Jordi García-Petit, 7 September 2021
Pedro Sánchez (i) receives Pere Aragonès in June at Moncloa. (EFE)
Protect the non pro-independence Catalans!
The greatest political fraud perpetrated by independentists has been their appropriation of Catalonia. They speak and act on behalf of Catalonia, of all Catalans, but they are only a part of Catalonia. Although they look sweetened (as President Pere Aragonès), they remain unchanged because their “being” (the conceptual being of independentism) is intrinsically conflictive, it divides Catalonia at its roots.
They present their partisan confrontation with the institutions of the State as a conflict between Catalonia and Spain, which they cover with the insulting euphemism of “the State.” They understand bilaterality not as what it is – a relationship between governments or administrations – but as what they intend – the relationship between sovereignties, that of Catalonia (non-existent) versus that of Spain.
The conflict as so many times in the history of Catalonia is a conflict between Catalans. Nowadays, some want secession from Spain and others want to remain in Spain. That is the conflict, plus the social inequalities: between exploiters and exploited, between possessors and needy, between cultivated and ignorant, between the country and the city, etc., as in other societies.
To rivet the division they have launched their (multi) fallacious “52%” referring to the result of the 14F elections. Compulsive thugs, add to the percentage of 48.05% obtained by ERC, JxCat and the CUP, a 2.72% of the PDeCAT that was outside the Parliament and that, even declaring itself independentist, did not align with the unilateralism of the other three.
That sum is not even 52% but 50.77%. In addition, the applicable electoral law rewards the vote of the districts of countryside with respect to metropolitan areas. Independentists have 13 more deputies thanks to just over 28,000 votes. However, 50.77% only represents 25.66% of the electoral census of Catalonia – and a census is always lower than the total population. That a few enlightened leaders and the many living the story of independence intend to continue imposing their independence theses with that meager support is, in democratic terms, a monumental aberration.
They have raised an ideological tyranny that prevents, silences or distorts criticism of their dictates – “We are a nation”, “One people” -, of which they claim the definition and representation, they are not verified or debated .
Even accepting with reservations that represent more or less 50% of the expressed vote of the Catalans – with many reservations because in their current vote there is a “borrowed” vote -, have the 50% who do not share their identity postulates been asked whether do you feel part of that nation? Are the more than 1,900,000 Catalans at risk of poverty or social exclusion a nation? Will the more than 430,000 Catalan girls and boys in a state of child poverty be a nation? As a society we ride on a fiction from which one day we will have to get off.
Meanwhile, the non-pro-independence Catalans, with the same rights, have been made invisible, marginalized in their concerns and in many of their social, cultural and, for many, linguistic needs. Those Catalans do not exist for the civil spokesmen of the independence movement or for the insolent indifference of the CUP – that caricature of the left – or, even more serious, nor for the institutional spokesmen of Catalan Government.
The inequality between the one and the other is manifested in many domains, for example, independentists demand from Catalan government the “right to self-determination”, a demand that they magnify through the public and private media that feed on public money. Why do not the non-pro-independence Catalans have the same opportunities to claim for their right to stay in Spain? What a number would be mounted if they dared to raise it!
There will be a negotiation table between governments to which the Catalan government will attend with its sectarian approaches (those of the independentists). “Amnesty and self-determination”, as the “main and inalienable” point of Catalan Government, sums up sectarianism: an unfair amnesty, according to the law and by the intended beneficiaries, and an imaginary self-determination, which no State or international organization, none, recognizes in Catalonia .
The politically correct thing for Catalan government would be to call in Catalonia for the general interest convening two tables of parliamentary parties and with representative social and economic entities to negotiate with the Government of Spain a consensual relationship of real problems, of the many suffered by the population of Catalonia.
Trusting that this call will take place is vain hope. The rulers of Catalan government have a good grip on the exclusive (and excluding) representation of Catalonia and will not let it go even although there are more and more appeals to democracy and to general interest that raises its voice before the willful ignorance from the pro-independence Government.
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