On April 8, the president of the Generalitat appeared for the second time before the general commission of the Autonomous Communities in the Senate. It had debuted six months ago with an intervention in defense of “amnesty, the self-determination referendum, well-being and prosperity.” Without mincing words, on this last occasion Pere Aragonès limited himself to confirming his political proposal before a Chamber as discredited, useless and partisan as always. Despite everything, he was right to go. If you like football, just because the field is a quagmire doesn't mean you give up scoring goals. Politics is also pedagogy.
In general, with the exception of Artur Mas, who never attended, the various presidents of the Generalitat before the process have been minimally considerate of the Senate. José Montilla, Pasqual Maragall and Jordi Pujol appeared on a total of five occasions. One of my reference speeches continues to be the one Pujol gave on March 11, 1997, when, with the moral authority of someone who perfectly combined Catalan patriotism and Hispanicism, he reminded attendees of the Catalan contributions to the modernization of the country. And also that it had to be possible to love Spain and be a Catalanist.
As a chamber of territorial representation and second reading, the Senate has been present in Catalan political life in especially difficult times. Just to mention the last one, remember October 27, 2017, when the former president and then senator Montilla had to be absent from his seat so as not to vote on the temporary suspension of autonomy. It is difficult to know if he did it for political, ethical or simply aesthetic reasons. Note also that, according to the Senate's own regulations – the one that the parties continually violate – a territorial debate would have to be convened every year. In an ordinary political course, this debate is neither present nor expected.
It is a shame that the Senate gives the impression of being a kind of elephant graveyard, where the amortized figures of the various parties find well-planted fields and benign shadows in which to lie down or talk on their cell phones. It is a shame because in all the bicameral countries in the world the Senate, in addition to harshly controlling the Executive, usually corrects the excesses of Parliament, a fact that always ends up benefiting us from possible abuses of the Administration. As we Catalans have known since medieval times, checks and balances protect civil liberties more than self-government. Disagreement between rulers always leaves citizens in peace... and their pockets.
Furthermore, in a country as diverse as Spain, any Government initiative that had to incorporate the cultural, national accent and even conflicting territorial interests would only have to benefit everyone. It would be very positive if the popular sovereignty embodied in Congress was with truly proportional criteria and found in the Senate the weight of calm reading.
Disconnected from the partisan quarrel and the need to make merit before their own electoral parish, the senators would have to be guardians of the principles of the country, especially those that make its territorial organization possible. It is difficult to imagine that, if this were the case, Barcelona and Valencia, the second and third cities in the State, would not have resolved their railway corridors a long time ago. Or that Extremadura has gone through so many decades of neglect in terms of investments. Or that the AVE has reached the end of the world, Fisterra, sooner than Lisbon.
Pasqual Maragall proposed the transfer of the Senate to Barcelona, in a historic interview in La Vanguardia, on January 26, 1992. Twenty years later, in the 2015 election campaign, José Montilla also endorsed the proposal, despite moving the Senate has always been described as an occurrence. Maybe it is. Of course, proposing an independence referendum or, even worse, “implementing the October 1 mandate” is apparently very realistic. While some continue trying to reach the moon, I would settle for a constitutional reform that, in addition to making the Upper House useful and plurinational, would consolidate Barcelona, city of cities, as co-capital of Spain and, why not, as a headquarters by the sea from where to confront the concerns of the most excellent and troublesome senators. It would benefit us more.
