Ángel Munárriz, 16 August 2024
Image: Pope Francis shakes hands with Salvador Illa, in a meeting held in March of this year in Vatican City .VATICAN MEDIA (POOL / GETTY)
The Christ of Illa
This time it was not a comment on his private beliefs, but a purely political statement. Solemn, even. At the swearing-in of his councillors on Monday, Salvador Illa appealed to the “Christian humanism” of his government. Earlier, on Thursday, in the investiture debate, he had already mentioned this tradition as one of his intellectual backgrounds. This was a matter of course. A practising Catholic, a frequent prayer, educated at the ‘Escola Pia’ in Granollers, the president has never hidden his creed. But what happened on Monday was something else, he went further: he linked his entire executive branch to a heritage that is cultural, but also religious, thus treading on the always swampy ground where politics and faith meet. An improvisation? ‘Not at all. Salvador never improvises’, says a PSC veteran.
This socialist, who has known Illa for more than a decade, attributes to him a threefold desire: to connect with the Catalan ‘tradition’ of ‘progressive Christianity’; to wink at the ‘orphan’ electorate of the former Convergència with ‘I am also Catholic’, in a manoeuvre consistent with his openness to moderate nationalism; and to show, ‘in a message that goes beyond Catalonia’, that there is a way to vindicate religion ‘other than that which appeals to Christianity in an exclusionary way, especially against Muslims’, as part of the right would do, be it with a discourse that is ‘different from that which appeals to the Christian in an exclusionary way, above all against Muslims’, as part of the right would do, either with a purely religious-based discourse or with the subterfuge of ‘Western values’, typical of Aliança Catalana. From the president’s team, a collaborator connects the allusion to ‘Christian humanism’ with the debate on immigration, more alive than ever in Europe and Spain (and in Catalonia, of course). And he stresses that Illa presented it as being linked to ‘social democracy’, together with which it constitutes a basic pairing in the construction of the EU. No stone was left unturned.
The PSC veteran, who prefers his name not to be published, emphasised the influence that the French Catholic humanist thinker Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) had on Illa, who holds a degree in Philosophy. And he extends this influence to a sector of the PSC headed by Josep María Carbonell, appointed in 2022 president of the Blanquerna Foundation by the archbishop of Barcelona, Juan José Omella. It is ‘wrong’, he adds, to interpret Illa’s Christian emphasis as seeking to please the Christian Democrats of Units per Avançar, his allied party, heir to Unió. Nor, he continues, is it a question of competing with Oriol Junqueras, another practicing Catholic: ‘Junqueras is a rarity in ERC and the importance of Units is relative. Where there are many disoriented Catholics is in Junts, whose followers are tempted by a way of understanding Christianity as a rejection of immigration in a homogeneous Catalonia. Illa offers himself as an alternative and tells them: ‘I am a Christian, like you, but my Christianity is not against anyone’’.
Amelia Sanchis, professor of Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Córdoba, who researches the connections between political and religious thought, contextualises Illa’s discourse in the ‘abandonment’ by the right, especially PP and Vox, of the ‘minimums’ of ‘Christian democracy’. Such neglect frees up space for a message of ‘social Christian’ content that Illa exploits, she analyses. ‘Since Ronald Reagan, a good part of the Western right has joined the marriage of moral conservatism – anti-feminist, anti-abortion – and economic neoliberalism. There is room for a discourse of Christian humanist inspiration from the left, although it arouses misgivings on the left itself’, she says, in a line of reasoning that she applies to Catalonia and the rest of Spain.
Although ‘it was never a powerful current’ in Spain, Christian democracy has now become ‘marginal’, agrees historian Ángel Luis López Villaverde, who cites as an exception the PNV and the odd figure in the PP, such as José Manuel García-Margallo. ‘In the PP and Vox, the notion of ‘social justice’, basic to Christian democracy and which Isabel Díaz Ayuso openly disavows, has disappeared. The appeal to Christianity has basically become an identity tool to shield borders’, adds the author of ‘El poder de la Iglesia en la España contemporánea’ (The power of the Church in contemporary Spain) who, on the other hand, doubts that the left will be able to take advantage of this vacuum. ‘Illa’s is an ambiguous allusion, difficult to translate politically, which is linked to a Europeanist, democratic and liberal memory, but already very blurred’, he points out. The neglect of Christian democratic postulates observed by Sanchis and López Villaverde is compatible with the maintenance of ‘Christian humanism’ in the statutes of the PP. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party, through a spokesman, declines to evaluate Illa’s use of this expression: ‘Everyone can be inspired by what they consider appropriate’.
Sanchis acknowledges that it may seem ‘paradoxical’ that the allusion to Christianity should come from a socialist leader in a particularly secularised territory. According to a March report by the Ferrer i Guàrdia Foundation, Catalonia is the region where the highest percentage of people declare themselves irreligious (51.3%). It is also where the lowest percentage of people tick the church box on their income tax (16%). But the ‘paradox’ is ‘only apparent’, she adds. ‘In Catalonia, a cultural Christianity is still widespread in progressive and nationalist sectors. The Catalan Church,’ she explains, ’has always had a national component, even a nationalist one, and has a history of certain opposition to Francoism at least since the 1970s’.
To appear close to the Church, as Illa does, can be seen as a sign of Catalanism rather than of pure religious affiliation’, explains Sanchis, who recalls that “the abbey of Montserrat was a symbol of anti-Franco resistance” and that in 1981 the Jesuits founded ‘Cristianisme i Justícia’, a centre for progressive studies. Sanchis cites the figure of Alfonso Comín (1933-1980), co-founder of ‘Cristianos por el Socialismo’, as a ‘point of reference’ that connects the Christian and socialist traditions, something that Gregorio Peces-Barba would do at the state level.
Carlos Rodríguez López-Brea, professor of Contemporary History at the Carlos III University, points in the same direction to explain the reasons for Illa’s insistence on ‘Christian humanism’: ‘The Catalan Church, even with its relative weakness, maintains a transversality that connects it with progressive sectors – including CC OO – and nationalists, in a similar way to what happens in the Basque Country’. In times of exclusionary radicalisation of the right in religious terms,’ he adds, “it makes sense to appeal to humanist values that in Catalonia refer to figures such as [the Benedictine monk] Hilari Raguer, in Spain to a tradition that includes the social Christianity in which Felipe González politicised himself, and in Europe to prominent names from its foundation [Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer o Alcide De Gasperi]”.
The PSOE’s Federal Group of Christian Socialists is enthusiastic about the new president. ‘Illa gives us a lot of visibility and a plus of quality’, says Cristóbal López, coordinator of the group, which depends on the Secretariat of Memory and Secularism, directed by Manuel García, precisely from the PSC. At 55 years of age, López, leader of the Centro de Sevilla group – that of Alfonso Guerra, Juan Espadas and former mayor Antonio Muñoz – is confident that Illa’s rise will remind the PSOE that Christians are ‘the soul of the party, although sometimes we are not seen’. ‘We are not a current, nor do we want quotas, but we want it to be understood that socialism is based on fraternity, and without fraternity it is impossible’, says López, who considers Illa to be one of the party’s “Christian references”, along with the minister María Jesús Montero and historical figures such as José Bono, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Ramón Jáuregui and Rosa Aguilar. In 2002, ‘Cristianos Socialistas’ presented Illa with its Fernando de los Ríos prize, an award named after a figure for whom the president has a special appreciation, as a member of his team points out, who vindicates the ‘revolution of respect’ held as the Republican minister’s motto.
Other voices are much less fervent about Christ’s entry onto the scene. ‘In the midst of a xenophobic offensive, it is pertinent to appeal to humanism, a doctrine that comes from the Renaissance and vindicates human dignity. But it has to be without surnames. If you add ‘Christian’, Vox or the PP can say: ‘We agree’,’ says Juanjo Picó, president of ‘ Europa Laica’, for whom the PSOE’s pending task is the separation of Church and State, with the repeal of the Acuerdos con el Vaticano, and not to give speeches that are “unnecessary, ambiguous and excluding”.
On Monday in X, Podemos MEP Irene Montero attacked Ramon Espadaler, secretary general of Units per Avançar and minister of Justice, calling him ‘anti-abortionist, transphobic and anti-feminist’. To no one’s surprise, the PSOE uses the vote of feminists and the left to send an anti-abortionist, transphobic and anti-feminist.
Bipartisanship means that you vote PP or PSOE, the right rules and the chauvinists rule. https://t.co/DeNEOIzqwh
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