COLONIAL “NORMALITY”

The re­pres­sion of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment and thou­sands of in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers to pre­vent the Cata­lan Re­pub­lic pro­claimed on Oc­to­ber 27, 2017, from be­com­ing a re­al­ity ex­posed the anti-de­mo­c­ra­tic char­ac­ter of the Span­ish regime of 1978 to the whole world, re­veal­ing no break from the bloody Franco dic­ta­tor­ship. The sub­se­quent law­fare has con­di­tioned the Cata­lan Par­lia­ment to tame the Cata­lan par­lia­men­tary par­ties.

The par­dons granted in 2021 and the ir­reg­u­lar ap­pli­ca­tion of the 2024 amnesty law, which served above all to grant amnesty to the po­lice forces re­spon­si­ble for the vi­o­lence with which they at­tempted to pre­vent the self-de­ter­mi­na­tion ref­er­en­dum of Oc­to­ber 1, 2017, went in the same di­rec­tion.

The cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment, Sal­vador Illa, claims that we have now en­tered a new stage of nor­mal­ity and he pre­sents him­self as an ef­fi­cient man­ager. But what cre­den­tials does he have? In Oc­to­ber 2017, he demon­strated against the in­de­pen­dence of Cat­alo­nia along­side the lead­ers of the neo-fas­cist VOX party and ap­proved the sub­se­quent re­pres­sion of in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers. As for his time as Span­ish Min­is­ter of Health dur­ing the pan­demic, he can­not boast any par­tic­u­larly con­vinc­ing re­sults ei­ther: the num­ber of Covid-19 vic­tims in Spain was no­table.

And what po­lit­i­cal lines has his gov­ern­ment de­vel­oped, apart from show­ing po­lit­i­cal sub­mis­sion to the gov­ern­ment of the me­trop­o­lis?

It is clear that the sup­posed “sin­gu­lar fi­nanc­ing” that was to be ob­tained for Cat­alo­nia will only con­tinue the usual plun­der of the Cata­lan Coun­tries as some­thing spe­cial. A five-year spend­ing pro­ject of around 18,500 mil­lion euros is put for­ward as a great thing. Nor­mally, these promises are not ful­filled. Any­way, this amount is small com­pared to the more than 22 bil­lion euros in tax rev­enue that leaves Cat­alo­nia each year and never re­turns.

On top of that, as a re­sult of the pre­med­i­tated fi­nan­cial as­phyx­i­a­tion of Cat­alo­nia, which causes debt, Spain charges in­ter­est to the Cata­lan Gov­ern­ment. On the other hand, dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting its own bud­get en­acted show its weak­ness and the anom­alous po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion.

Fur­ther­more, a dis­as­trous eco­nomic model due to the in­ter­ven­tion of the hy­per­central­ist Span­ish State ag­gra­vates ten­sions for main­tain­ing the wel­fare state in health­care, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, and so on. In re­la­tion to this, the new pup­pet gov­ern­ment has al­ready shown its in­ten­tions to con­tinue the cul­tural geno­cide at­tempted dur­ing the Franco dic­ta­tor­ship and be­fore. Thus, in De­cem­ber it pre­sented a pro­ject to re­move Cata­lan lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture as a com­pul­sory sub­ject in sec­ondary schools. Only a rapid re­ac­tion from Cata­lan so­ci­ety forced its with­drawal.

In short, the nor­mal­ity that Mr. Illa preaches with the help of a pow­er­ful and sub­sidised media ap­pa­ra­tus is an­ti­de­mo­c­ra­tic and colo­nial. In fact, de­spite the Span­ish nar­ra­tive de­vised to cause a col­lec­tive global am­ne­sia, Cat­alo­nia meets all the points of the United Na­tions to be con­sid­ered a colony.

De­spite its con­tra­dic­tions, the na­tional lib­er­a­tion move­ment of the Cata­lan peo­ple is still very much alive, as wit­nessed by the nu­mer­ous streets and squares in towns and cities ded­i­cated to Oc­to­ber 1, 2017. Log­i­cally, the Cata­lan peo­ple’s de­sire for de­coloni­sa­tion and a dig­ni­fied, sus­tain­able fu­ture free from the struc­tural in­ef­fi­ciency and cor­rup­tion of Spain will per­sist until in­de­pen­dence is achieved. This is also ev­i­dent from a plaque on the mon­u­ment in front of the Dalí Mu­seum in Figueres, ded­i­cated to a Cata­lan philoso­pher much ap­pre­ci­ated by the bril­liant painter. The in­scrip­tion reads, “Cata­lan thought al­ways sprouts again and sur­vives its de­luded gravedig­gers”.