Eternal return
Antoni Puigverd
03/23/2021 23: 39 Updated to 03/23/2021 11:49 PM
Image of several flags of Spain and stars on the balconies of Barcelona Llibert Teixidó
When one tries to get a little bit away from the heat of battle, one clearly perceives the existence of undercurrents that will never go away. These or those will win the elections, but the undercurrents will persist. The two great battles of today’s Spain are the same that were fought in the Civil War (although of course made up in the fashion of the times): the territorial conflict, on the one hand, and on the other, the insomniac dispute between the two Spains.
The territorial conflict has been resolved in a thousand ways: short (Primo) and long (Franco) dictatorships, federal or unitary republics, constitutional monarchies. The wound is still here: oozing pus. Once the Basque exception is accepted (the agreement, which even Franco partially respected), decentralization is accepted for the rest, but it is not admitted that it implies the shielding of diversity (Statute 2); and this despite the fact that the Constitution enshrined diversity in a pact that was not only ideological, but also territorial. The judiciary brand has been weakening the territorial pact until it has become an unrecognizable thing that enchants those who identify with a French-style Spain (the vast majority of Spanish speakers) but scares the various historical minorities, who need real instruments to defend their identity and their culture.
There is ample basis to overcome folly, but not for the constitutional embrace
The judiciary brand has formalized the change of the Constitution. It presents itself as a neutral, apolitical, aseptic power, but it participates, together with the army, in the historical nucleus of a State that is confused with the nation. We must add the high civil service and the economic and media powers associated with the BOE to be able to rename it as a deep state: a core of power that synthesizes three visions of Spain, the traditional, the conservative and the liberal. Ayuso, in the wake of Aznar, wants to reunite them in a single party. Thanks to the octopus arms of the deep state, this block commands the essentials even when it is divided and loses the election.
The first 20 years of democracy were a trompe l’oeil. With the death of Franco, the deep current of the Spanish right lost its flow, disconcerted. As soon as it recovered “without complexes” came the Aznarian rectification and the Catalan rebound. It is known that in the trenches the foolish triumph. Referendum!… they said. Go for them! …the other side replied. Communism or freedom, Ayuso says now. Fascism will not pass, Iglesias replies. There is ample cultural and social basis for overcoming folly (hence the allure of centrist rhetoric). But there is not one to really take the step that the Constitution announced: a balancing and multicentric Spain that favors, like intelligent Switzerland, its diversity. We will never advance towards this Spain, we will always return to the quarrel, to the shock, to the conflict. Each side hopes, not in renewing the pact, but in crushing the enemy. Catalans will dream of ‘tortillas’, but nothing is more popular in Spain than ‘tortas’[cakes/blows].
https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20210323/6604747/eterno-retorno.html
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