SHADOW OF THE PAST

Just re­cently we learnt of the pre­ma­ture demise of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment’s pres­i­dent, David Sas­soli at the rel­a­tively young age of 65. Be­yond the mourn­ing, Mr Sas­soli also epit­o­mises, at least for this col­umn, the stark dif­fer­ence in the in­sti­tu­tional ed­i­fices of both Italy and Spain; for it is re­mark­able how hard it is to find such bul­let proof de­moc­rats in Spain, where a sub­strate of cen­tral­ist chau­vin­ism al­ways pre­vails, re­gard­less if they act under the um­brella of in­ter­na­tional in­sti­tu­tions.

The two coun­tries have often been com­pared due to their no­to­ri­ous fas­cist past. In fact, Mus­solini’s Italy, to­gether with Hitler’s Ger­many, was one of the key con­trib­u­tors to the Span­ish na­tion­al­ists’ mil­i­tary takeover that fi­nally tri­umphed in 1939. How­ever, after its U turn in join­ing the al­lies late in the Sec­ond World War, Italy had a note­wor­thy de­mo­c­ra­tic trans­for­ma­tion. Just a few years later, in 1951, it joined France, Ger­many and the Benelux to form the Eu­ro­pean Coal and Steel Com­mu­nity, the em­bryo of today’s EU.

In con­trast, Spain con­tin­ued for 40 years as a tyran­ni­cal dic­ta­tor­ship, which only de­clined with the despot’s own dwin­dling health. Sev­eral rea­sons have been ar­gued for it not hold­ing up after Franco’s death. One of them is that if Spain (and Por­tu­gal, for the mat­ter) were to join NATO and the then Eu­ro­pean Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity, no­blesse oblige, they had to pledge to de­mo­c­ra­tic stan­dards, vis a vis the despo­tisms on the other side of the iron cur­tain.

Yet, Por­tu­gal en­dured a real pu­rifi­ca­tion of its au­thor­i­tar­ian roots, after the “Rev­olução dos Cravos” in 1974, spurred by colonels from con­flicts in African colonies. Spain has never un­der­gone such a cathar­sis: there has been a con­ti­nu­ity in the modus operandi, only under a de­mo­c­ra­tic façade, in the few in­sti­tu­tions that con­sti­tute the real power. This au­thor­i­tar­ian sub­strate is es­pe­cially ex­posed when chal­lenged with the forces that, by way of his­tory, cul­ture and econ­omy, man­i­fest them­selves as al­ter­na­tives to Madrid, fun­da­men­tally the Basques and the Cata­lans.

Whilst there are ex­cel­lent pro­fes­sion­als “made in Spain”, the main­stream re­flects this lack of real de­mo­c­ra­tic cre­den­tials. The an­tag­o­nism be­tween the ideals rep­re­sented by Madrid and, say, Bil­bao, San Se­bas­t­ian, or Barcelona, re­sults in very few Cata­lans, or Basques, hav­ing rel­e­vant po­si­tions in THE in­sti­tu­tions: i.e. the ju­di­ciary, po­lice, army, media, and so on. As a re­sult, the norm is to pledge one­self to a cen­tral­is­tic mind­set, in­fused by that gen­uine “made in Madrid” na­tion­al­ism, rather than to abide by solid eth­i­cal and de­mo­c­ra­tic stan­dards.

Take Mr Josep Bor­rell, High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Eu­ro­pean Union for For­eign Af­fairs and Se­cu­rity Pol­icy since 2019. Ar­guably one of the smartest in the room, his true face is par­tic­u­larly ex­posed when con­fronted with Cat­alo­nia’s in­de­pen­dence move­ment. For ex­am­ple, he men­tioned “the need to dis­in­fect those claim­ing in­de­pen­dence” in a meet­ing of an in­sti­tu­tion (“So­ci­etat Civil Cata­lana”) not shy of its pro-Fran­coist mem­bers; at the same time, in a fas­ci­nat­ing twist of his­tory, he’s never afraid in com­par­ing Cat­alo­nia’s peace­ful claims to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion to Hitler’s Ger­many in the 1930s!

Worst of all, be­yond the murky ar­gu­ments from those who should lead by ex­am­ple, Spain’s lack of real in­sti­tu­tional re­form de­prives it of the po­ten­tial to be rep­re­sented by dif­fer­ent views and mind­sets, of­fer­ing knowl­edge, de­mo­c­ra­tic stan­dards and savoir faire. Granted, this sys­tem of medi­oc­rity and in­ep­ti­tude is func­tional to Madrid’s cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal caste, self-cen­tred in the sacro­sanct unity of the state and in the con­ti­nu­ity of their hold on power.