01 Dec 2011 Barcelona, un debat d’idees impossible

I believe, as Daniel Innerarity has written, that facts are what give credit to ideas and not the other way round. And I also believe, as Raymond Aron reminds us, that experience shows that we have to judge people for what they do and not what they say. Politics, in the final instance, is action. Action supported on certain principles and linked to various conflicting interests. And the city, as the highest expression of politics and as the setting for it, is the product of many decisions laid down over time, and also the result of chance events and of unforeseen dynamics that act on the will of individuals. But any city, including Barcelona, is a space for ideas where different positions confront one another – or should confront one another–, positions which have the same right to be formulated on the board and which, in a constant process of exchange, gain or lose credibility in the eyes of citizens.

Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia and a large European metropolis, ought to have room for an exemplary debate on ideas. The open-minded Barcelona that always looked towards the north, that welcomed exiles from all over the world, that wisely embraced and relaunched the artistic avant-gardes, that intertwined identity, cosmopolitanism and modernity with Catalanism, that spearheaded the fight for democracy in the Spains, the Barcelona that is the crossroads of awarenesses and criteria has for many years shown a tendency towards monologue, an ideological monologue in which the central ideas of a social-democracy that is slow to react are replaced and displaced by a magma of alter-globalising, neo-libertarian, neo-communist, anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti-West discourses. All these elements give rise to a confused anti-political and populist brew that gets part of its notoriety from the over-representation it enjoys in the media (especially the public ones) and in academic and cultural milieus. As a result of this, during the spring and summer of this year, the revolt by the so-called “indignant” in Barcelona had a far more chaotic and less reformist profile than the same movement in Madrid.

But it is on the right of social-democratic values, in the space shared by Christian-democratic, liberal and conservative principles, that Barcelona displays a real anomaly. I see this situation as an inertial asymmetry that turns any debate on ideas into an unfair competition in which the hegemonic players fail to acknowledge their opponents’ right to claim whatever it is they are claiming. The fact that any position that goes against their orthodoxy is systematically described as “neocon” or “ultra-liberal” gives an idea of the extent of this permanent disfigurement. Anyone not endorsing the dominant trend is excluded from the conversation. Only exceptionally, like a quota to legitimate precarious tactical balances, are they allowed to appear in settings in which an all-smothering ideology is fabricated and administered, which, paradoxically, becomes the most official of all, even though it presents itself as hypercritical of the system and offers itself as a revolutionary challenge to it.

So far, at least, electoral cycles have had relatively little influence on this phenomenon. Ideological hegemony is one thing and politico-institutional hegemony is another. Even so, it is obvious that Catalan socialism, especially during Pasqual Maragall’s time as mayor, forged and maintained many complicities with the world of creation and thought, forcing a clash with everything that Jordi Pujol and his policies were said to represent. The false axiom according to which Catalan nationalism was a retrograde movement opposed to a Barcelona that embodies modernity allowed the use of public money to set up a series of powerful platforms and screens to consolidate long-term ideological domination. The fact that Pujol gave priority in the electoral competition to the tension between Catalan nationalism and Spanish nationalism (which was what favoured his political offer) meant that the left-right ideological combat was adjourned sine die. The unique role of a large and active part of the Catholic Church and the educational world, which were traditionally set in very precise coordinates since the transition, has tended to reinforce many of the premises of local progressivism and has kept out other points of view; the school imaginary, frequently influenced by a rigid, corporate trade-unionism, very often rests on slogans of a political ultra-correctness that kills off thought.

Nevertheless, things have changed recently. The great debate of ideas that was pending in Catalonia is no longer between more right-wing visions and more left-wing visions. We are in a new context, where the risk is higher. The economic crisis, the in-breeding of political parties, the widespread misgivings about politicians, the collapse of social-democratic programmes in Europe and the emergence of populist movements of every shade have taken the limelight off the right-left debate and have put a more serious discussion on the table, one it is claimed is new but which has overtones of the worst decade of the 20th century: the debate between those in favour of the democracy we have and those in favour of liquidating it forthwith and establishing we know not what. Those who challenge representative democracy in its entirety refuse to accept that it can be reformed and argue as follows: first, they proclaim that the politicians do not represent them, and then they perform a triple somersault and claim that, in fact, they do not represent anyone and that the people therefore are taking over the streets to build a new legitimacy. The millions of people who vote for the political parties thereby become lost souls who must be saved by the aware avant-garde of a movement which, by sheer intuition, knows exactly what citizens want, even though it will not agree to submit to the rules of the ballot box because, as it keeps saying, the game has been adulterated. Breaking this circular thinking is impossible.

In Barcelona, this anti-political reaction is enthusiastically endorsed by the old intellectuality, which is fascinated by a spectacle that has all the ingredients of what Bernard Crick calls “student politics”, which he identifies with “those who think more of building ‘New Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land’ than of the more humdrum, limited but immediate benefits which actually winning an election might bring to an electorate”. In this respect, it is worth noting how many of the most prominent mandarins of culture and academia in Barcelona, with a position of responsibility in the democratic institutions and control over public spending, manage to divaricate and act as the inspiration and the champions of this frontally anti-political phenomenon, playing two roles at once as they comfortably pass themselves off as outsiders while they are luxury insiders, administrators with effective power over parcels of reality that are far from negligible.

The unequal and ambiguous relationship between Catalan society and the power of the state, since the military defeat of 1714, has nurtured all sorts of turmoil and insurrections, and has also gradually shaped the figure of the intellectual as a public actor with a part to play. Away from Madrid, the responsibility of the elites is relativised, everything seems a bit of a joke. The Tragic Week, the gangsterism of the twenties, the May Events, the clandestine anti-Franco movements, the libertarian underground of the early transition… are all very powerful and irresistible images and an invitation to nostalgic emulation. Especially amongst those who think only they are right because, many years ago, feeling like gods, they jumped over the bonfire.

Autumn (October – December 2011)