Rafael Jorba – 11/11/2019
I leave the study of the electoral data for the demographers. I will focus on the analysis of the identity spiral, of the reciprocal hate speech, which has catapulted Vox. The ideological axis – that of the programmatic proposals – has been overshadowed by the identity axis, by the auction between the two nationalisms on stage – Catalan and Spanish -, with citizens, on one side and on the other, also those of in the middle, as emotional hostages of this pseudo-patriotic bid.
The responsibility of Catalan sovereignty is capital. Let’s make memory. On the theoretical level, it not only abdicated the majority political catalanism – the defense of self-government and Spanish plurality – but also broke the social consent that would have been set in the Transition and that the ‘president’ Tarradellas summed up in the formula: “ Citizens of Catalonia! ” The right to decide placed ritual democracy at the frontispiece of Catalan politics, ended deliberative democracy and banalized secession, that is, the political divorce by which a part of our fellow citizens are declared foreigners.
The right not to have to decide
Catalanism was inseparable from Hispanic interventionism. “The Catalans – said recently in Barcelona the essayist Michael Ignatieff – have the right not to have to decide. No one can force them to choose between father and mother, between one State and another, between one identity and another, because most humans have several identities. Politics should not force us to choose between one of them, but avoid existential and painful decisions. ”
Miquel Iceta summed me up in his day the bankruptcy that the ‘procés’ produced in his party: “The PSC was born so that we didn’t have to decide.” The path chosen was that of fracture – 9-N consultation, plebiscitary elections, 1-O referendum – and led to a country tied with itself. A sum of ritual and dual democracy that led to a dead end: one half of the citizens very happy and the other half very angry. It was the politicians’ obligation to put a consensual proposal on the table that could result in a large majority of citizens being moderately satisfied.
And, on a practical level, the ‘procés’ roadmap was not only written from unilateralism but also broke the Catalan legality itself: a self-determination referendum law, which regulated the electoral system, and which did not have the majority of two thirds that the Statute requires for this task, and a law of legal transience, which also did not have this qualified majority that the Statute provides for its reform. Neither the 1-O nor the subsequent declaration of independence complied with the rules of the game; neither the Spanish nor the Catalan.
The reaffirmation of the unilateral route – “Ho tornarem a fer!” And the double language of Quim Torra in the face of episodes of violence have fueled Spanish nationalism: the PP-responsible for the bankruptcy of the constitutional consent that produced the appeal against Catalonia the Statute – and, above all, Vox, the faction of the extreme right that historically had incorporated its electorate and that has now been emancipated. Along the way, with the contest of Citizens, Vox had been bleached in the policy of regional and municipal pacts.
Recover democratic values
Paradoxically, the main victim of the identity auction was Albert Rivera, the senior auctioneer, who was born in Catalonia and grew up in Spain at the hands of anti-Catalanism. Then, in the failed investiture of Pedro Sánchez, he threw away the tradition of the hinge party that characterizes his European liberal partners, dusted off an antiparty joseantonian discourse – “neither red nor blue” – and lashed out at the “Sánchez band ”: Communists, independentists, batasunos … Santiago Abascal – the original script is always better than the copy – now reaps its fruits.
And here we are: trapped in the identity spiral. The first obligation of the PSOE and the PP – the parties that claim to be heirs of the 1978 Constitution – is to rescue the citizens, also the Catalans, of hate speech. It is necessary to recover democratic values, with the citizenship pact – shared rights and duties – as a flag and a dose of national secularism: stop regulating and facing identities. The honorable Members should follow that invitation of François Mitterrand in his farewell address of the European Parliament: “What I ask of you is almost impossible, since we have to overcome our own history; if we do not overcome it, a rule will be imposed: nationalism is war! ”
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