Whatever happens, keep the dignity

Good­ness knows what the head­lines will be de­clar­ing by the time you are read­ing this, but Spain's con­sti­tu­tional court did what every­one ex­pected it would. Yes, we knew, of course we did. But in the days and weeks that have fol­lowed I can feel the grow­ing ten­sion in the air, and with it the first chill­ing trep­i­da­tion min­gled with a deep­en­ing sense of in­jus­tice.

Notwith­stand­ing the glar­ingly ob­vi­ous ques­tion of what more the bur­go­mas­ters of Madrid can do to fur­ther fuel the fire and fos­ter the cause for Cat­alo­nia's in­de­pen­dence, they have gal­vanised an un­likely op­po­si­tion. I have Cata­lan friends who most likely would not vote to break away com­pletely from Spain, but they are out­raged that a sim­ple ref­er­en­dum along the lines of the Scot­tish choice is being blocked.

As talks dom­i­nate town and city halls, board­rooms and homes, while ways to de­feat the Span­ish gov­ern­ment's ob­du­racy are dis­cussed in cor­ri­dors of power, what else can be done in the cause of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion?

Re­lent­lessly show the world that Cat­alo­nia is dif­fer­ent, able and ready.

De­fine it, with peace and dig­nity, be­cause you are edg­ing closer and closer to the cen­tre of the global stage. The spot­light may or may not be fleet­ing, but bil­lions of opin­ions will be cast in the blink of an eye. It al­ways stag­gers me how wafer-thin most hu­mans' knowl­edge of so­ci­eties be­yond their own can be in this in­for­ma­tion age, so ac­cept the truth that de­spite some re­cent media at­ten­tion the ma­jor­ity of the human race hasn't a clue of Cat­alo­nia's ex­is­tence let alone its cause. Yet.

Protest? Ab­solutely: With res­olute­ness but with­out vi­o­lence, how­ever deep the pas­sion and how­ever po­tent the im­pulse or the provo­ca­tion. Give the split sec­ond sound bite, low-at­ten­tion-span watch­ers across all the con­ti­nents rea­son to re­mem­ber a calm stead­fast­ness and cer­tainty of rights, in star­tling con­trast to the numb­ing ag­gres­sions plagu­ing our planet.

And what­ever the com­ing months and years bring, res­olutely press on with un­der­lin­ing what this na­tion rep­re­sents, with na­tion state deeds, fair­ness, tol­er­ance and in­no­va­tion. Frankly, do things that neigh­bour­ing Spain doesn't.

Here are my three im­per­a­tives.

1. Clean up Cat­alo­nia day. I aired the idea ear­lier in the year. This would go to the heart of com­mu­ni­ties, gal­vanise the pop­u­lous across the gen­er­a­tions, fos­ter good­will and pride. It has to hap­pen, as does a deep and last­ing com­mit­ment to green en­ergy and sus­tain­abil­ity.

2. Re-eval­u­ate ed­u­ca­tion to its core, being mind­ful of the holis­tic prin­ci­ples I ex­pounded in my Sep­tem­ber ar­ti­cle and that were de­fined here in Cat­alo­nia in 1937. AND make Eng­lish lan­guage learn­ing a far higher pri­or­ity. It sends a clear mes­sage about out­ward-look­ing Cata­lan's am­bi­tion, open­ness and place in the world, and fun­da­men­tally raises the op­por­tu­ni­ties for cur­rent and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

3. Cham­pion the arts far more, and then more still. Cat­alo­nia only has to weigh the ex­tra­or­di­nary worth of its artis­tic her­itage to re­alise there is much that can and should be done. Water the tal­ent and it will bear fruit, cul­tur­ally and eco­nom­i­cally.

So, dear reader, ex­plore all the ways we can show the world what a cre­ative, in­clu­sive, holis­tic coun­try this is. And share them. What ideas do you have?