Fidel Masreal – Barcelona – Monday, 05/25/2020 – 08:47
The ’president’ Quim Torra, during one of his speeches in the Parliament. / PARLIAMENT OF CATALUNYA
The pandemic reaffirms political polarization.
Comín affirms that the script of ERC in Madrid “has been blown up” and Cs advocates for more coordination between autonomous regions
The economist Dani Rodrik asks himself in a recent article if the coronavirus will serve to remake the world. The question can be applied to Catalan politics, centered in the last decade on the sovereignty pulse. Invocations to strengthen cooperation and collaboration in all institutions and organizations are constant, but how do the different actors at stake in Catalonia understand the word cooperation?
First case. The Federalistes d’Esquerres collective, in a publication, concludes that the ideal system for facing the future is federalism. “There are no valid sovereignties: the governance of our societies and the ability to face critical situations such as the one we are living through require cooperation, integration and homogeneity of action criteria … It is time for federal virtues”, it points out.
Second example. The member of Catalan Parliament of Cs, Nacho Martín Blanco, highlights the “cooperation between autonomies in health, education and social services” although he regrets “that there is no single health identity card for all of Spain”, based on the principle of “loyalty”. Centralizing? “Subsidiarity yes, but there are aspects that should be centralized”. He maintains that the Spanish model is already a “de facto” federal one.
Another thesis. The ‘ex-regional minister’ of the Government and leader of the Consell per la República, Toni Comín, is convinced that the pandemic has shown that “cooperation is not contrary to self-determination”. “It is more, it is the other way around, there can be no cooperation without respect for nations and their right to self-determination”, he defends, and rummages that “the government’s management has been very improvable and the conclusion of part of the independence movement is that If there were reasons before, now there are more. “
Comín insists on the thesis – “expressed in the wrong way”, he concedes – that in an independent Catalonia “there would have been fewer deaths”, because the confinement would have been taken place earlier. “It is an approximation from objectivity” And the Govern’s management? “The Health Department has not made everything perfect”
The ‘ex-regional minister’ adds that, in the face of the “centralist drift”, ERC’s script for the dialogue route “has been blown up”: “If they now want to change course, they must begin by acknowledging that they were wrong”.
Sovereignty self-criticism
Former JxCat member of Parliament and now head of the Dincat federation, Carles Campuzano, believes that the crisis “shows that integration and cooperation are needed more than ever, in the European context” And in the Spanish case, he considers that single command “in an administration that has not managed public services for decades, is absurd” And regarding whether the independence movement maintains its validity when invoking cooperation, he makes a self-criticism: “One of the intellectual weaknesses of the ‘procés’ is that it had no proposal regarding what link an independent Catalonia should have with the Spanish space. If we were independent, we should maintain European and Iberian cooperation and collaboration “.
Campuzano is pessimistic: “If there were powerful leaderships and looks here and there, it would be time to open things up, but seeing what is happening, nothing suggests that this could happen in the short term.”
Rodrik’s article concludes that the covid-19 crisis will not serve to remake the world. Each previous thesis will feel confirmed. Rodrik says: “Those who want more public powers and government will have many reasons to think that the crisis justifies their belief. And skeptics about governments and who denounce their incompetence will also see their previous opinions confirmed. Those who want greater global governance will argue that a stronger international public health regime might have reduced the costs of the pandemic. And those seeking stronger nation-states will point to the many ways that WHO appears to have mishandled its response. “
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