Juan-José López Burniol, 20 July 2024
Image: Mané Espinosa
On 26 February 2001, Pasqual Maragall published an article in El País whose title said it all: ‘Madrid is leaving’. Years later, on 6 July 2003, he insisted on the same idea: ‘Madrid has gone’. In both texts he put forward the same idea: the progressive disconnection from Spain by Madrid, its capital. And both texts, much quoted, inspire the title of this one: ‘Catalonia is leaving’, in which I record a personal perception: that a significant part of Catalan society and, within it, a good part of its ruling class is in the process of disconnecting from Spain, if it has not already disconnected from it entirely, while leaving intact the necessary connections to defend its interests.
The first time I put forward this idea, precisely in Madrid and before a small audience of academics, journalists and professionals, my thesis met with little success. Disagreement was immediately aroused. In any case,’ they objected, ’a minority of Catalans will be leaving, but not all of them, and, furthermore, we must never lose sight of the Catalans who have emigrated from the interior, who want to remain Spanish. Both objections are reasonable, but I would qualify them by pointing out that, except on the odd occasion, these Catalan citizens who do not feel detached from Spain generally have little media presence.
I insist, therefore, on my idea: a part of Catalan society and its leaders – who are those who today set the tone for Catalonia’s future – lack affectio societatis for Spain, have no sense of belonging to it and do not feel linked to other Spaniards by bonds of solidarity. I am not judging; I am simply stating. Has it always been like this? Perhaps not. In his tribute to José Álvarez Junco, Pueblo y nación, Stephen Jacobson asks, with respect to Spain, why nationalist movements arose in a state that, until the last decades of the 19th century, was among the most cohesive in Europe. But what difference does it make?
The only rational way out is a federal state; a confederation would destroy the state.
The reader may wonder why I touch on this ungrateful subject. The reason is that it serves as an argument in support of my view that self-determination for Catalonia should not be rejected outright. Since 2008, when I published ‘Spain from a Corner’, I have argued that: 1) The only rational solution to Spain’s territorial problem is a federal State, which develops and culminates the current autonomous State; while, on the contrary, a confederation would destroy the State.2) The only viable alternative to the federal State is the self-determination of those autonomous communities that really want to leave. That is why Federalism or self-determination is the subtitle of my book. To put it crudely: if necessary, the secessionist gangrene must be cut off so that a State that legally articulates the Spain that wants to remain united can survive. It would be impossible to opt for the entelechy of a confederal state.
Many readers will think that this formula – federal state or self-determination – would hasten the disintegration of Spain. I do not think so for three reasons: 1) What would be lethal is to continue with continuous concessions, extracted in a bilateral debate by the separatist communities. 2) If the right to self-determination were admitted, the problem would cease to be Spain’s and would become the problem of the community that wants self-determination, since it would be divided into two opposing parts. 3) It is hard for an old state, with many centuries behind it, to admit the right to self-determination, but history shows that any state that recognises such a right is strengthened, as it will no longer be subjected to continuous blackmail from the community that claims to want to leave, when the truth is that almost all those that ‘want to leave’ usually talk about shared sovereignty, associated states and other formulas that conceal the desire to go it alone for whatever suits them, without completely cutting ties with the state for whatever benefits them.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20240720/9815792/catalunya.html
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