In our part of the world, the table occupies a central place in the house: family members gather around it, to eat, to do homework or to chat. It is something essential in politics. Outside the operating room, the table evokes moments of calm and reflection. At the beginning of a period of electoral turmoil, turning to the image of the table may help us not lose our calm or good humor.
In one of the rooms of the Bank of Spain there is an Elizabethan table, round, of medium diameter, provided with half a dozen small drawers; inside each one, a fan. It is a Council of Ministers table from the Restoration era. On the ivory plaques that adorn the little drawers, they read State (today Foreign), War (Defense), Grace and Justice (Justice), Government (Interior) and Treasury. I seem to remember that there are no more labels.
The table corresponds to what are inalienable powers of every modern State. It is something that our politicians should keep in mind throughout the electoral campaigns, to avoid impossible demands and false steps.
State powers (what a federal Constitution would call “federal”) should not be susceptible to transfer. However, the administration of these powers, or some of them, could be entrusted to a regional body. In a recent article, Andreu Mas-Colell gives as an example the possibility of a single tax agency. The enormous reluctance of the central administration towards such a change is not lost on him. The author attributes them to the suspicion that this step was considered the prelude to the independence of Catalonia. He is right, although patriotism may be less important in reluctance than an aversion to giving up power.
In my opinion, there is something no less serious: in Catalonia, those inclined towards independence do not stop repeating that any concession by the State is nothing more than a starting point on the path to independence. How can the rest of us not be suspicious?
Mas-Colell is right when he says that independence is the result of either an agreement or a cataclysm. The agreement is not possible, no one wants a cataclysm, but the independence movement refuses to face the dilemma, it does not change its discourse. In the rest of Spain, this attitude produces enormous distrust, and institutions, no matter how good their design, cannot make up for the lack of trust, which is mutual.
That is a situation that we cannot allow. Threats surround us whose outlines we can barely discern, but which we know are real: climate change, the so-called artificial intelligence, war conflicts. The factors that lead to division and confrontation dominate, within and between countries; Inequalities grow while feelings of identity are exacerbated. Union, which now involves a conscious effort against other impulses, is an indispensable condition for survival. Let’s not spread a pizza on the table of dialogue that everyone wants to serve at their convenience.
