Catalonia has lived a political decade focused on a single issue. The Catalonia-Spain conflict removed any other topic from public conversation – and for five years also from private conversation – no matter how important and necessary its approach might be. The logic was overwhelmingly simple. Since any evil was attributable to the fact of lacking its own State, all problems were going to be resolved as soon as that lack was resolved. It wasn’t worth wasting time on trifles. At the same time, for constitutionalism, the only urgent thing was to confront and put an end to that threat by all possible means. So from the opposite motivation the result was the same: any issue that was not related to the flags had to wait for a better turn.
Something else happened. On the playing field of sovereignty the center-right faded into black. His ideological articulation disappeared from the scene, ceding all programmatic prominence to the left. The financial crisis, the 3%, the inflated Pujol case, the fear derived from not being black-legged independentists, all this sum created a complex state of mind, which could only be overcome by renouncing the political legacy that gave historical personality to that space. The sovereignist or purely Catalan social right continued to be represented politically, but only in relation to the independence issue, the only thing that seemed to matter at that time.
There was a double consequence. On the one hand, the noted postponement of many issues for posing a threat of distraction from the secessionist issue and its subsequent repression and collapse. On the other hand, the disappearance of the conservative counterweight in nationalism, making Catalonia one of the most left-wing territories on the entire continent, with no alternative discourse to that advocated by self-proclaimed progressivism.
The above must be kept in mind to understand the true significance of Junts having decided to play the immigration card politically now. And also to decode why the left overreacts, accusing them of embracing far-right discourse and assimilating them to xenophobic positions. The decision of Carles Puigdemont’s party is easily understandable. The citizen conversation on the matter not only exists, but is of great intensity. There are political movements, such as Aliança Catalana, encouraging this issue to be the central axis of public discussion in the face of the next elections.
Motion sensors indicate that this concern must be addressed. And since Junts has insisted since its last ideological conclave in 2022 to be something more than an independence movement, rearming itself as a conventional party, it is normal that one of the issues it tries to champion is this.
As for the accusations that are leveled at the junteros from the left for supposedly whitewashing far-right theses, the truth is that they cause a certain blush. They are explained by the surprising, disruptive, we would say, result in Catalonia that certain issues are aired from the sovereigntist spectrum with another approach after so many years of imposted unanimity due to the desistance and non-appearance of the nationalist center-right in the axis of social discussion. Come on, the mute man was more handsome when he was silent.
Catalonia will not manage immigration despite everything that has been said this week. Wednesday’s announcement about the full transfer of powers by the State were fireworks that will eventually go out after coloring the sky for a while. But it did serve to clearly observe how a new political framework is taking shape in which, with the independence demands lowered by all actors, other issues that have been discussed for a long time on the tables, sofas and beds of homes are rapidly gaining weight. . We also saw it with the PISA report, a disaster that would have gone practically unnoticed at the height of the process.
Are good news. We must talk seriously about these postponed and silenced issues. And it is advisable to do so with all eyes on the table to break the false consensus that impoverishes the hygienic and heated discussion that the most crucial issues deserve. Those who have laid the foundations of a new society that is mutating at a dizzying speed for many reasons, including the permanent arrival of immigrants.
