27 Jun 2012 Un país confús

I would like to know if the leading politicians in Spain today know their history. The principal postwar European leaders knew their history and this was why they began a project that today has become the European Union—to ward off the historical mistakes of the Old Continent. Has Mariano Rajoy read much about the 19th and 20th centuries? In Catalonia, Jordi Pujol built his leadership on a refined, precise and profound understanding of the great events of the past. History is essential for anyone who aspires to govern: history is what allows us to put decisions in context and thus makes the anxieties of the present relative. Without a historical vision, politics becomes one-dimensional, despite being efficient. The politician that never looks backward doesn’t know where he or she is.

In theory, Catalan politicians today have a good understanding of the ups and downs Catalonia and Spain have gone through over the last three hundred years. In practice, it is not so clear this is the case. The approach to the elaboration of the new Catalan Statute of Autonomy during the mandate of President Pasqual Maragall makes it clear that politicians and society —including those of us in the newspaper business—show a notable contempt for the teachings of the past. History never repeats itself but there are important variables that were there yesterday and that continue to be here today, despite the context having changed considerably.

A recent publication of a work by Jaume Vicens Vives (originally conceived and written for an Italian audience) brilliantly synthesizes the period that began with the Peninsular War. In Espanya contemporània (1814-1953) [“Contemporary Spain (1814-1953)”], edited by Quaderns Crema, the eminent historian includes some reflections that, when read today, are particularly significant: “The political action used in Barcelona by the bourgeois generation of 1901 progresses in a coherent manner up until 1917. In this city it is not surprising to find the epicenter of the social phenomena that are most hostile to the Spanish state of the Restoration. Its economic potential, its intense intellectual life and its dynamism made it impossible for it to put up with —both from the social and political point of view— the methods being used in the Parliament and the Administration of Madrid.” As Vives himself emphasizes, the men of ‘98 who hailed from the peninsular periphery “acted in a different manner” than those of Castile, with an optimism that was the driving force behind Catalanism’s big victory over caciquism in 1901.

Keeping these pages in mind, let us ask ourselves the uncomfortable question that many have been thinking but don’t dare voice: up to what point can the Catalan society of 2012 put up with the political methods being used in Madrid today? I can’t reproduce in public what some leaders have told me in private about what goes on there. The images are simply too grotesque. More than one hundred years have gone by, we have lived through two dictatorships, a civil war and, instead of it being the colonial disaster of 1898, now what is shaking the country’s foundation is a global economic crisis that is forcing Spain to cede sovereignty. Faced with this situation, the heirs of the Catalan bourgeois generation of 1901 are proposing a new fiscal pact, while at the same time, a part of the citizenry would like to go ever further.

A Madrid oasis versus a Catalan oasis. What a surprise! As Catalans we are not superior to the rest of the citizens of the Kingdom of Spain, obviously, but in 1898 we looked to the future and now in 2012 we are not afraid of “more Europe.” In Catalonia we can also find those who are incompetent and corrupt, but Bankia is the work of the pharaonic Madrid that felt it had to finish the historical task of those who a century ago repeated, “My Spain hurts.” The Madrid elite is in a hurry to turn the restoration of democracy of 1976 into a regime in which the anomalies —read Catalonia— are tightly controlled and progressively reduced to the smallest of expressions. It seems that they didn’t take into account that the world had gotten smaller. Nor did they foresee that they would get hurt from an excess of confidence.

With this scenario in mind, President Mas’s proposal for a fiscal pact is a political cornerstone that runs the risk of becoming outdated far too soon. In addition, and I never get tired of repeating it in my articles as of late, the strength of the fiscal pact as a mechanism of internal social consensus in Catalonia cannot hide that it is far too ambiguous a wager. A fiscal pact to continue within Spain in a more comfortable manner, or to make the critical masses in favor of sovereignty grow? I already know the pragmatic response: a fiscal pact to avoid, to start with, that Catalan autonomy disappears because of financial suffocation. But the economic crisis burns through political strategies in the blink of an eye.

The veteran historian, lawyer and politician Josep Maria Ainaud de Lasarte, in an interview by Jordi Manent in the May issue of the magazine Serra d’Or, stated that the principal problem of the Catalans throughout history is “not having been clear enough.” This astute observer adds that “we are a country that is basically confused; I have always said that we are undefined.” The Catalan Statute that ended up in the Constitutional Court was surrounded by monumental confusion. It is essential that the new fiscal pact should not have to suffer the same fate.

Catalan society has advanced when it has been capable of overcoming confusion. When all the sectors of society have understood that a country’s first obligation is to not delude itself.