I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older, or because I live politics from a distance, or because there is a general neglect of the proper use of words in this hyper-communicated world, or because who knows... But the truth is that it irritates me. increasingly the way in which our politicians express themselves, with this mixture of imprecision and forcefulness that no dictionary can withstand nor, even less, any learning of what Rafael Campalans repeated: politics is pedagogy.
The right says: “Spain is me.” He says to the left: “Progressivism is what I do.” Puigdemont says: “Nosaltres, els catalans”, with 392,634 votes, 11.16% of the total cast in Catalonia. And I wonder if it wouldn't be better, more understandable, more hygienic for the sake of public debate, if they said: “Our project for Spain is x, y, z”, “Progressivism is doing this, that or that” or “Nosaltres, The voters of Junts per Catalunya, who are not the majority, think and volem això.” To me, I confess, I would like them all a little more.
And so almost all of them. For example, Errejón says that, with the possibility of speaking the co-official languages, the real Spain has entered Congress. He also said that democracy had entered Congress in 2016 when Podemos arrived. Oh really? Was the Congress resulting from popular suffrage since 1978 unreal? Or undemocratic? Wouldn't it be better to say something like "I'm glad that the co-official languages can be spoken in Congress because I think it gives more representation to our diversity" or something like "I'm glad that the result of the votes of the Spaniards have given a more multi-party Congress and that, in it, my party is represented.” I confess, I would like a little more.
If they do the exercise of empty signifiers with electoral slogans, it can even make them laugh because there is the acme of words that say nothing.
Something similar to this avalanche of intentional confusion is going to happen to us with the amnesty, which, no one is aware of, is going to be the single issue in the coming weeks. Beyond the analysis of its effects, which people much more qualified than me write about –Lasalle, for example, warns of the risk of a constituent transition through facts–, I would like to better understand its purpose, not even to invoke to Campalans and his demand for pedagogy. They say that the amnesty will serve to pacify Catalonia, pacify as synonymous (sic) with turning the page, with the understanding that the process will not be overcome until Puigdemont returns and there are no open cases.
But let me express my doubts. If this is so clear, how has it not been one of the strong points of the electoral program? And more importantly, are we talking about turning the page or pretending that there was none? Is this pacifying Catalonia? Call me naïve, but I believed that the process had precisely originated because there was no new legal agreement once the 2010 ruling on the Statute was handed down. And 13 years later we still have no constitutional reform, no new financing system (pending since 2014), no reinforced institutional loyalty mechanisms, no Senate reform, no institutionalized conference of presidents... ergo, we remain the same. Each government can, legitimately and under the rules with which we have democratically established ourselves, act to try to solve problems. But doesn't this seem like an important enough topic to at least demand time, reflection and words that say something?
