TIME TO DEFINE ME

I am, in a fun­da­men­tal way, pow­er­less. As a British pass­port holder who has resided in Cat­alo­nia for more than 15 years I have no elec­toral rights any­where, save choos­ing my Pri­o­rat vil­lage coun­cil. The UK says no. Spain says no.

As a UK na­tional who is pro-Eu­ro­pean and whose work, in­come and so­cial focus is cross-bor­der, it is no un­der­state­ment to say that deny­ing me and my part­ner the bal­lot re­gard­ing Brexit, along with a vast num­ber of long-term Eu­ro­pean res­i­dents, was wholly un­de­mo­c­ra­tic. We are, to put it mildly, di­rectly and neg­a­tively af­fected by the con­se­quences both fi­nan­cially and emo­tion­ally yet un­able to par­tic­i­pate in the process.

Now the ex­pe­ri­ence of being dis­en­fran­chised here in Spain, where we law­fully abide and pay our taxes, is equally acute.

As with Brexit, I have to stand on the side-lines, a wit­ness.

I am a jour­nal­ist who was ed­u­cated to re­port and com­ment on what I see, who had it drilled into him not to par­tic­i­pate di­rectly but to ques­tion, so this is not an un­usual po­si­tion for me to be in. The rule of the news­pa­per that I was on back then was that you never joined any or­gan­i­sa­tion or po­lit­i­cal party, some­thing I al­ways stuck to rigidly dur­ing my decades as a re­porter and ed­i­tor; save for one or­gan­i­sa­tion, Amnesty In­ter­na­tional. There did not, at the time or in the fore­see­able fu­ture, ap­pear to be any risk what­so­ever of com­pro­mise.

So, yes, I wear a yel­low rib­bon. I am con­founded by the events of the past decade. I won­der at the judge­ments and procla­ma­tions of the Span­ish State and ju­di­ciary in re­sponse to the Cata­lan cri­sis, but more im­por­tantly, so too must the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity.

But first, let’s cut to the quick.

Spain can­not af­ford to lose Cat­alo­nia. Eco­nom­ics. Left right and cen­tre. And they make no bones about it - it is un­think­able, wholly un­ac­cept­able. Non-ne­go­tiable. Full stop. What­ever it takes it is not going to be al­lowed.

And Eu­rope has not been able to face the com­plex con­se­quences of an in­de­pen­dent Cat­alo­nia out of Eu­rope and a weak­ened Spain. Eco­nom­ics. Again. Fin­gers in ears and hum.

But - a very big but - there is the even greater issue, the game changer for good or bad. Pub­lic per­cep­tion. It is al­ways the defin­ing bat­tle ground both at home and in­creas­ingly abroad.

Where does that leave the pol­i­tics? As pub­lic per­cep­tion is what qual­i­fies the de­mo­c­ra­tic power-base, so both the elected faces of any gov­ern­ment and a na­tion’s media are cen­tre stage all the time, pro­claim­ing, man­ag­ing, prob­ing, try­ing to make sense of the mael­strom of it all in sound­bites. It is a highly-skilled and ruth­less dance in the spot­light, away from any dark arts of the shad­ows.

What is vital is to keep poise, to keep a firm eye on pub­lic per­cep­tion and al­ways emit calm­ness, con­trol and cer­tainty. On the big is­sues you can­not af­ford to put a word or foot wrong. Sound judg­ment in all things is es­sen­tial, and that has to in­clude pal­pa­ble in­tegrity, rea­son, flex­i­bil­ity and a ca­pac­ity to com­pro­mise when nec­es­sary.

Be­tray any­thing else, ig­nore how ac­tions may be judged, twitch, sound ar­ro­gant, angry or de­fen­sive – worse, be puni­tive and re­peat­edly over-em­pha­size a strength to cover a weak­ness – then things can rapidly un­ravel. Dogma will in­evitably turn around and bite you.

That goes for every­one in of­fice any­where, what­ever party, what­ever be­lief.

I ques­tion the sym­bolic de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence but not the democ­racy be­hind it. More­over, I ques­tion how Mr Rajoy can­not see that what he and his party have done and are doing in what they be­lieve is the de­fence of the con­sti­tu­tion and the state, given all op­tions open to them, is weak­en­ing and iso­lat­ing Spain by the day. The po­ten­tial con­se­quences must be dawn­ing on the state as it is on all of us.