Daniel Arasa 9/06/2020
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.
I hope Karl Marx does not get angry for paraphrasing his call inciting proletarians of the world to unite. I throw it at the Catalan non pro-independence groups and little-groups that have been in contact and in conversation for a long time, but seem unable to find a way to unify the action. “Units per avançar”, “Lliures”, “Poblet group”, some remains and mutations of Convergence, and others, count little separately, but together may have political weight.
Now is a good time for the merger or the creation of a joint electoral platform to retain specificities.
I do not express just a wish because I consider it a need for the good of Catalonia. But, above all, because they now have a favorable situation. Unexpectedly for everyone, facilitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
I go on to argue it. The pro-independence “Process” was already very touched months ago. Everyone saw that it was in the doldrums, with no prospects. It was even captured by his own promoters and media collaborators, many of whom acknowledged it privately even though they denied it in public and continued to inflame their followers.
The “Process” is in itself a systematic agitation for politicians and the media, especially the public of the Generalitat and a few others also subsidized, who for years have dedicated all hours and all minutes, and who dragged by force to talk about it to the rest of the media, making the topic ubiquitous, as if nothing else in the world was important.
But the Covid-19 pandemic has arrived and has broken this dynamic. Has the reader noticed that the world has not spoken about Puigdemont for three months and it is foreseeable that it will continue like this for a certain time? This is deadly for those politicians who live on permanent turmoil. The commotion on the street, meanwhile, is reduced to that group of “pirates” who cut the Meridiana Avenue every day and some more who are concentrated before the Central Government Delegation. They are residual actions, without global incidence. In the coming times there may be agitation, but derived from the dire consequences of the coronavirus, not from nationalist demands.
It does not mean that the pro-independence movement has ended, no that much, but it has accelerated the end of a “Process” that already had serious weaknesses. Agitation and subsidized organizations such as ANC and Òmnium will be able to mobilize people because they have many supporters, but they know that it will have nothing to do with the great concentrations of other times.
But there is still much more, in Catalonia, because of the pandemic, some people have realized that there are more important and worrying things in life than the pro-independence “Process” and that it is not justified to continue with so much loss of energy and time.
More decisive, however, is the effect on an international scale. Until now, few foreigners were interested in the Catalan “Process” despite the image that Catalan public TV3 wanted to give, but with the inclement way in which the Covid-19 has hit – and still hits – everywhere, and in view of the very serious economic consequences derived, it is naive to think that in Europe someone will be interested in the Catalan “Process”, at least in the next two or three years.
It is not new either, but it is now clearer. Faced to facts, taking into account the new situation, believe what you want, no one with his head in its place can believe that in a period of a legislature or even two (4 or 8 years) Catalonia can be independent.
For both reasons, therefore, to continue on the path followed since 2012 is to maintain political fiction and go to the ruin of Catalonia. A part of the nationalist electorate has been so abducted by these years of propaganda bombardment that even though the chances of achieving independence are nil they will continue to vote for pro-independence parties. It is unavoidable.
But surely a certain percentage of those who, for example, voted CiU, who wanted powerful self-government and the development of Catalan culture, also understand that doing politics is to move with possibilism and pragmatism, getting there where you can reasonably be, solving waiting lists for hospitals, building infrastructures, having an industrial policy, improving teaching and research, attend elders dependency. Not only call, promote demonstrations and maintain a climate of permanent tension with the Spanish Government, whoever is in office.
That part of the most realistic electorate that feels Catalanist will not vote again for “Spanish” parties, but they can support a Catalanist option that does not intend to break with Spain. After a decade of collapse of no pro-independence Catalanism, I understand that it is a good time for the comeback. The range of the electorate that these unified groups can attract goes far beyond the 300,000 votes previously attributed to them.
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