THE REAL NATIONALISM

It is not un­com­mon to blame the Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence process on sup­posed na­tion­al­ism, a back­ward step in a world of open bor­ders, re­gional in­te­gra­tion, and so on. Given that stan­dard na­tion­al­ist and/or eth­ni­cist rhetoric is still to be heard at any of the myr­iad of pro-in­de­pen­dence’s mass peace­ful ral­lies – which ex­actly mir­ror the racial, so­cial, gen­der and age com­po­si­tion of Cat­alo­nia – this must be due to mere rhetoric, to es­cape from a topic that is nei­ther sim­ple nor triv­ial. In fact, Cata­lan lead­ers, from left to right, are al­ways adamant in pro­claim­ing that in­de­pen­dence plays against no one and is now the way to solve a re­la­tion­ship that has been tainted after Madrid’s mul­ti­ple vi­o­la­tions of com­mon agree­ments with Cat­alo­nia and its peo­ple.

Para­dox­i­cally, union­ist demon­stra­tions – few in num­ber and at­ten­dance (at least in Cat­alo­nia) – show the worst of Span­ish na­tion­al­ism: fas­cist-style salutes, burn­ing of Cata­lan flags, curs­ing and blam­ing Cata­lan in­sti­tu­tions and fig­ures, threats to jour­nal­ists, and so on. Need­less to say, the huge ma­jor­ity of union­ist sup­port­ers are not straight­for­wardly vi­o­lent, yet they hardly show any un­ease when sur­rounded by fas­cists and their em­blems, nor do they man­i­fest an ex­plicit re­jec­tion of them. This alone epit­o­mises one of the Spain’s ills: it has never come to terms with its past, fas­cism, and its many man­i­fes­ta­tions – e.g. bul­ly­ing of po­lit­i­cal ri­vals, media cen­sor­ship, ju­di­cial­i­sa­tion of pol­i­tics, vi­o­lent at­ti­tudes – per­me­ate the coun­try’s so­ci­ety and in­sti­tu­tions, one way or an­other.

In fact, the so-called “model tran­si­tion” pro­voked up to 591 deaths and left the Civil War and the 40 years of Gen­eral Franco’s rule un­ac­counted for. This lat­ter fact sit­u­ates Spain just below Cam­bo­dia in its num­ber of uniden­ti­fied mass graves. Hence, tag­ging the past as taboo was im­plicit in the set­tle­ment be­tween left (in­clud­ing the com­mu­nists) and right (in­clud­ing the fas­cists).

Yet, cru­cially, ig­nor­ing the past also meant that key Fran­coist in­sti­tu­tions were left un­ac­counted for (i.e. the monar­chy, ju­di­ciary, po­lice, mil­i­tary, and so on). All with the risk of ul­ti­mately un­der­min­ing the coun­try’s weak democ­racy, which is shown for what it is in today’s con­text. A State in which in­no­cent peo­ple are per­se­cuted for their po­lit­i­cal thoughts, Spain bring­ing shame to Eu­rope, with its po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and ex­iles.

The last twist of the screw in Spain’s na­tion­al­ism has been its new po­lit­i­cal star, Vox, a party that is not shy in call­ing it­self heir of the dic­ta­tor and his ide­ol­ogy – this, at least, is some­thing that the two other right-wing na­tion­al­ist par­ties, PP and Ciu­dadanos, have tried to con­ceal. For its part, Spain’s left-wing, ev­i­dently tooth­less to set a dif­fer­ent agenda to the one dic­tated by Franco’s in­her­i­tors, has in­stead blamed, some­what cyn­i­cally, the pro-in­de­pen­dence camp for hav­ing awak­ened the “fas­cist mon­ster” within Span­ish so­ci­ety and pol­i­tics.

All in all, even con­sid­er­ing a hand­i­capped Cata­lan lead­er­ship (their main lead­ers jailed or ex­iled), the num­ber of peo­ple in Cat­alo­nia who abhor Span­ish na­tion­al­ism is slowly ris­ing, es­pe­cially faced with the shame­less fe­roc­ity, in­jus­tice and venge­ful­ness with which Madrid deals with the Cata­lans. Added to this is po­ten­tial trou­ble ahead for Madrid, as its room for ma­noeu­vre has been sig­nif­i­cantly tight­ened: to start with, it can­not risk again being ex­posed to the world with more po­lice bru­tal­ity; fur­ther­more, it is not con­vinc­ing the in­ter­na­tional es­tab­lish­ment that it is low­er­ing ten­sions in Cat­alo­nia; and, fi­nally, on the eco­nomic front, its bud­get deficit, al­ways the largest in the EU, is a bur­den for its al­ready high pub­lic debt, plac­ing Spain on a razor’s edge, should events turn even grim­mer (e.g. more po­lit­i­cal un­rest, lower growth, re-in­fringe­ment of Brus­sel’s deficit lim­its, etc).