The Catalans will speak through the ballot boxes on May 12. The demoscopic machinery has already been set in motion and indicates to us with a certain inaccuracy its predictions. It is typical of every campaign to insist that this election is the most important in recent history. I do not know. What can be said is that they are the most anomalous and perhaps the most picturesque known.
In the considerations of the philosopher and essayist Josep Ferrater Mora (1912-1991) about the forms of Catalan life, we can read the reflection that we can share with many: “Catalans don’t like being taken for incompetent”. It is early to take stock of the twelve years of the process.
First, because it is not over yet, whatever Minister Félix Bolaños and many of his colleagues in the Sánchez Cabinet say. And secondly, because we lack the perspective that time gives and the assessment that history will make when many relevant facts that are now ignored are known. Everything will be known. William Faulkner said that the past is never dead, not even past. And Ernest Lluch liked to quote Benedetto Croce when he referred to history as the past that does not pass.
The vast majority will agree that the process has not gone well and has shown strong doses of political incompetence. The country has regressed in many fields in which it excelled. Among other reasons, because Catalonia has lost control and has not been able to distinguish between ideals and reality. It would be very healthy to admit that it has been a failure for independence supporters and those who are not. It can also be considered a failure of the State, regardless of the lack of political intelligence and the abúlia of the Rajoy government or the audacity of Sánchez, if one thinks that an amnesty law is the balm that it will appease the secessionism that no pro-independence party has renounced or intends to renounce.
The polls will tell if the Catalans want to continue in the discourse of the will of a people that Artur Mas invoked in 2012 or prefer to opt for a job well done, continuity, irony, measure and sanity, qualities that Ferrater Mora highlighted in his reflections. Mismanagement is not acceptable in the short or long term. In less than two months we will know the new political map in Catalonia, which will continue to have a decisive influence in Spain.
