The wave of pro-independence abstention is growing on social networks. Very relevant intellectuals surf there. They have been complaining for years that the punishment for the jailed leaders replaced the goals of the process. They consider that the pro-independence parties have been making emotional blackmail and that they are now dramatizing a sovereignty that, in fact, masks an inefficient and skimmed regionalism.
Four years ago, Jordi Graupera, the standard-bearer of this position, presented himself to the generals with the Primaries formula, which sought to unify all pro-independence currents from the ground up. He did not have bad results: 28,253 votes (3.7%) in Barcelona, ??but he did not win the seat. It was too early. The pro-independence bases were still dominated by the tear mist. Now it seems that his time has come. The abstentionist wave that is being prepared aims to emulate the strategy of Bildu, which during the illegalization and the socialist presidency of Patxi López laid the foundations of a project that years later is about to overtake the generational GNP. The main argument of the abstentionists is that the pro-independence parties will never change on their own, since the interests of the professionals who make a living from politics always prevail. They must be made to change by force, hence the behaviorist strategy of abstention: “Either change or we will leave you without seats”. The abstentionists see more dangerous the fossilization of a banal independence, than the arrival of Vox in the central government. Joan Burdeus concluded his article in the digital magazine Núvol with this sentence: “I feel much more hopeful about what can move in Catalonia if we continue to monitor that I am not afraid of a PP and Vox government”.
More or less, intentional abstention will harm pro-independence parties. It will just make them lose their already very eroded hegemony. Now, the alternative of the PSC will be very limited, too. The Catalanism of the PSC and commons has no capacity for seduction in the independence bloc. It is still likely, as I explained last week, that some of the Catalan nationalism will end up in the extreme version of Ripoll. PP and Vox will finally have a small garden in Catalonia; very limited In short: Catalan politics is advancing at a forced march towards hyper-fragmentation.
All against all will cause the country to return to a conflict like that of the 15th century. No one will have the minimum strength needed to run the country. Perhaps Israeli politics, also very fragmented, can afford it: Israel is a very strong state. But the failure of all the Catalan compasses can be decisive for the end of a game that Francoism determined, that the Catalanist unity of anti-Francoism conjured and that Pujolian nationalism, first, and independence, then to exasperate with the idea that Catalan balances were an impediment to national normality. This normality has turned out to be explosive. Increasing hyperfragmentation is the result.
It is known that history does not serve as a lesson; and less in the time of Adamism, in which there are so many who believe they are starting from scratch. But it’s still interesting to consult. The first green shoots of overcoming the hyper-fragmentation of the 15th century did not appear until the 17th century, and the industrial revolution did not begin until the 18th century. A Verdaguer does not appear until the end of the 19th century. Fabra i Pla’s prose reaches the 20th century. To redo, this hyper-chopped country now has so much time ahead?
