Six years ago yesterday fanaticism took the lives of 16 people who were walking peacefully along the Rambla de Barcelona and through the port of Cambrils. They have been the deadliest terrorist attacks in Catalonia in the last thirty years. As happened with those of Atocha in 2004, the deadliest of the attacks committed in Spain, were the result of the radicalization of young Muslim immigrants settled in our country. Both keep an unfortunate parallelism that connects us with the rabid political news of our days, since far from exhibiting the unity that is required in the face of acts of this type, the nationalists in power in Catalonia and Spain, respectively, displayed irresponsible sectarianism. that led them to manipulate to the point of exacerbation the reading of what happened.
In Catalonia we were at the boiling point of the procés, and the Puigdemont Government did not hesitate to proclaim through its public media that the efficiency of the Catalan police demonstrated that Spain was not needed at all. Josep Lluís Trapero was, then, elevated to the altars of his particular dream. Many of us felt pain and indignation at the treatment of the information, in which the secessionist story prevailed over the unity that the moment required. A single town, they said, and they did not hesitate to divide it in two at the most serious moment.
Something similar, or perhaps worse, led the government of José María Aznar to maintain the thesis that ETA was responsible for the 11-M attacks. Faced with evidence that was accumulating before the eyes of citizens and the international community, ministers Acebes and Zaplana continued to maintain on the screens the version of events that best reconciled with their short-term electoral interests. The bill came to them immediately, in the form of a defeat at the polls, but Aznar, still in the interview that Jordi Évole did with him in 2021, fed conspiracy theories so as not to have to back down.
These two nationalisms, in their extreme versions, encourage hatred against immigrants and multiculturalism, be it in Ripoll, where the executors of 17-A resided, today governed by the xenophobic independence movement with the acquiescence of Junts, or in many other towns from Spain, where friction with immigrants is exploited by the demagogy of Vox.
Immigration, and particularly that from Africa, is already the great issue that divides our societies. On the one hand, it is clear that Europe needs it in the face of a decreasing population trend. On the other, we do not have well-structured instruments to deal with the culture shock that this entails, as the rebellion that took place in France last June has shown us. Immigration integration requires pragmatic trial-and-error policies, not radical formulas that claim to be saving graces.
We are now in the post-election quagmire, in which the majority of the population, which has voted for moderation and would be in favor of big deals, is trapped by its extremes.
It can be argued that Catalonia has not yet fed a party comparable to the Spanish Vox, and to a certain extent it is true. Vox is pure and hard extreme right, in the manner of its European partners in Poland and Hungary. But it can also be said that, at least formally, he proclaims himself a constitutionalist. Xenophobic Catalan nationalism, despite having a certain tradition, has only given rise to a few eruptions in Plana de Vic and now in Ripollès. But it's there. Junts cannot be directly accused, but Puigdemont's personal situation turns this party into an anti-system movement, resolutely focused on fighting the State, cultivating its particular anti-Spanish xenophobia.
Despite yesterday's mirage with the election of the president and the Congress Bureau, it is very difficult for a government action to be conducted with the firmness required by the challenges that are posed to us with these wickers. Although a potential investiture agreement with Junts would have the beneficial effect of providing a landing strip for this party in the Spanish political reality, this is not going to generate a more stable environment for a legislature program, which seems tortuous and probably brief. The pact between moderates that our country undoubtedly needs will have to wait for a more propitious framework.
