“From 1580 to the day – wrote Ortega in España invertebrada (1921) –, everything that happens in Spain is decadence and disintegration. (…) It may be a coincidence, but the detachment of the last overseas possessions (1898) seems to be the signal for the beginning of intrapeninsular dispersion.” And so we are more than a century later: the Catalan and Basque nationalists condition all Spanish politics for their exclusive benefit without ever abdicating, whatever the concession made to them, their final objective: the independence of Catalonia and Euskadi.
Indeed, during the transition, Spain made a notable effort to channel the Catalan demand, going from a unitary and centralist State to an autonomous State, which is the incomplete and perfectible replica of a federal State, which represented a notable advance. . But it has been useless: forty years later, the confrontation is served again, by many agreements, tables and rapporteurs that are arbitrated. Concord has died: together we killed it and it died alone.
It's not the first time it happens. The attempt at the Second Republic also ended badly, whose drive to resolve the “Catalan problem” was personalized by Manuel Azaña. From his initial enthusiasm to his final desolate denunciation there is an abyss. This is how his late article “The libertarian insurrection and the Barcelona-Bilbao 'axis'” begins: “Our people are condemned to the fact that, with a monarchy or a republic, in peace or in war, under a unitary and assimilistic regime or under an autonomous regime , the Catalan question endures as a source of disturbances, of passionate discord, of injustices, whether committed by the State or committed against it."
This being the case, we must face reality as it is: knowing that radical nationalists will never be satisfied with a federal State. In fact, they abhor it because it is still a variety of the unitary State, since there are some matters in which the general interest of all the federated states prevails over their particular interests. It might seem then that they would be satisfied with a confederal State, but it would be another deception, because they would immediately claim, emanating from the essence of the confederation, the right of self-determination to access their final goal: independence. In short: by way of “contentment”, of constant concessions, there is nothing to do. The State would be destroyed for nothing.
From the Spanish perspective, there is only one last attempt, almost hopeless: an agreement between the two major parties, open to the participation of others, that reforms the autonomous State (powers, financing and Senate) until it becomes a federal State, which satisfies the most demanding levels of self-government that can be subsumed within a federation, and that, in addition, is accepted with loyalty by moderate nationalists.
And, if this attempt also fails, the system will go into crisis and the Catalans and Basques will have to be given the floor to decide through a referendum. There is no other. Because, if Spain continues on the path of “contentment”, that is, of the repeated concessions granted to the nationalists at the drop of a hat and at the mercy of an urgent need, there will come a time when the State will be emptied and will cease to be operational. . It is not that Spain will then “break up”, but that there will no longer be a State worthy of that name and Spain will have vanished as a political entity.
At this point, more than one will ask: why should Spain persist? My answer is simple: so that it can continue to be an immediate area of primary solidarity shaped by geography (the inevitable peninsula) and by history (Spain is one of the three peninsular nations resulting from history), in which all Spaniards who want to continue being equal. That's all. I do not think of past greatness, nor of hegemonic powers; I don't long for any past. I repeat: I only defend the well-being of Spaniards who want to continue being so, seeking for them solidarity, equality and reciprocal loyalty.
