29/08/2019
Reader´s opinion
That Quim Torra does not have the capacity to hold a position of an importance such as being President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, is demonstrated by his manifest ineffectiveness and paralysis beyond any other aspect of the symbolism generated by any activity or entity related to the “procés”. Gestures, words and little else.
Meanwhile, each day the utility of the institution is increasingly questioned, but this is dangerous because it can end up raising the idea that the institution does not exist, because the in(actions) do not affect people’s day to day, which at the end is the objective that our institutions and money of taxpayers should serve.
It took a lot of effort to recover the Generalitat, with all its limitations and criticisms, so that now a handful of incompetent politicians throwing away the reputation of the institution because of its inaction and recklessness. They would like to build a new state when they are not able to manage an autonomous community. The contradiction is flagrant.
But, besides being incompetent, Quim Torra is also an unworthy President. He has already spoken extensively about his writings and comments on social networks before being President, with clearly supremacist tones. But Mr. Torra has continued to show his unworthiness in the exercise of his position. It has not hidden or moderated, or has not done so in the manner required by the position and the institution.
That is why I say that Torra is an unworthy President. Unworthy with all the letters. Taking just one example (one more, and there is already a good handful), his last gesture: the text of a tweet published by Mr. Torra himself on August 24 on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Paris of Nazism and the role played by Spanish anti-fascist fighters, with “the Nine” as a true example of dignity, parading through the Champs Elysées filled to the flag, with thousands of people receiving soldiers as heroes.
Textually, the tweet said the following: “I regret to have to specify that the Spanish role in the Second World War was the sending of thousands of soldiers of the Blue Division to fight alongside Hitler (1941-43). The republican soldiers of The Nine continued fighting precisely against fascism and the dictator Franco’s Spain “.
The intention of Mr. Torra is clear: to continue with the dissemination of the idea that Spain and the Spaniards, per se, represent an undemocratic people aligned with fascism, because let’s not forget: a good part of Catalan nationalism bases its discourse on the attack on Spain and the Spaniards, with victimhood and manipulation as tools of first necessity.
That is why he unfairly and interestedly speaks of the “central role.” It is true that the Franco regime sent thousands of soldiers of the Blue Division to defend the Nazi regime (it must be tank into account that about two thousand were Catalan), but we must also remember that many other Spanish soldiers fought in the antifascist resistance, and the example of “the Nine” should be studied in all secondary schools. 160 brave formed this company, while an estimated 4,000 Spaniards participated in the insurrection of Paris and the liberation of the city.
Torra fails deliberately to remember that these fighters were Spanish, deliberately confusing “Spain” with “the dictator Franco’s Spain” while in no case equate “Germany” with “Hitler”, obviously.
Of course, he wants to make people believe the idea that all of Catalonia was anti-Franco when Spain in its entirety was in favor of Franco’s totalitarian regime.
Meanwhile, the processist propaganda machinery continues at full capacity, even spreading the thesis of revisionist pseudohistorians, some of which are quite delusional.
Someday we will have to do a study of how the processism has wanted (also) to appropriate the anti-Franco struggle and symbology and the defense of democracy in our country, when a non-negligible part of processism activists were of enough age to fight in the anti-Franco and did not move a single finger. Be it for fear, something entirely understandable, or for mere adherence to the regime.
A part of Catalan nationalism “forgets” that in Catalonia, during Franco, there were also Catalan supporters of Franco’s regime. And not few. Or when they do not talk enough about the large number of Franco’s mayors who, from one day to the next, went on to appear in the 1979 municipal lists on the Convergence lists and continued to hold office already in democracy.
Not a word about the Company (Tercio) of Our Lady of Montserrat and her role in the Civil War. Neither of the large number of Francoist Catalans who supported the Franco regime until the end, many of them belonging to families that, oh surprise!, today support the processism.
There is little talk about this, nor that the ranks of anti-Franco activism were full of people who emigrated from different areas of Spain, defending Catalonia’s democracy and national freedoms. You just have to take a look at the number of people retaliated by the Franco regime by provinces and one will realize that not only Catalonia suffered fascist barbarism. Moreover, and by way of example, the three provinces with the most retaliations, by far, were those of Córdoba, Sevilla and Málaga.
Torra’s tweet comes in response to an unfortunate tweet from the Spanish Ministry of Justice, which said that “Spain had a crucial role in the release of @Paris 75 years ago.” It should be clarified that Spain in 1945 was a state with a totalitarian regime allied with Nazi Germany. That is why it would have been more correct to speak of “Spanish Republicans” (who were exiled and also fought against the Franco regime) than of “Spain”. The ministry also told, in another tweet, that “it is the first time in 75 years that a representative of the Spanish Government officially attends the celebration of the liberation of Paris to value the Contributions the exiles to this historical event that was crucial in the outcome of World War II “. It saddens me and I am ashamed that more than 40 years of democracy have had to pass before a government representative has participated in the commemoration of the liberation of Paris. It is necessary that once the Spanish Republicans who fought in the antifascist resistance receive an official tribute and recognition from their country as they deserve.
To use the memory of the anti-fascist struggle by manipulating it in such a crude and brazen way for partisan interests as Mr. Quim Torra has done does not deserve another qualification than that of unworthy.
Until when this man will continue to be the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia?
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