26 May 2020
CONVERSES DE CATALUNYA – We constitute a group of people from different experiences, united by the will to work together to favor the configuration of a large central space in Catalan politics. We propose to stimulate a new political culture based on positive competition, transactional dialogue and the search for agreements to generate positive synergies between political, social, cultural and economic actors.
Catalonia has always encouraged to strengthen its self-government and at the same time project itself to the world. It must be said that in positive terms this last condition has been lost in a great extend. Since independence has become the only government flag, our country has been excluded from international and particularly European dialogue. The only place where a certain presence is registered is in the courts of Belgium, Germany and Scotland. It is not a good balance.
The disgrace of the current pandemic has paradoxically offered an opportunity for small countries to become a world reference. The most spectacular case is that of Taiwan. This semi-state, which is not recognized by most nations due to pressure from China, always tries to stick its head out to try to get out of the drowning to which the Asian giant is subjecting it. In part, it has achieved this by rebuilding a brilliant economy out of nowhere, and now it has become a world benchmark because of the way and success with which it has faced Covid-19, which has practically not affected this country, despite the proximity to China and the importance of trade and people.
Catalonia, which has a high level of medical intelligence, could have deployed initiatives that would have made it a benchmark on a lesser scale in Europe. It was not so. The management has been at least clumsy and the first initiative of its own, the confinement of Igualada, has resulted in a high number of infected and dead. At this point, the serious incongruity that Barcelona is the only capital of Spain isolated from its province is a great error.
The reason is simple, the Generalitat wanted to decide the territorial units to apply for each phase, determined that it was the health area. And since it is prohibited in phase 1 to transfer from one territory to another, and the city of Barcelona is itself a unit, the neighbor of Barcelona cannot change the sidewalk to take the metro because it is located within the limit of next quarter-health area L’Hospitalet . When they claimed that this was the territorial unit, did no one think that this consequence would occur? It is an example of how deficient the application of self-government capabilities is.
Catalonia has always encouraged to strengthen its self-government and at the same time project itself in the world, but this last condition has been lost in a great extend.
Also, this weekend, President Torra has gone off the hook making public a long list of demands, largely justified. The question is why he does it so wrong. If he really intended to obtain any result, the logical thing would have been that he had used from the first moment, to take advantage of the five negotiations, five, that Sánchez has had to do to approve the respective states of alarm.
In this dynamic negotiation, until reaching the Bildu scandal, everyone has taken advantage of the situation From the modest Teruel Exists to the PNV, which has taken the lion’s share. But no, instead of negotiating, the Catalan parties have made statements of principle, and now that the possibility of starting the government’s concessions seems practically exhausted, it is when it raises the flag of concrete demands. It really seems as if what we like is that they ignore us, and so we can enjoy our misfortune. It would be a political version of masochism.
As if that were not enough, now the Generalitat is launching a tourist promotion campaign in the rest of Spain to attract visitors. After having told them what they have been told for years (“Spain robs us, Spain kills us”). The minds that design all these performances really are worth studying.
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