes after the king’s speech, “that’s another ten points for the independentistas”. Yes. To add to the ten or more they added after the police clubbings of last Sunday.
I have a more than academic interest in this unfolding slow-motion disaster. My mother is Spanish, from Madrid. I lived 15 years in Catalonia until I moved to London four years ago, but I have always meant to return and applied for a Spanish passport after the Brexit referendum. I love Spain and so am against Catalan independence but I have never loved Spanish politics, especially the authoritarian strain represented by the people in power today and shared by much of the Madrid establishment. I have never forgotten a conversation I had 15 years ago with a man who remains a pillar of that establishment. “I can’t stand the Catalans,” he exclaimed. “They always want to make a deal. They’ve got no principles, for God’s sake! No principles!”
It is Madrid’s adherence to its blessed principles that has led us into today’s dangerous mess. It also explains what, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, seems to be the inexplicable refusal of Rajoy’s government to try to solve the problem through international mediation, or dialogue of any kind. “Principles” in the Catalan context means the Spanish constitution, which does not allow for a Catalan referendum on sovereignty. One might think that a constitution, being a necessarily fallible human document, would be open to change as circumstances change. Not on the Catalan question; not for Rajoy.
Miguel de Unamuno, a celebrated Spanish writer of the last century, lamented what he saw as a national political spirit contaminated “by the barracks and the sacristy”. My sense has long been that the intransigent habit of thought exhibited by Spain’s political classes is the inheritance of 500 years of Catholic absolutism. Spanish Catholicism was to Christendom generally what Saudi Islam is to the Muslim world today: the most resistant to outside philosophical, political, cultural or scientific influence. I don’t think it is any accident that there is no translation in Spanish, or in Arabic, for the English word “compromise”. The concept of “I cede a little and you cede a little so we both end up winning” is alien to the Spanish political mind.
It is why the Spanish empire lost Cuba in 1898 and before that California and the rest of what is now the western United States. It is the chief reason why, on the Catalan question, the centre-right Popular party government of Rajoy and the Madrid establishment have achieved the opposite of what they claim to want: instead of working to preserve the unity of Spain they alienate the Catalan people and fuel the drive for independence.
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| Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, King Felipe VI and Catalan president Carles Puigdemont in a rare moment of unity, observing a minute’s silence for victims of the August terrorist attacks MATTHIAS OESTERLE/ALAMY |
Put simply, they are third-rate politicians. Rule one for the intelligent resolution of a dispute like the Catalan one is to know your enemy: put yourself in their shoes, try to understand why they think the way they do and then try to persuade them to come around to your point of view, or at least to meet you halfway. The Struggle for Catalonia, a new book by the New York Times correspondent in Spain, Raphael Minder, ends on just this note. The peoples of Spain will not be reunited, Minder writes, so long as the political establishment in Madrid makes no effort to “understand the feelings expressed by hundreds of thousands on the streets of Barcelona”.
Catalan nationalist feelings go back at least 300 years. On September 11, 1714, at the end of the Spanish war of succession, Barcelona fell after a long siege to the army of Felipe V, Spain’s first Bourbon king. His namesake might have trodden with a little more tact in his speech this week had he chosen to recall that this glorious defeat, the Catalan Dunkirk, today marks the date of Catalonia’s annual national holiday. It is a commemoration of the suicidal heroism of the city’s defenders but also a reminder of the oppression they suffered under Felipe V. An absolute ruler, he demolished a fifth of the city, closed the Catalan parliament and the universities and banned Catalan as an administrative language.
An absolute ruler of more recent memory, Francisco Franco, fanned the flames of nationalist grievance by carrying out uncannily similar measures after he assumed absolute power in 1939 following the victory of his fascist forces in the Spanish civil war. Apart from the executions by firing squad of leading Catalan politicians and thousands more, he too suppressed the local language, the chief emblem of Catalan identity. Under Franco’s rule parents were not allowed to give their children Catalan names such as Jordi or Josep. The generalissimo chose to regard Catalan as a dialect, which was as insulting as it was wrong: Catalan is just as much a language in its own right as Spanish, French and Italian.
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| The suppression of Catalan culture after 1939 under General Franco, which included banning Catalan Christian names, finds an echo today in the disdain of many Spaniards for the region and its people KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES |
A hangover of the Franco era that continues to stir the nationalist pot is the disdain for Catalan among other Spaniards. It is accompanied by a dislike for Catalans generally, whom many choose to regard as snooty and superior when the truth is, I think, that they are merely shy. But nationalism is a sentiment, a simmering resentment towards a neighbour perceived to be abusive. Nationalism is not a plan. Independence is. What we see today is how one has evolved into the other and on a scale never before seen. Many who were once merely heart-sore nationalists are now active campaigners for independence.
The years 2006, 2010 and 2012 mark the progression. In 2006 the pro-independence vote stood at barely 15 per cent of the population. A decision taken that year gave hope that the number would drop: not only the Catalan parliament in Barcelona, but the national parliament in Madrid, voted in favour of a new statute defining Catalonia as a nation and granting it greater autonomy than it had enjoyed since the death of Franco in 1975. This included giving Catalonia a greater degree of judicial independence.
Delays in the implementation of the statute gave time for a Spanish nationalist backlash. In 2010 Rajoy’s Popular Party, then in opposition, succumbed to the impulse that sparked the explosion of Catalan independentismo and has led to the present crisis: seeking votes in the rest of Spain, it campaigned against the Catalan statute and took it to the notoriously politicised constitutional court, where it was overruled. The law trumped politics, the precedent that continues to hinder a solution of the problem today.
In 2012 what was then the centre-right Catalan government nevertheless tried to find an accommodation with Rajoy, who had become prime minister the year before. It sought talks to try to obtain fiscal concessions along the lines of those granted to the Basque country, whose government has a much greater authority over the collection and distribution of tax money. But Rajoy rebuffed them. Add the economic crisis and high unemployment to the outrage among ordinary Catalans at the scornful treatment they felt they had received and the upshot was the biggest protest anyone in Catalonia could remember. On the national holiday of September 11 a million people poured on to the streets of Barcelona.
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| Protesters took to the streets of Barcelona after Madrid blocked the Catalan government’s referendum on independence TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP |
What they called for was a legally binding independence referendum and the clamour only grew after the British government agreed to precisely such a vote in Scotland in 2014. But Rajoy’s government would not budge. The law was the law. Pragmatism was for him an unintelligible Greek word. It was as if he took his cue from the advice Franco once gave a friendly newspaper editor: “Do as I do, don’t get involved in politics.”
But the Catalans were doing plenty of politics and in 2015 a rag-tag pro-independence coalition led by Carles Puigdemont took power by a slender margin in the Catalan parliament. Whereupon the rhetoric from both sides became more angry and the political climate more hostile.
Rajoy’s government and his supporters in the media have portrayed the mop-topped Puigdemont and his radical comrades as irresponsible and infantile but it has been hard to avoid the conclusion that, if so, the supposedly adult politicians in Madrid have descended to the same level. The education minister stoked the flames by stating the government’s intention to españolizar — Spanishify — Catalan children; the foreign minister did the same when he accused the Catalan government of “an uprising” and “a coup d’état”. Felipe González, a former socialist prime minister, trumped them both in an article in El País in which he compared the independence movement to “the German or Italian adventure” of the 1930s.
Things could have been so different, so easily, starting with the Popular Party restraining the vindictive impulse that drove it to overrule the autonomy statute through the courts. Even if it had not, the massive street protests two years later provided another opportunity. Had Rajoy possessed an ounce of statesmanship, he could have gone to Barcelona, made a conciliatory speech and offered dialogue with the less militant, more pliable Catalan government that was then in power. Applause would have rung out around the hall and the Puigdemont radicals would probably have been done for.
Had Rajoy an ounce of statesmanship, he could have gone to Barcelona in 2012, made a conciliatory speech and offered dialogue with the less militant Catalan government then in power
The dangerous showdown today between Spanish fanatics and Catalan romantics would never have happened if, along with the change in mood music, the upshot of talks had been the granting of a binding referendum such as the one Scotland was given three years ago. Catalans say of themselves that two emotions vie in their hearts, seny and rauxa: common sense and raging passion. They are by ancient Mediterranean tradition a trading nation. When they are not angry, as they are now, they are the most practical people on earth. A proper referendum held a couple of years ago would have yielded in all likelihood a substantial “no” to independence from Spain and, as happened in Quebec, the subject would have been put to bed for a generation at least.
Instead what we have is the cruel absurdity of the Madrid government acting towards the Catalans like a husband who hates his wife and mistreats her but refuses to let her contemplate leaving him, screaming “She’s mine!”.
What happens now? Puigdemont has said he will make a unilateral declaration of independence but his delay in doing so indicates an entirely realistic fear of more violent reprisals from Madrid, hence his stated desire for EU mediation, so far refused. Such a declaration would signify scarcely more in substance than the outcome of the unilateral “referendum”: it would be more political theatre. Catalonia is not a small Pacific island, sufficient unto itself. It is part of Spain and part of the European Union. A hard, overnight Catexit is simply not possible. Puigdemont is playing a high-risk game.
The Spanish government could see he is playing a game, if it chose to, and react proportionately: watch and wait a while and, acknowledging that the Catalan independence clamour has significant numbers behind it, accede to talks. The wife, in this scenario, could respond yet to some blandishments. Rajoy could do what he should have done five years ago and agree to a binding referendum. In the event of a victory for the “yes” vote, order — at least order of the type now found in Brexit Britain — would be restored. Madrid, having given its legal blessing to the referendum, would have to abide through gritted teeth by the result. In the event of a “no” victory, the problem would be solved.
Fat chance, though, as things stand. More likely is that ominous royal defence of the “constitutional order” by “the legitimate state powers”. Luis de Guindos, the economy minister, showed just how inflexible the Spanish government remains when he said in a television interview on Thursday that Catalan independence was “out of the question” because it was, first, “illegal” and, second, “irrational”: “Catalonia has always been part of Spain”.
A part of me still clings to the sliver of hope I felt before the king’s speech, that maybe the EU will intervene and knock sense into Spanish heads. But it is more likely that they will do so only after the cracking of more Catalan bones, by which time it may be too late. One death at the hands of the king’s police, one martyr for the Catalan cause, and anything could happen. Rajoy calls Puigdemont a traitor but if the conflict descends into widespread violence, and if Catalonia does eventually achieve independence, history may record that the bigger traitor was Rajoy.
John Carlin writes* for the Spanish newspaper El País. *Used to.