“From 1580 on – wrote Ortega in España invertebrata (1921) – what happens in Spain is decadence and disintegration. (…) It must be a coincidence, but the detachment of the last overseas possessions (1898) seems to be the signal for the beginning of the intrapeninsular dispersion”. And so we are more than a century later: the Catalan and Basque nationalists condition all Spanish politics for their own exclusive benefit without ever abdicating, whatever the concession that is made to them, their ultimate goal: the independence of Catalonia and the Basque Country .
In effect, Spain made, during the transition, a remarkable effort to put the Catalan claim on track, by moving from a unitary and centralist State to an autonomous State, which is the incomplete and perfectable replica of a federal State; a decision that meant a notable advance. But it has been useless: forty years later, the confrontation is again being served, by many agreements, tables and speakers who arbitrate. Concord is dead: we all killed it together and it died alone.
It’s not the first time it’s happened. The attempt of the Second Republic also ended badly. His drive to solve the “Catalan problem” was personalized by Manuel Azaña. From his initial enthusiasm to the final desolate denunciation there is an abyss. This is how his late article “The libertarian insurrection and the Barcelona-Bilbao axis” begins: “Our people are condemned to the fact that, with a monarchy or a republic, in peace or at war, under a unitary and assimilationist regime or under an autonomous regime, the Catalan question will continue as a fountain of disturbances, passionate discords, injustices, whether committed by the State or committed against it”.
That being the case, you have to face reality as it is: being very clear that the radical nationalists will never be satisfied with a federal state. In reality, they abhor it because it is still a variety of the Unitary State, since there are some matters in which the general interest of all the federated states prevails over the particular interests of these.
It might seem then that they would be satisfied with a confederal state, but it would be another deception, because they would immediately claim, as an emanation of the essence of the confederation, the right of self-determination to access their final goal: independence . In summary: there is nothing to be done by way of “contentment”, of constant cessions. The State would be destroyed for nothing.
From the Spanish perspective, there is only one possible way out, but almost without hope: an agreement between the two major parties, open to the participation of others, to reform the Autonomous State (competencies, funding and Senate) until it becomes a federal state that satisfies the most demanding levels of self-government that can be assumed within a federation, and that, moreover, is accepted with loyalty by moderate nationalists. And, if this attempt also fails, the system will be in crisis and the Catalans and Basques will have to be given the floor to decide through a referendum. Because, if Spain continues on the path of “contentment”, that is to say, of the repeated cessions granted to the nationalists in response and driven by an urgent need, a moment will come when the State will be emptied of powers and will cease to be operational It is not that then Spain will “break up”, but that there will no longer be a State deserving of that name and Spain will have faded as a political entity.
At this point, more than one will ask: why does Spain have to survive? My answer is simple: so that it can continue to be an immediate area of ??primary solidarity shaped by geography (the inevitable peninsula) and by history (Spain is one of the three peninsular nations resulting from history), in which all Spaniards who they want to continue to be the same. Just that. I do not think of past greatness, nor of hegemonic powers; I don’t miss any past. I repeat: I only defend the well-being of Spaniards who wish to continue to be so, seeking for them solidarity, equality and reciprocal loyalty.
