At a meeting of the government of Artur Mas, the "parable of the goat" made a fortune. It was explained by the then Minister of Economy and Finance, Andreu Mas-Colell. The story takes place in an indeterminate past, in an extremely humble home where grandparents, parents, children, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law and grandchildren live together. The lack of space makes the life of the cohabitants unbearable. Desperate, the head of the family goes to the rabbi of the community to ask for advice. The wise man does not disappoint expectations and quickly prescribes the solution to the pressing problem.
-Put a goat to live with you. You'll see how things will improve.
Despite not understanding how coexistence could improve by adding a goat to a house that no longer had room for anyone else, the good man followed the advice to the letter and immediately. After fifteen days, he goes back to visit the rabbi. With tears in his eyes, he explains that with the animal at home things have gotten substantially worse than bearable.
-Do not rush. That the goat lived with you was only the beginning of the solution. Now you must remove it.
Two weeks later the rabbi and the head of the family meet again.
-How about now without the goat?
-Wonderful. Now we really live in paradise!
In 2022 it can already be said openly that the sovereignist process is the Catalan and modern version of the parable of the goat. He appealed to the rabbi for nationalism in 2008 due to serious problems with road, rail and energy infrastructure, in addition to underfinancing. And this one did not disappoint. Goats, you need goats! Goats, bastards! Or any animal that resembles it! Things will get better! And as the head of the family in the original parable did, nationalism followed the advice to the letter. A bighorn sheep was invited to the party, whose antlers measure more than a meter from end to end. He charged the animal with the referendum and the declaration of independence. Jail, disqualifications and frustration followed. And then? Guess? Trying to get the sheep out of the equation to return to how we were a decade ago, only perceiving it as an improvement for having been much worse.
The pardons, the reform of the crime of sedition and probably also that of embezzlement, the agenda to save the Catalan language from a threat of disappearance that we have just discovered after so many years of pride and, in general, the entire political agenda offered by the PSOE and ERC is based on making the sheep and the consequences of its attack disappear. We were bad, we were worse and the goal is to go back to being only bad. That is the summary of the independence process after a decade living with a herd of goats in the room. A circular trip that, given what happened, did not require so much baggage, much less so much political energy and even less so much tension.
Yesterday there was a railway accident in Catalonia that fortunately left no victims to regret. In September the commuter service was suspended due to a failure in the communications system. Delays occur on virtually all lines on a daily basis. Users travel –for free, yes– in conditions that are not in line with those expected in a European country in 2022. We have run out of a highway that crosses the country from south to north (or from north to south, as you prefer). because the AP-7 has ceased to be. The new regional financing model sleeps the sleep of the just. The health system is bursting at the seams, particularly in primary care. The school cheats solitaire to make up the rates of school failure. Continue yourselves with the shopping list.
But we are, it seems, better than before the process because ERC and PSOE continue to officiate the burial of the goat thanks to the reform of the Penal Code. You have a problem, you create a bigger one, you try to fix the second one –not even with a collection of patches– and the first one no longer seems so important. A book is missing to add to the extensive bibliography of the independence process: History of a removable goat. With an explanatory subtitle, as is pertinent in all current essay literature: The Catalan case and the art of improving by getting worse.
