Five years after the high point of the independence process, a new period of reflection opens on the lessons that can be drawn from that historical experience and how Catalonia should face its future. Six perspectives from different spheres of society invite today, from this recent past, to draw, with different tones, new political and social landscapes.
Andreu Mas-Colell, who was Minister of Economy from 2010 to 2016 in the government of Artur Mas, affirms that the main lesson of the procés is that Europe does not accept "any alteration of external or internal borders", so the sovereignist agenda " it is not feasible” if the objective is “to culminate in independence” or the creation of a new European state. The horizon, therefore, is far beyond Madrid, in the European Union five years ago, and now.
The historian, a specialist in Catalanism, Joan Esculies, "for whom geography rules", agrees on this. Catalonia, when thinking about its future, "has to know where it is geopolitically" and what role it can play in the Mediterranean and in Europe, he says.
For his part, the medievalist José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, a researcher on Mediterranean culture, highlights that the independence movement "should have understood that it could not go in the opposite direction to Europe and had to have raised the issue better", since the Union European, he recalls, "was not up to the task" and observed the Catalan "drive" with growing suspicion.
"That convulsion did not take into account the voices that demanded prudence and, like other times throughout its history, Catalonia let itself be carried away by the rauxa", explains Ruiz-Domènec. An argument that Esculies expands by contrasting the desire of a part of society with a social reality that has become "very complex" in recent years, especially after the arrival of a wave of immigrants from all over the world.
"Catalonia is difficult to govern without taking into account this new immigration," says Esculies, for whom the independence movement suffered from excessive voluntarism. "In the social field, you have to look for solutions without going into direct confrontation when you know you can't win," he reiterates, adding that if the procés failed it was not because of the response of the Spanish State, but because it lacked the necessary people to will culminate Many Catalans emotionally linked to the old immigration, an entire sector of the population “that until then had remained silent”, were clearly opposed to independence when October 2017 arrived.
Those long convulsive moments have left a residue that also invites reflection from the hand of a citizenry not so involved in the day-to-day monitoring of politics. The archaeologist Eudald Carbonell, who declares himself a communist and independentist, considers that the process has been broken and that what has happened has to be metabolized. We have to work, he explains, so that identity, the Catalan identity, is diversity. A project cannot be developed in which only part of the population feels incumbent, he indicates, since it is not necessary to go towards a process of social homogenization but where wealth is diversity. “We are in this moment: we have to admit diversity.” A plurality that, in his opinion, Spain has always denied in its relationship with Catalonia.
Carme Portaceli, director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, also speaks about diversity as reality and richness, something that professor Ruiz-Domènec associates with cosmopolitan life and the creative energy of the Barcelona of transition. Society has become polarized, it seems that everything has to be black or white, which generates "an ignorance that does not help to understand each other", analyzes the playwright.
For Portaceli, it is essential to recover the capacity and the possibility of debating, in a reference that goes beyond the debate on the procés. And he vindicates ideology not as a closed box but as a way of living and coexisting with others. In Catalonia there was polarization, but he considers that the page is turning and now a vital moment is taking shape where walking together is "going for the better, getting to know, knowing".
From the academic field, Joan Guàrdia, rector of the University of Barcelona, claims the identity character of this Diada five years after 1-O. The Onze de Setembre is always a symbol of national identity, he underlines, but in a way in which a project to "rethink the country" is essential.
Guàrdia places as a reference the Congrés de Cultura Catalana, which put in the seventies "the ideas and projects to build a national identity of Catalonia". And he proposes a new congress of culture that, away from the noise and the political "mess", redefines new shared objectives.
As for the future prospects in the face of a "profound change of civilization" on a global scale and after the local "catastrophe" of 2017, "which has undoubtedly left its mark", in the words of Ruiz-Domènec, Catalonia should, according to the Professor Mas-Colell, "deeply play the card of a Europe in which the borders are diluted" and contribute to inclining the majority of the government in Spain towards the recognition of the plurinational nature of the State.
In this sense, Esculies recommends, "beyond the wishes" of a part of society, to be aware of "the levers that Catalonia has to increase its self-government", which is the common denominator among the majority of Catalan citizens. . Optimistic, Ruiz-Domènec says he is sure that “the Catalan spirit always regenerates itself and there will be a comeback”. And he recalls that at other historical crossroads, such as the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Catalonia knew how to take advantage of its potential and modernize itself. “The programmatic self-absorption will be left behind and Catalonia will focus more on the place it occupies in the western Mediterranean than on its identity to rediscover the splendid path that began in Barcelona in the seventies”, he concludes.
Looking at the city of Barcelona, in these hot days on the eve of September 11, Carme Portaceli speaks of the need to regain freshness.
