An endemic disease of independence, and therefore of our party system, are the opportunistic attacks of historical transcendence and incorruptible maximalism that promise quick, simple and definitive solutions to complex problems that for centuries, such as that of our territorial integration, we drag
I now hear a spokesman for Junts warning that “the amnesty and the referendum will be like the ‘good day’ before we start negotiating the investiture” and, from the other side of the negotiation, he responds by throwing out promises with candid lightness of salvific pacts and historical reunions.
Meanwhile, in the street, the transcendences of the tribunes are ignored; the demonstrations are emptied and the beaches are carelessly filled in this endless summer.
Those who call for big referendums to change the borders of the EU could already start winning the daily referendum that is democracy by improving hospitals and schools where the trains arrive on time. If they achieved this efficiency, the Catalans would give them majorities, election after election in an unequivocal and sustained way over time. Demanding referendums, on the other hand, before winning those votes is throwing patriotic smokescreens over his personal incompetence.
But managing the parish is more difficult than promising heaven and demands discreet arrangements and sacrifices. You have to put up with the neighbor and his dog, because, in return, they put up with your child’s screams: it demands Orteguian relevance, because then you have to agree to paint the staircase. Or we will all live without speaking in a slum. It is to resign – like the Flemish and Walloon Belgians who share a State – that the solution to traffic jams is not unreachable helicopters in an unrealizable utopia, but shared and well-managed motorways.
We should be talking about this management of close, complex and real things now. Instead, we agonize over the foundations of the rule of law every time a contested election leaves Parliament hanging. And so we are on our way to repeat the third in seven years.
