The Spanish, including the Catalans, have innovated little in politics in their contemporary history. In both their democratic and dictatorial phases, they have copied external models, and often badly. Even when they achieved a more or less successful operation, the transition – something that Ernest Lluch explained to the Balkans in case it served as a model for the ex-Yugoslav countries – they have not been able to adapt it to the new times.
The Spanish, on the other hand, excel at copying themselves. The “event” called by the PP for September 24 has its roots in demonstrations of a century ago. In December 1918, for example, thousands of citizens protested in the streets of Madrid against the proposed autonomy statute proposed by the Catalanist parties, led by the Regionalist League. At the beginning of the thirties, more acts were called against the approval of the Statute of Catalonia. The Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, Ventura Gassol, even had his romantic poet’s hair cut in Madrid.
The secular path of anti-Catalan protests reaches us. Today the PSOE loses the elections, but it can govern by building majorities with the pro-independence parties and the parties to its left – “the anti-Spain”. And he would do it for years if the leftist voter was less picky about the vote. On the other hand, after twenty years on the path of Aznarism, the PP is at an impasse. Its split, Vox, pushes it to an extreme policy that scares potential allies. He wins the election, but he cannot govern. Thus it has lost its last partner, the PNB, pinched by the rise of Bildu and doubtful about an eternal reform of the Basque Statute which, seeing the result of the Catalan case, remains in limbo for years.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo has already warned. Hence their contradictory messages. But it is difficult to change a policy of two decades in a month with Isabel Díaz Ayuso at the back of her neck. The pater familias Aznar has offered him a solution: that the street makes Catalonia boil and, above all, that it makes the PSOE nervous so that it strips the cards. Not to the socialists who speak in public, who are the usual ones and of a political time that has already passed, but to the cadres who grind their teeth while an independentism in electoral decline boasts of its luck and raises the decibels of amnesty.
Ironically, the balm to calm those who are silent while sensing a viacrucis of the legislature, is in Waterloo. In ERC, not because they are less pro-independence but because they have negotiated for four years, they have learned to pull the rope without breaking it, even though their electorate has made them pay dearly for it. Carles Puigdemont has within reach to organize the “counteract” of the PP. That is why he will have to overcome tense days (such as 19-S), obvious things (that one cannot always pay in advance) and infinite pains (that those who today regard him as the true president of the Generalitat, the throw between the legs of the horses the day after the covenant). Oh!
