The last ten years have not gone well for Catalonia, which has dedicated more time and energy to what should be than to what it had to do. An accepted date to mark the beginning of the process may be the great demonstration of July 10, 2010 against the ruling of the Statute, which had gone through all the steps provided for by the Constitution and, however, was amended in 14 articles at the request of the resources presented by the Popular Party.
That large demonstration of hundreds of thousands of Catalans filling Passeig de Gràcia was led by President José Montilla, who had to be escorted by a security cordon from the Mossos before finishing the route when he was taunted by a group of protesters.
Since that emotional shock of great political tension, massive demonstrations followed after the Diada of 2012, which the then president Mas made his own. He requested an exceptional majority by advancing the elections to November 25 and went from 62 to 50 deputies of what was then CiU. He did not know how to read those results and continued towards independence, he called elections again in September 2015, he won them again leading Junts pel Sí, but he did not have the ten votes of the CUP to be invested and in the words of a deputy from Cuba he was sent “to the trash can of history.” In his place, deputy Carles Puigdemont was unexpectedly elected president of the Generalitat, who promoted the holding of the unilateral referendum on October 1, 2017 and a very brief declaration of independence on the 27th of the same month.
The reaction of the Rajoy government is well known and so is what has happened from then to today. The story will analyze in perspective the random events that the State authorities and the political and social forces of Catalonia have carried out. Application of 155, arrests, imprisonments, exiles, trials, pardons, an amnesty law, the flight of thousands of companies and a division between Catalans that will be highlighted again in the elections on May 12.
Nobody has even won the story. As Anne Applebaum says, there are always multiple and different opinions about everything. The problem is that there are also alternative facts or the absence of discussion frameworks on collectively accepted proven facts.
The historical dispute between Catalonia and Spain goes back a long way and will not be resolved in the next elections or in the following generations. Catalonia does not have enough strength to unilaterally separate from Spain, but it can destabilize the State to the point of producing the paradox that a politician on the run from Spanish justice has temporarily become the cornerstone that crowns the edifice of governability, ensuring the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. I do not mind repeating what I have written so many times in these pages: the independence of Catalonia will not occur against Spain and without the approval of Europe and the international community.
The great Hispanic historian J.H. Elliot, in his latest book Catalans and Scots, points out that too often the governments in London and Madrid did not take seriously the concerns of Scots and Catalans, and did not notice the cultural and emotional barriers that separated them. Dialogue constitutes a central function of democratic government, but “there are barriers on both sides that do not want to be torn down.” It is an absence of imagination to understand and assume the reasons of the other.
But concrete and continued actions are needed for the dialogue between the parties to offer satisfactory results. When dialogue ceases, Elliot continues, a new obstacle on the path to independence is removed and secession may seem like the most convenient solution.
The elections of May 12 could indicate that the path taken ten years ago has led nowhere and that a strong dose of realism is necessary to first deal with the problems in Catalonia, which are not few and affect many, and, second, reach a fiscal, economic and financial pact with the State that facilitates social peace, progress and understanding with the other peoples of Spain. Federalism has been successful in the United States and Germany. It is not a utopia.
