State power and CATALANOPHOBIA

Com­plex phe­nom­ena are more straight­for­ward in their in­fancy, and so­cial in­sti­tu­tions are bet­ter un­der­stood through ex­am­ples from the past. For in­stance, how is elite rule en­forced? Thucy­dides, the Athen­ian his­to­rian, gave an ex­am­ple about the Spar­tans’ serfs, the helots. In 425 BC Sparta suf­fered a hu­mil­i­at­ing de­feat against the Athe­ni­ans in its own ter­ri­tory. In the af­ter­math, the ephors’ coun­cil an­nounced they would re­ward the helots who had mostly sup­ported the Spar­tans dur­ing the cam­paign: so, they crowned the awarded helots with lau­rel, pa­raded them up the tem­ple hill… and had them se­cretly slaugh­tered – for the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans con­sid­ered that those with the most ini­tia­tive to help their mas­ters were also most likely to rebel.

In­sti­tu­tions are re­dis­tri­b­u­tion ma­chines. When re­sources are scarce and elites weaken, pres­sure for change grows. Against this, rul­ing elites often re­sort to two time-tested strate­gies: chop off the heads that stand out and/or find scape­goats (ide­ally the same) to di­vert pop­u­lar dis­con­tent.

With the un­prece­dented wealth in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, mod­ern na­tion-states be­came more will­ing to buy ac­qui­es­cence through re­dis­tri­b­u­tion. Co­he­sive na­tion-states tend there­fore to be led from their most pros­per­ous re­gions, as they have the re­sources to buy other com­mu­ni­ties’ loy­alty. For ex­am­ple, in 19th and 20th-cen­tury France re­gion­al­ist move­ments (e.g. Le Félib­rige in Provence) ab­horred se­ces­sion and dis­played strong French-na­tion­al­ist sen­ti­ment. Spain fol­lowed the same strat­egy suc­cess­fully e.g. with Navarre re­gion­al­ism.

The con­flict ig­nites when some mi­nori­ties’ eco­nomic po­ten­tial, if unchecked, threat­ens to upset the power bal­ance: then rul­ing elites de­lib­er­ately fos­ter mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and wield the State’s power against the per­ceived threat. The Jew­ish case in­evitably comes to mind, but many other dis­crim­i­nated en­tre­pre­neur­ial mi­nori­ties exist: Mid­dle East­ern Chris­tians, East African In­di­ans, South-East Asian Chi­nese…

This brings us to the Cata­lan (and Basque) con­flicts. Not by co­in­ci­dence are Spain’s two in­de­pen­dence-seek­ing re­gions also the most in­dus­tri­alised – Cat­alo­nia being larger and there­fore po­ten­tially more threat­en­ing. Thus Cata­lans, long re­garded as the Jews of Spain, fit both roles of un­com­fort­ably suc­cess­ful mi­nor­ity and con­ve­nient scape­goat. Cata­lanopho­bia dis­plays in­deed the stan­dard traits of xeno­pho­bia: wide­spread media and on­line bul­ly­ing, con­sis­tently dis­crim­i­na­tory eco­nomic gov­ern­ment poli­cies and lop­sided ap­pli­ca­tion of the law (e.g. against in­de­pen­den­tists). Anti-Cata­lanism is such an old, per­va­sive trick in Span­ish pol­i­tics it even has a stan­dard name: Ler­roux­ism – in ref­er­ence to a fa­mous politi­cian who made it his per­sonal trade­mark. Re­veal­ingly, al­though Cata­lan and Va­len­cian tra­di­tional cul­tures are vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal, their pop­u­lar and media stereo­types in Spain have noth­ing in com­mon – Cat­alo­nia’s being the most neg­a­tive.

Machi­avelli un­der­stood the prob­lem long ago: to sub­due a coun­try with an­other cul­ture whose cit­i­zens have a tra­di­tion of lib­erty one must, he ad­vised, ei­ther move the cap­i­tal there, or raze them, or di­lute them with colonists, or allow them to rule them­selves. In Spain the first so­lu­tion is un­think­able, and so is thank­fully (de­spite Span­ish far-right’s ex­hor­ta­tions) the sec­ond. The third was pur­sued and par­tially suc­ceeded (most of the Cata­lans op­pos­ing in­de­pen­dence today have strong 20th-cen­tury Span­ish im­mi­gra­tion roots, often being im­mi­grants them­selves), but Cata­lan so­ci­ety’s at­trac­tive­ness led to the new­com­ers’ grad­ual as­sim­i­la­tion in­stead of the op­po­site – a rare case among state­less na­tions. The ob­vi­ous so­lu­tion is there­fore self-rule; yet, as long as Cat­alo­nia is po­lit­i­cally sub­or­di­nate, it is just too tempt­ing for Spain’s es­tab­lish­ment to clip its wings when­ever it be­comes un­com­fort­ably suc­cess­ful. In­de­pen­dence may there­fore seem far off, but it is re­al­is­ti­cally the only so­lu­tion to what in Spain is all-too-often known as the “Cata­lan Prob­lem”.