Geography is stubborn. In a few weeks, the news that links the Valencian Community with Catalonia and vice versa has filled the front pages. Confirming that on material and physical bases it is impossible to widen fractures between autonomies, no matter how much political and institutional actors on both sides of the border try. A border, precisely, that has facilitated the exodus of Catalan companies to the south, due to the unfinished episode of the "procés", and the possible transfer of water to the north, from Sagunt, to alleviate the persistent drought that is leaving Catalans without water. Pablo Salazar said this week in Las Provincias, regarding the water issue, that "the Catalan-Valencian Commonwealth, that community of interests of neighboring regions, which, as Josep Vicent says, Boira has nothing to do with the non-existent Països Catalans, It worked this time."
Geography does not always respond to the will to construct certain political ecosystems. It happens, as Salazar pointed out, with those non-existent "Catalan countries." But that same geography has conveyed and will continue to convey a multitude of interests for centuries. The aforementioned Josep Vicent Boira defined it as the Catalan-Valencian Commonwealth (2010, Columna), a theoretical construction that some political actors have attempted to demonize. It often happens when life is observed exclusively from an ideological and/or partisan perspective. It is like trying to deny the growing flow of interests between Valencia and Madrid, no matter how much criticism of the centralism that emerges, with increasing force, from the "capital." Economic synergies always exceed political objectives and, when attempts are made to paralyze them, crises and chaos come.
That large Catalan companies, some systemic such as Caixabank or Banc de Sabadell, have moved their headquarters responds to a commercial solution, but facilitated by a proximity that goes beyond distances and is located in the field of understanding in a geography that It also shares cultural ties, no matter how much some try to deny it. That the Sagunt desalination plant, with the support of Carlos Mazón, it must be said, transfers water to Catalonia represents an opportunity that we will see if time can end up becoming recurring, in both directions, if climate change accelerates the deterioration of our Mediterranean, both on the coast and in the interior. Best of all, the two realities have been staged without collective traumas, as happened in the past. There are things that have changed, and a lot, for the better, despite the attempts of quite a few actors to dynamit it, to the north and south.
Reality is stubborn, as much as geography, and perhaps we should rethink Josep Vicent Boira's hypothesis. I think that those who criticized it did not read it, as is usually normal in these cases. The Valencian geographer never made reference to cultural or linguistic issues, he only observed the material confluences from which both autonomies could benefit, despite their leaders. There are many who would like the border to have a Trumpist aesthetic, with eight-meter-high walls and checkpoints on both sides. But this illusion of some minorities (not without complexes) contrasts with reality: companies, water, businesses, manufacturing, students and millions of interactions will occur every day between two territories that could be assumed as a Commonwealth, according to Boira, or continue to be a Commonwealth forced by geography although we avoid calling it.
(The second most important interregional road freight transport flow in Spain is Catalunya-Comunitat Valenciana and vice versa, a short distance from Andalusia and Comunitat Valenciana. Between 2020 and 2021 it has increased by 37%. And it will be like this for a long time)
PS: Pere Aragonés has not shown any gesture of gratitude to Valencian water solidarity. Shapes.
