THE LAST WORD
2015's unfinished business
At my age it's hard to remember what you had for breakfast, never mind what happened 12 months ago. That's why I love a review of the year, to jog the memory and bring myself up to date. So, I hope you enjoyed our review of 2015 on pages 21-45. It is now a tradition at Catalonia Today to finish the year with a wrap up of the previous 12 months, particularly when it has been such an action-packed year as this one.
However, here I wanted to look ahead to 2016. Working on the review of the year over the past couple of weeks, it struck me how many of the events and scenarios we have witnessed and experienced are from over and will more than likely continue into next year. Consequently, what follows is my pick of the issues that are far from over and can safely be labelled “unfinished business”.
Sovereignty process
If you live in Catalonia, whatever your political persuasion, the drive towards independence taking place in the country is clearly of some importance. Beyond arguments about whether it is good for Catalonia to be independent or not, the sovereignty process is not going away any time soon. In one corner we have a Catalan parliament with a pro-independence majority and the democratic mandate required to move towards creating a Catalan state. In the other corner, is the Spanish state, which has its own mandate to ensure the unity of Spain as set out in the constitution. In between there is a Spanish general election and surely no end of to-ing and fro-ing to come. Naturally, the international community is reluctant to get involved, but in the end it might be the only way out of the inevitable stalemate.
Islamic State
After the awful terrorist attacks in Paris, a tough reaction was to be expected from the French government. With the country hurt and angry, declaring war on Islamic State is no doubt what many people wanted to hear. The problem is that such an attitude does little to nothing to address the issues that led to the existence of such a phenomenon as Islamic State in the first place. Most of us would accept that occasionally war is unavoidable, but it rarely does much more than cause yet more deaths and store trouble for the future. We are unlikely to see a solution to the problems of the Middle East next year, so let's just hope some real progress can be made and that the death toll can be kept to a minimum.
