José María Aznar, Artur Mas, Albert Rivera and many others… started out as liberals and ended up as nationalists. How is it possible? Why Spain, the country that in its Cádiz Cortes used the word liberal in its modern meaning for the first time, the nation that surely had its most universal moment when, besieged by Napoleonic troops, approved its exemplary first constitution, La Pepa, why? Why has it been unable to forge a liberal political party, if not hegemonic, at least majority or not even minimally influential?
Even worse is the strictly Catalan case, since neither the excuse of geography, nor that of a possible failure in its process of industrialization and urbanization are applicable to it. The Catalans carried out an early process of commodification of their economy, already in the 17th century; a nineteenth-century industrialization and urban concentration and, even so, despite its proximity to France and its Mediterranean vocation, as if they suffered from the same Iberian fatality, they have also recurrently succumbed to identity siren songs or, worse still, to the fratricidal and intolerant temptation.
And it is that deep down, the case of the Catalans is even sadder than the Spanish one, because for not being able to, the Catalans cannot even argue as an excuse the suffocating presence of the State. From the first romantics to the noucentistas, our elites have ended up getting sick, cyclically and like the most, of nationalism.
Logically, as in the flat skies of a full moon night, Catalonia and the whole of Spain have produced great liberals who shine with the same intensity as the best stars. Even so, always isolated and fleeting stars that, in the best of cases, have formed constellations, but which in the end have been unable to establish themselves as the central pole of an entire solar system.
I am a liberal “in the good sense of the word”, Antonio Machado prayed, pained by a reactionary, ultra-Catholic Spain and civil war, which never felt the Enlightenment tradition as its own, not even in its American version, not even in the most statist continental European version. .
And that spurious liberals, yes, we have had them and we continue to have them. Thus, that nowadays only extravagant characters like Díaz Ayuso in Madrid or Carlos Carrizosa in Barcelona fly the liberal flag, it is downright disturbing. A real nonsense.
Because being a liberal has never consisted of enshrining individual rights, stripping them of their necessary moral responsibility; or in committing to an idea of ??childish and selfish freedom, standard bearer of low passions. “Long live wine!” José María Aznar shamelessly and irresponsibly blurted out the day that, pretending to be a liberal, he ended up incarnating himself as a poor libertine clown.
To be a liberal is to be convinced that men and women are born endowed with individual rights that are inalienable to us, that we are willing to partly cede only by contract, precisely to protect ourselves from abuses by third parties and by the State itself. Being liberal is respecting the rule of law and democracy, the division of powers and the market economy. And morally, assume a certain ethics of doubt, that is, a tolerant spirit, convinced that whoever differs from the majority ideas may be partly right and, consequently, deserves our respect.
Both in Catalonia and in Spain as a whole, the right has eradicated the liberal tradition from its universe – the Trias Fargas family itself begged Convergència to leave its name alone. Calling the FAES a liberal think tank is also daring. Thus, the few liberals that have existed have only found refuge in the socialist family, although at the cost of being seen as brothers-in-law, never as brothers.
With more than 70% of the population residing in cities, with a significant majority of citizens with university studies, travel and autonomous professions, I refuse to accept that good liberalism, in its progressive aspect, cannot one day take root in our soil, as were Pasqual Maragall or Miquel Roca or, in their conservative tradition, as Cambó, Maura or Cánovas del Castillo had been. There have been. What a pity that his ideas never reached the majority!