Six years ago yesterday, fanaticism claimed the lives of 16 people who were walking peacefully along the Rambla in Barcelona and the port of Cambrils. They have been the deadliest terrorist attacks in Catalonia in the last thirty years. Just as happened with those in Atocha in 2004, the deadliest of the attacks committed in Spain, they were the result of the radicalization of young Muslim immigrants settled in our country. Both have an unfortunate parallel that connects us with the latest political current affairs of our days, since far from exhibiting the unity that is required in the face of acts of this type, the nationalists in power in Catalonia and Spain, respectively , they flaunted an irresponsible sectarianism that led them to manipulate to the point of exacerbation the reading of what had happened.
In Catalonia we were at the boiling point of the process, and the Puigdemont Government did not hesitate to proclaim through its public media that the effectiveness of the Catalan police showed that Spain was not needed for anything. Josep Lluís Trapero was then elevated to the altars of his particular dream. Many of us were pained and indignant by the treatment of the information, in which the secessionist story prevailed over the unity that the moment required. One people, they said, and they did not hesitate to split it in two at the most critical moment.
Something similar, or perhaps worse, led the government of José María Aznar to maintain the thesis of ETA’s authorship in the 11-M attacks. Faced with evidence that was accumulating before the eyes of the citizens and the international community, Ministers Acebes and Zaplana continued to keep on the screens the version of events that was best with their short-term electoral interests. The bill came to them immediately, in the form of defeat at the polls, but, even in the interview that Jordi Évole gave him in 2021, Aznar fueled the conspiracy theories so as not to have to deny them.
These two nationalisms, in their extreme versions, expect hatred against immigrants and multiculturalism, whether in Ripoll, where the executors of the 17-A resided, today governed by xenophobic independence with the acquiescence of Junts, or in so many towns in the rest of Spain, where Vox’s demagoguery exploits friction with immigrants.
Immigration, and particularly that from Africa, is already the big issue that divides our societies. On the one hand, it is clear that Europe needs it in the face of a decreasing population trend. On the other hand, we do not have well-structured instruments to deal with the cultural shock that this entails, as the rebellion produced in France last June has shown us. Immigration integration requires pragmatic trial-and-error policies, not radical, supposedly savior formulas.
We are now in the post-electoral quagmire, in which the majority of the population, which voted for moderation and would be in favor of major agreements, is trapped by its extremes.
It can be argued that Catalonia has not yet nurtured a party comparable to the Spanish Vox and in a way it is true. Vox is pure and hard extreme right, in the manner of its European partners in Poland and Hungary. But it can also be said that, at least formally, he proclaims himself a constitutionalist. Xenophobic Catalan nationalism, although it has a certain tradition, has only given rise to a few eruptions in the Plana de Vic and now in Ripollès. But it is there. Junts cannot be accused directly. But Puigdemont’s personal situation turns this party into an anti-system movement, resolutely focused on fighting the State, cultivating its particular anti-Spanish xenophobia.
Despite yesterday’s mirage with the election of the president and the Bureau of the Congress, it is very difficult that with these elements it is possible to conduct a government action in the way that the challenges that we face require. Although a potential investiture agreement with Junts would have the beneficial effect of providing this party with a landing strip in the Spanish political reality, this will not generate a more stable environment for a legislative program, which is guessed tortuous and probably short. The pact between moderates that our country undoubtedly needs will have to wait for a more favorable framework.
