MARCOS LAMELAS. BARCELONA 29/12/2019 05:00
In networks this Christmas has revived the debate about who should have Catalan nationality in case Catalonia achieves independence. Or what is the same, what to do with more than three million Catalans who do not want it, that 47.9% of citizens of Catalonia that according to the CEO oppose the sovereign project. The good news is that for the first time the problem arises instead of ignoring it, which is what political parties usually do with Catalans who do not think like them. The bad thing is that, in case of winning, what is considered is to leave this group without Catalan nationality. The proposal has been rejected as supremacist, even, for a good part of independentists, but the truth is that for several years the Generalitat has endorsed with its acts this type of positions.
It is also true that the positions in favor of withdrawing a future Catalan nationality to the majority of the population have not been very significant between personalities, while those who have opposed have been much more prominent figures of independentism, such as television producer Toni Soler or the ERC deputy in Congress, Gabriel Rufián.
It all started with a tweet from one of the founders of the Koiné group, famous for wanting the Castilian to stop being an official language in Catalonia, Josep María Virgili i Ortiga, a retired high school professor and linguist. Virgili wrote: “Some of you who call yourself ‘non-independentist Catalans’, you are not really Catalan. You are something else as respectable as you want (needless to say), but Catalans are not. I would say that what you are is Spanish. residents in Catalonia “. The cursed adjective, “settlers,” was in the air.
From here, the journalist Pilar Carracelas, following the path of Pilar Rahola, famous Catalan independentist tertullian of Catalan TV, supported the linguist on Twitter ensuring that the Catalan “demos”, that is, the Catalans with the right to vote, had to be limited to those who voted the 1-O. That is, 2.28 million people. On a census in the last general of 5.3 million people, you just have to do basic arithmetic calculations.
Other radicals had already supported before this option as Santiago Espot, president of a Catalan association that encourages denouncing traders who do not label in Catalan. Espot in his statement already stood on the ground of segregation: “In Catalonia we the Catalans must command. The colonizers must be treated with the same contempt and scorn they use with us. They do not deserve anything else. They can take the way out from Diagonal to Zaragoza. “
The support of the Generalitat
The problem with these types of positions is that they have been endorsed by the Generalitat for years. There are hundreds of examples of how non-independentist Catalans are ignored and belittled. The most notable of them was Quim Torra and not only for his famous articles but for the endorsement of the Slovenian route in 2018 as a way to reach independence. After independence, Slovenia solved the problem with what was called “the erased”, 18,000 Yugoslav citizens residing in Slovenia lost their rights. They were deleted from all records. An authentic administrative ethnic cleansing. They lost not only their rights, but also pensions or savings. At present, the claims are still in process, with sentences in favor of international justice. One day they take away your nationality and the next they remove you from the property registry. Both the Council of Europe and the UN have recognized and condemned this phenomenon.
A year before the pronouncement in favor of the Slovenian route, in 2017, the then spokesman of the Generalitat, Jordi Turull insisted again and again that the Catalans who did not support independence were “subjects”, not citizens. He made these statements from the lectern of the press room of the Palau de la Generalitat.
Sovereignty ensures that the proposal to withdraw nationality to constitutionalists is a minority but the Generalitat has endorsed the lack of plurality
The same happened in the Parliament when the disconnection laws were passed, which were the preamble to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (DUI) of October 2017. Again, half of Catalonia was ignored and acted to make it appear that a good part of the citizenship literally did not exist.
The same path
Torra and Carles Puigdemont have gone the same way. For example. Torra promoted this year the Advisory Council for the Constituent Debate, which was to generate a new Constitution. This body was chaired by Lluís Llach. In their day they promised to be “a republican tool to advance in accordance with the right to self-determination of the Catalan people and the will of the vast majority”, in the words of their own promoters. Well, this body did not have a single non-independence member. Never has such a minority majority been seen.
The same thing happened when Puigdemont wanted to launch his parallel parliament, the so-called Assembly of Elected Positions. More than 2,000 people gathered. How many of them were not independentists? None. With this way of building the new country it is not uncommon for them to emerge exalted with initiatives such as withdrawing citizenship from many of the Catalans.
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