Interview with Julian Casanova, historian and professor of Contemporary History at the University of Zaragoza
"I do not know if I will see it, but the process of independence of Catalonia is unstoppable"
thediario.es
Julian Casanova (Valdealgorfa, 1956), is a historian and professor of Contemporary History at the University of Zaragoza. He has written several books on the Second Republic, the Civil War and anarchism. Visiting professor at numerous universities, including Queen Mary College (London), Harvard (USA) and Central European University (Hungary). In this interview, which is developed by telephone, we talk about Catalonia, how we have arrived at this situation and what the outputs might be.
With what other country could we compare what happens in Catalonia?
Yugoslavia in the first phase, before the genocide, came from a transition that resembled the first moment of the Spanish Transition, but at present there is no parallelism in Europe, neither in the second part of the twentieth century nor at the beginning of the century XXI. It is not the Scottish case and it is not Kosovo. There is no state that after leaving a long dictatorship and consolidating democracy for 40 years, in which there is a party that wants to become independent due to lack of negotiation of the State, among other reasons.
To achieve independence, one of these three factors must be given: negotiation - case of Czechs and Slovaks -, war or dismemberment of an empire, like the Soviet one.
If we take the last point, we need a decaying, bankrupt or weak state. With a strong and legitimate one, a process of independence is difficult unless there is a war or an invasion. The first step would be to have an unreliable state for a sector of the population either because it is bankrupt or because it has no capacity to apply the monopolies of violence and administration. In the Yugoslav case there is a moment when this aspect plays a very important role. There has to be a process of decomposition so that the opposition has enough power and legitimacy. What was the second point?
War.
We would be before the egg or the chicken: is war the consequence of independence or is war a companion of the process of independence? Is it the cause or the effect?
Is the Spanish state strong or weak? Do institutions have auctóritas before citizens?
People confuse repressive with strong. The Weberian concept of State, which has the legitimacy of the monopoly of violence and administration, does not have to be repressive, on the contrary. The state that arises from the Civil War and the Franco regime is not strong, it is repressive. A strong state needs to legitimize itself before society. That began to change in the Transition and in democracy. People perceived a more effective Administration. The Armed Forces went from being perceived as repressive to achieve a considerable respect on the part of the citizenship. The same is the Police and the Civil Guard. The state legitimized itself, became stronger.
From 2008, this legitimacy loses its strength in Spain and in other countries. In Spain it is due to three fundamental reasons. The first is corruption, which has brought us back to times when politics was made of corruption, bribes, families and friends. It reappears with force something that seemed proper to the Restoration and Francoism. In Catalonia the discourse against corruption works, although it has an important part.
The second point is political: the decomposition and loss of strength of the legitimacy of the State. Parliament ceases to be a decisive forum for discussion where the deputies of the different parties express their positions. Parliament becomes a focus of political powers and not a transmission of democracy. Without it, it was difficult for the We, the social movements from below phenomenon, to have appeared.
Third, the State did not have negotiating capacity from the outset in this process. There it lost part of its legitimacy. The fact that there has not been a negotiating State, especially since 2010 and the appeal of unconstitutionality of the Catalan Statute are fundamental elements. Is it a universal problem? Possibly, but in Spain the dimension is giant.
There is also corruption in Catalonia, but in Catalonia they perceive that there has been an attempt to purge it. A commission was created in the Parlament chaired by David Fernandez, of the CUP. Jordi Pujol and his family have been discredited before the Catalan society. Instead, here the corrupt continue to rule.
If it is not true it works as perception. Joining political responsibility to judicial guilt, as Mariano Rajoy and the PP do, say here there are no political leaders if a judicial decision is not reached. And exempting political responsibility through 'I already went to the polls' has done tremendous damage to democracy. There is a deterioration of politics, an abyss between leaders and citizens. There is no need but to see what has happened in the United States.
The phenomenon has become giant in Spain by the capacity that the PP has had to remain undamaged in this process. There is a speech of independence that has permeated Catalonia. We are not talking about independence consciousness, cultural identity or political consciousness, but about the bargain that meant that the Spain that robs us was dominated by thieves. This perception is very important in the younger and less conscious sector of Catalonia.
The hour of truth begins on day 2. The discourse of the central power is judicial, using a discredited justice. The Constitutional Court is not out of all suspicion. Not the 12 best. They are wearing a party shirt. How can it be solved?
Yes, that's very interesting. In Quebec and Scotland, even in Czechoslovakia, the debate was a political debate. Here we have gone to a second phase, which is what we are, the legal-constitutional: 'if you do not comply with the law watch for consequences'. There is a third phase, before October 2: will there be any problem of public order? Will the political and legal-constitutional phases lead to a public order problem on day 1?
Rajoy and vice-president Soraya Sáez de Santamaría have promised that no referendum will be held. The independentistas have the capacity to open, I do not know, at least 400 municipalities. Is there going to be a public order problem with a photo for the world other than the current one?
There is no political offer, anyone who leaves the discipline is stoned. We live between two absolute truths.
What you are proposing, that there is no mediation possible, is because it has been moved from the political phase to the legal-constitutional phase and that of mobilization. Behind the mobilization are not only the independentistas, there is an important social mass. We can ask why we have reached this point, but what is clear is that this important social mass is not just a political negotiation at the moment. The role of the intellectuals, historians, who in other places have served not of mediation but at least of wisdom, has been unthinkable here because in fact the reasonings are changed, they are subordinated to feelings and not arguments. From that point of view we have reached a point of no return.
I asked Josep Borrell, in an interview published in eldiario.es, if he detected a Balkan tuft in all this. If someone's gone, it can end badly.
Yes, but comparing Catalonia with the Balkans is a bit harsh. Here race and religion have no bearing, two fundamental elements behind the genocide, nor do we have the deep cracks of the Balkan world. But I do get the impression that we are going to reach a point of confrontation. If the state wants to maintain legitimacy and the Constitution, and if independence wants to follow the process that is marking a very broad social base, there is going to be some kind of confrontation.
I think there are two advantages over the Balkans. We do not have a divided Army and it is subordinated to the civil power. This is a great advantage that there was at the beginning of the Transition. Some will seem silly, but having an Army subordinate to civilian power is basic for civil society and democracy to work. The only thing that could bring us closer to the Balkans is that there would be police confrontations, that there would be a division in the Mossos d'Esquadra with respect to what legitimacy they owe, if that of the prosecutors and judges, who in essence emanate from Madrid, or Generalitat of Catalonia. The balkanization of all this is difficult for what I explained before.
In the Balkans there are phenomena of history, cultural legacies of race and religion that complicate the situation, which does not mean that it would have had to end as badly as it ended.
There is great verbal violence in social networks. How to prevent it from overflowing and how to put it back in the lane so you can give a dialogue? Juan-José López Burniol argues that the initiative must start from the strongest, from the Spanish state.
I am convinced that the responsibility of the State has not been only that of a Government like the PP, but it has been in line with what you are proposing. When you have the legitimacy, the state has to know where it can give in a negotiation and where it has to look for the negotiation. That has not happened. But you are raising the 2 as if we knew that there is no referendum ...
There is referendum with whatever participation.
With whatever participation, it is not going to be very high, and within participation, with 99% of the "yes", right?
It can happen like in Venezuela: in the referendum of the opposition only the opposition voted, and in the referendum of Nicolás Maduro only those of Maduro voted.
But Rajoy has promised that there will be no referendum, that is ...
They'll call it something else.
If they block the possibility of you entering an electoral college, would you rule that out?
I do not know.
That is why I say that the initiatives that can be given on day 2 will depend on what happens 1. Any initiative that comes later must have at least four requirements.
The first is that the state does not confuse strength with repression. You have more strength, you have the capacity, you have the legitimacy and you have a block of constitutionalist political parties, but you also have to know that you have to give it a political solution or try to recover the political initiative.
The second element is that social mobilization in Catalonia, which is very broad at the moment in favor of independence - very broad and very militant -, knows that there is a possibility of opening negotiations that would lead to this goal without the need for continue with the break. Convincing them is going to be very difficult.
There is a third element, which somehow blows through the air the alliance between the CUP and the old Convergence, which is socially and culturally unviable. From that point of view, the people of En Común have an important role, which until now have remained in an ambiguity.
And the fourth, which seems basic, is that Mariano Rajoy has to take a step. He has been so far a fundamental element to get where we have arrived and has to admit that from 2 there will be no choice but to enter into a political negotiation, I do not know if forced by the PSOE. I think it's going to be difficult. Rajoy is asking for more strength than negotiation. And there are people in Catalonia who no longer want negotiation. I listen a lot in journalism this phrase, 'from 2 will have no choice but to sit'. Who do you sit with? Only with the policy or also with the social base - very popular, to those who have convinced them that the rupture and the Catalan republic are just around the corner?
It seems that in the part, let's call it constitutionalist, there is no strategy. Everything is fixed and short term. If there were, there would be no attacks against Ada Colau and We can, because they represent a bridge that divides the independent independentismo because they raise a referendum agreed. If there were elections, In Common could avoid the absolute majority of the independence block. We would enter a more leisurely phase.
Yes, that is very clear, but they also have to clear a little the ambiguity in which they have been until now. It is no longer worth saying that you want the right to decide because at the moment we are no longer alone in the ability to decide. They have a very important role at the moment, starting with control of Barcelona, which is the most important city and the city in which everything moves.
On the other hand, it is true that a part of the Catalan social base that represents independence does not only represent independence because they have not let them decide, but because they believe that there has been a consolidation of antidemocratic structures of power in Madrid. There is a very different message here because these people are not only criticizing Spain because they steal us, they really think that there is a clear opposition between the democracy they represent in Catalonia and the antidemocratic structures. This I am even seeing in social networks with me. When I put on Facebook something that I think is sensible, someone tells you. 'the Spanish progress is already trying to convince us, but here you know that you are just as corrupt as the others.'
There is a speech in which Madrid represents an antidemocratic structure What is Madrid? Madrid is the PP. What is Madrid? Madrid is the PSOE, Madrid is the Constitution, it is the legacy of 78, all that. And so it is not so easy to return to the channel with a negotiation after the process that there has been confrontation, and that there will be from here to day 1.
The only solution would be to open the Constitution and resolve the state form.
Yes I think so.
All attempts to consolidate a state after the fall of the empire in 1892, which greatly affected the Catalans, the Catalan industry, all attempts to consolidate a state have failed. We had a twentieth century with a civil war and a dictatorship.
The fundamental issue is that what was used in 1978, when we came from a dictatorship, no longer serves. The Constitution proclaims that Spain is indivisible. This has never been negotiable. If you want to open a negotiation you have to open a negotiation in which the indivisibility of Spain ceases to be taboo, and that you have to do with a constitutional reform.
One of the topics about the Constitution is that it was approved in four days and hardly discussed. Anyone reading what the witnesses say, from Manuel Fraga to Alfonso Guerra, will see how hard it was to get that Constitution in those moments. The Constitution was approved in December 78 in a referendum, It has been little more than three years since Franco's death. The banned melon, the one of Spain is indivisible, they have to open it by means of a negotiation. At the moment I see no other way out. For that, there must also be negotiating capacity on the part of the Catalan elites who are controlling the procès.
Some argue that the problem is not a problem of Catalonia, but Spain, which has not finished structuring a State acceptable to all.
Nor should one be an advantage. If you balance the late twentieth century and compare it with what they said with the noventayochistas or what was said after the dictatorship we see that we have advanced. Among others, in the legitimacy of the State, which is no longer just repressive. The State reaches citizens through Health, Education. It seems that from 2008 we live in a broken world, also the international world, not just ours.
What was clear at the end of the twentieth century is not since 2008. We have the Brexit, Donald Trump, North Korea, Syria and immigration, with Hungarians and Poles ignoring the basic democratic norms of the European Union. All this has greatly influenced the Catalan issue. This is not only a crisis between Madrid and Barcelona, it is an institutional, political and economic crisis that has affected young people with job insecurity. It's an explosive mixture. There is one part that belongs to the structuring of the State, but another belongs to the more social part.
There is a massive loss of elite prestige throughout the world.
Yes, exactly. However there is a part of the Catalan elites that tries to convince others that this is a problem of others and not theirs. The nationalism as it is raised in Catalonia is not only a cultural and identity nationalism. There are some very strong elites who are proposing an alternative exit to their own perpetuation, to maintain their social position. The PP has convinced its voters that the economic crisis is clearing and that corruption is not a problem. There are seven or eight million Spaniards who vote for the PP. The Socialist Party was missing for some time and we could be moving from a social movement to a political party with five million votes, something unthinkable in the bipartisan and Transition schemes.
All this amid a deterioration of the media. A deterioration not only means that there is no longer any independence, but that the young people have changed the habits of buying the newspaper, going to the media to find out. The digital age is changing the way of thinking, the way of conceiving, the way of teaching. Historians are changing the way we teach and investigate history.
I know that it seems that the whole problem is territorial, that the whole problem is Catalonia and the territory, but I believe that what we are witnessing is a bankruptcy of some of the most consolidated values that had until that moment, but that anyone who travels he is seeing it. But there are signs that go against Catalonia. For example, Brexit, which has not been as effective and fast as it seemed. The EU around Angela Merkel to put away away from Trump. They want order, what is not needed at the moment is disintegration and disorder. This is acting against Catalonia. At CNN and the BBC there is a speech in which Catalonia is no longer so dear, Before they were seen as fighters against an oppression. This speech is disappearing.
Kosovo became independent because it had the US and the main EU countries behind it. But Catalonia has no one.
He does not have anyone. But they are telling young Catalans that they will be in the EU the next day and that they will be in international treaties. And that is false because they have not signed, Madrid has signed them.
It is clear that there is a problem of structuring the state. But I insist on this: what idea had the Spaniards of Spain in the last 20 or 30 years of the twentieth century compared to the previous pessimism? What was the idea of education, of the values that this education was bringing, of health for all with respect to that of our parents and grandparents?
There is a moment in which we verify that a system works for the first time in the history of Spain. That system has begun to be in crisis. That now they want to convince us that this is all product of 78, how bad the Transition was made, is a reading of the past manipulated from the present, which does not mean that the present is happy, because the present is no longer happy. But it is not true that the past was always happy because there is no need to see where Spain was in 1975.
The victory of the PP by absolute majority allowed him to occupy all the institutions: the Parliament, the justice. On the other hand, in the United States the separation of powers works with Donald Trump, who is a book autocrat.
And the Republican party itself will not accept it, Paul Ryan will not accept it. From that point of view, the PP has three advantages over the US: they have incredible discipline; have gone over corruption and have media control, with the complicity of important groups, which has also done a lot of damage. In Spain we are facing a crisis not only brought by the economy, the institutional and territorial question. We should reflect on whether in democracy, beyond the formal, the people have something to say. This is the debate, that of the appropriation of power by strong elites and democratically legitimized.
And ineffective to protect citizens from the economic crisis.
Ineffective to give an economic alternative. In the triumph of liberal capitalism, that of the people who defended the labor reforms to bring down important achievements, there has been no one in front. It looked like he could have Barack Obama but that was over. Social democracy was left naked because part of its social discourse was also defended by liberalism after many decades. It is curious how the Europe that leaves behind the era of the fascismos, the war and the violence, begins to make waters at the beginning of the 21st century.
The crisis will worsen if democracies become more fragile. If the state is able to redistribute goods and services, people perceive it as a good state. What is happening is that that state has stopped redistributing goods and services, which was the main contribution to social stability after World War II. Why are we here? Because there are no politicians committed to society and that is producing political extremism, not only in Spain. It is producing a violent and hostile nationalism to the democratic system. We see it in Poland, in Russia and in some excommunist countries. But we have also seen it with the Brexit or in France with Marie Le Pen.
The crises that triggered the First and Second World War provided the teaching of what it says: to avoid populism it is necessary to redistribute wealth and bet on the social state. But that distribution has been cut and not only cut, but goes back. Why not return to the recipe that worked?
Exactly. The commitment to extend social services to the majority of citizens through the State comes after the crisis of 29. It stops fascisms and war, and returns after 45. The crisis before the First World War is very different ; is the advent of mass society. But the commitment to extend social services through the state was achieved in 1945 in most Western societies. It served to overcome the backwardness in collective equipment, in infrastructure and, above all, in the healthcare system. Why was the entry into the EU of Spain and Portugal so important in the 1980s? Because that's what we were given. Not only was democracy, was to equate ourselves in a process in which the state assists the least protected, with collective facilities and an important healthcare system. That also gave hope to the countries of Eastern Europe. It happens in Czechoslovakia with Havel, in Hungary and in other countries. Why has this prosperity been squandered? Why do the blackest fragments of history reappear in Europe? Because some of the signs of identity have been lost in Social Democracy, but also of democracy. There are people who say that you can not go back to the situation before the crisis because there is no turning back. And there are other people who have not dared to defend these policies of redistribution of wealth through the States. Why has this prosperity been squandered? Why do the blackest fragments of history reappear in Europe? Because some of the signs of identity have been lost in Social Democracy, but also of democracy. There are people who say that you can not go back to the situation before the crisis because there is no turning back. And there are other people who have not dared to defend these policies of redistribution of wealth through the States. Why has this prosperity been squandered? Why do the blackest fragments of history reappear in Europe? Because some of the signs of identity have been lost in Social Democracy, but also of democracy. There are people who say that you can not go back to the situation before the crisis because there is no turning back. And there are other people who have not dared to defend these policies of redistribution of wealth through the States.
It seems that the post-Communist left still does not find its story.
The only way to clear the black fragments of Europe is to return to the point where the state consolidates the commitment to citizens that social services will be extended. That has been lost. And to distribute income more equitably. Whenever someone tries to introduce alternatives for a more equitable distribution of income, people come out of order that says that means taxes to the rich. In the 50s and 60s it was very clear, and in the 70s, too. We arrived late, but we arrived. That is why the Spaniards got so caught up in Europe, not only democracy and freedom, we also discovered what was a non-repressive state, with an important benefactor through mechanisms of political, administrative and municipal representation.
We must recover some of the fundamental axes of democracy, and that democracy came after what Eric Hobsbawm called the Europe of extremes. It was an apprenticeship after years of violence and confrontation. Now we need a learning to get out of the institutional, economic, cultural, political bankruptcy of Europe. It is possible that nationalisms, apart from States, can not be an alternative in this that I am raising.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Catalonia?
Soon or soon we will see a process of independence in Catalonia. I am convinced. I am not optimistic in the way we are going to manage all this. I am not optimistic in the way the State will manage it, in the way the Government will manage it. I think that in the independentism part, there are currently voices that reason and argue, that are able to redirect the negotiation, not only to incite people and stimulate the street. So from that point of view I am not optimistic, but I believe that the process of independence of Catalonia is unstoppable. I do not know if I'm going to see it, but the process is unstoppable. So, in the end, when you take stock, someone will have to explain why the process that was not unstoppable ended up being unstoppable.
Source: http://www.eldiario.es/politica/voy-proceso-independencia-Catalunya-imparable_0_688031278.html
With what other country could we compare what happens in Catalonia?
Yugoslavia in the first phase, before the genocide, came from a transition that resembled the first moment of the Spanish Transition, but at present there is no parallelism in Europe, neither in the second part of the twentieth century nor at the beginning of the century XXI. It is not the Scottish case and it is not Kosovo. There is no state that after leaving a long dictatorship and consolidating democracy for 40 years, in which there is a party that wants to become independent due to lack of negotiation of the State, among other reasons.
To achieve independence, one of these three factors must be given: negotiation - case of Czechs and Slovaks -, war or dismemberment of an empire, like the Soviet one.
If we take the last point, we need a decaying, bankrupt or weak state. With a strong and legitimate one, a process of independence is difficult unless there is a war or an invasion. The first step would be to have an unreliable state for a sector of the population either because it is bankrupt or because it has no capacity to apply the monopolies of violence and administration. In the Yugoslav case there is a moment when this aspect plays a very important role. There has to be a process of decomposition so that the opposition has enough power and legitimacy. What was the second point?
War.
We would be before the egg or the chicken: is war the consequence of independence or is war a companion of the process of independence? Is it the cause or the effect?
Is the Spanish state strong or weak? Do institutions have auctóritas before citizens?
People confuse repressive with strong. The Weberian concept of State, which has the legitimacy of the monopoly of violence and administration, does not have to be repressive, on the contrary. The state that arises from the Civil War and the Franco regime is not strong, it is repressive. A strong state needs to legitimize itself before society. That began to change in the Transition and in democracy. People perceived a more effective Administration. The Armed Forces went from being perceived as repressive to achieve a considerable respect on the part of the citizenship. The same is the Police and the Civil Guard. The state legitimized itself, became stronger.
From 2008, this legitimacy loses its strength in Spain and in other countries. In Spain it is due to three fundamental reasons. The first is corruption, which has brought us back to times when politics was made of corruption, bribes, families and friends. It reappears with force something that seemed proper to the Restoration and Francoism. In Catalonia the discourse against corruption works, although it has an important part.
The second point is political: the decomposition and loss of strength of the legitimacy of the State. Parliament ceases to be a decisive forum for discussion where the deputies of the different parties express their positions. Parliament becomes a focus of political powers and not a transmission of democracy. Without it, it was difficult for the We, the social movements from below phenomenon, to have appeared.
Third, the State did not have negotiating capacity from the outset in this process. There it lost part of its legitimacy. The fact that there has not been a negotiating State, especially since 2010 and the appeal of unconstitutionality of the Catalan Statute are fundamental elements. Is it a universal problem? Possibly, but in Spain the dimension is giant.
There is also corruption in Catalonia, but in Catalonia they perceive that there has been an attempt to purge it. A commission was created in the Parlament chaired by David Fernandez, of the CUP. Jordi Pujol and his family have been discredited before the Catalan society. Instead, here the corrupt continue to rule.
If it is not true it works as perception. Joining political responsibility to judicial guilt, as Mariano Rajoy and the PP do, say here there are no political leaders if a judicial decision is not reached. And exempting political responsibility through 'I already went to the polls' has done tremendous damage to democracy. There is a deterioration of politics, an abyss between leaders and citizens. There is no need but to see what has happened in the United States.
The phenomenon has become giant in Spain by the capacity that the PP has had to remain undamaged in this process. There is a speech of independence that has permeated Catalonia. We are not talking about independence consciousness, cultural identity or political consciousness, but about the bargain that meant that the Spain that robs us was dominated by thieves. This perception is very important in the younger and less conscious sector of Catalonia.
The hour of truth begins on day 2. The discourse of the central power is judicial, using a discredited justice. The Constitutional Court is not out of all suspicion. Not the 12 best. They are wearing a party shirt. How can it be solved?
Yes, that's very interesting. In Quebec and Scotland, even in Czechoslovakia, the debate was a political debate. Here we have gone to a second phase, which is what we are, the legal-constitutional: 'if you do not comply with the law watch for consequences'. There is a third phase, before October 2: will there be any problem of public order? Will the political and legal-constitutional phases lead to a public order problem on day 1?
Rajoy and vice-president Soraya Sáez de Santamaría have promised that no referendum will be held. The independentistas have the capacity to open, I do not know, at least 400 municipalities. Is there going to be a public order problem with a photo for the world other than the current one?
There is no political offer, anyone who leaves the discipline is stoned. We live between two absolute truths.
What you are proposing, that there is no mediation possible, is because it has been moved from the political phase to the legal-constitutional phase and that of mobilization. Behind the mobilization are not only the independentistas, there is an important social mass. We can ask why we have reached this point, but what is clear is that this important social mass is not just a political negotiation at the moment. The role of the intellectuals, historians, who in other places have served not of mediation but at least of wisdom, has been unthinkable here because in fact the reasonings are changed, they are subordinated to feelings and not arguments. From that point of view we have reached a point of no return.
I asked Josep Borrell, in an interview published in eldiario.es, if he detected a Balkan tuft in all this. If someone's gone, it can end badly.
Yes, but comparing Catalonia with the Balkans is a bit harsh. Here race and religion have no bearing, two fundamental elements behind the genocide, nor do we have the deep cracks of the Balkan world. But I do get the impression that we are going to reach a point of confrontation. If the state wants to maintain legitimacy and the Constitution, and if independence wants to follow the process that is marking a very broad social base, there is going to be some kind of confrontation.
I think there are two advantages over the Balkans. We do not have a divided Army and it is subordinated to the civil power. This is a great advantage that there was at the beginning of the Transition. Some will seem silly, but having an Army subordinate to civilian power is basic for civil society and democracy to work. The only thing that could bring us closer to the Balkans is that there would be police confrontations, that there would be a division in the Mossos d'Esquadra with respect to what legitimacy they owe, if that of the prosecutors and judges, who in essence emanate from Madrid, or Generalitat of Catalonia. The balkanization of all this is difficult for what I explained before.
In the Balkans there are phenomena of history, cultural legacies of race and religion that complicate the situation, which does not mean that it would have had to end as badly as it ended.
There is great verbal violence in social networks. How to prevent it from overflowing and how to put it back in the lane so you can give a dialogue? Juan-José López Burniol argues that the initiative must start from the strongest, from the Spanish state.
I am convinced that the responsibility of the State has not been only that of a Government like the PP, but it has been in line with what you are proposing. When you have the legitimacy, the state has to know where it can give in a negotiation and where it has to look for the negotiation. That has not happened. But you are raising the 2 as if we knew that there is no referendum ...
There is referendum with whatever participation.
With whatever participation, it is not going to be very high, and within participation, with 99% of the "yes", right?
It can happen like in Venezuela: in the referendum of the opposition only the opposition voted, and in the referendum of Nicolás Maduro only those of Maduro voted.
But Rajoy has promised that there will be no referendum, that is ...
They'll call it something else.
If they block the possibility of you entering an electoral college, would you rule that out?
I do not know.
That is why I say that the initiatives that can be given on day 2 will depend on what happens 1. Any initiative that comes later must have at least four requirements.
The first is that the state does not confuse strength with repression. You have more strength, you have the capacity, you have the legitimacy and you have a block of constitutionalist political parties, but you also have to know that you have to give it a political solution or try to recover the political initiative.
The second element is that social mobilization in Catalonia, which is very broad at the moment in favor of independence - very broad and very militant -, knows that there is a possibility of opening negotiations that would lead to this goal without the need for continue with the break. Convincing them is going to be very difficult.
There is a third element, which somehow blows through the air the alliance between the CUP and the old Convergence, which is socially and culturally unviable. From that point of view, the people of En Común have an important role, which until now have remained in an ambiguity.
And the fourth, which seems basic, is that Mariano Rajoy has to take a step. He has been so far a fundamental element to get where we have arrived and has to admit that from 2 there will be no choice but to enter into a political negotiation, I do not know if forced by the PSOE. I think it's going to be difficult. Rajoy is asking for more strength than negotiation. And there are people in Catalonia who no longer want negotiation. I listen a lot in journalism this phrase, 'from 2 will have no choice but to sit'. Who do you sit with? Only with the policy or also with the social base - very popular, to those who have convinced them that the rupture and the Catalan republic are just around the corner?
It seems that in the part, let's call it constitutionalist, there is no strategy. Everything is fixed and short term. If there were, there would be no attacks against Ada Colau and We can, because they represent a bridge that divides the independent independentismo because they raise a referendum agreed. If there were elections, In Common could avoid the absolute majority of the independence block. We would enter a more leisurely phase.
Yes, that is very clear, but they also have to clear a little the ambiguity in which they have been until now. It is no longer worth saying that you want the right to decide because at the moment we are no longer alone in the ability to decide. They have a very important role at the moment, starting with control of Barcelona, which is the most important city and the city in which everything moves.
On the other hand, it is true that a part of the Catalan social base that represents independence does not only represent independence because they have not let them decide, but because they believe that there has been a consolidation of antidemocratic structures of power in Madrid. There is a very different message here because these people are not only criticizing Spain because they steal us, they really think that there is a clear opposition between the democracy they represent in Catalonia and the antidemocratic structures. This I am even seeing in social networks with me. When I put on Facebook something that I think is sensible, someone tells you. 'the Spanish progress is already trying to convince us, but here you know that you are just as corrupt as the others.'
There is a speech in which Madrid represents an antidemocratic structure What is Madrid? Madrid is the PP. What is Madrid? Madrid is the PSOE, Madrid is the Constitution, it is the legacy of 78, all that. And so it is not so easy to return to the channel with a negotiation after the process that there has been confrontation, and that there will be from here to day 1.
The only solution would be to open the Constitution and resolve the state form.
Yes I think so.
All attempts to consolidate a state after the fall of the empire in 1892, which greatly affected the Catalans, the Catalan industry, all attempts to consolidate a state have failed. We had a twentieth century with a civil war and a dictatorship.
The fundamental issue is that what was used in 1978, when we came from a dictatorship, no longer serves. The Constitution proclaims that Spain is indivisible. This has never been negotiable. If you want to open a negotiation you have to open a negotiation in which the indivisibility of Spain ceases to be taboo, and that you have to do with a constitutional reform.
One of the topics about the Constitution is that it was approved in four days and hardly discussed. Anyone reading what the witnesses say, from Manuel Fraga to Alfonso Guerra, will see how hard it was to get that Constitution in those moments. The Constitution was approved in December 78 in a referendum, It has been little more than three years since Franco's death. The banned melon, the one of Spain is indivisible, they have to open it by means of a negotiation. At the moment I see no other way out. For that, there must also be negotiating capacity on the part of the Catalan elites who are controlling the procès.
Some argue that the problem is not a problem of Catalonia, but Spain, which has not finished structuring a State acceptable to all.
Nor should one be an advantage. If you balance the late twentieth century and compare it with what they said with the noventayochistas or what was said after the dictatorship we see that we have advanced. Among others, in the legitimacy of the State, which is no longer just repressive. The State reaches citizens through Health, Education. It seems that from 2008 we live in a broken world, also the international world, not just ours.
What was clear at the end of the twentieth century is not since 2008. We have the Brexit, Donald Trump, North Korea, Syria and immigration, with Hungarians and Poles ignoring the basic democratic norms of the European Union. All this has greatly influenced the Catalan issue. This is not only a crisis between Madrid and Barcelona, it is an institutional, political and economic crisis that has affected young people with job insecurity. It's an explosive mixture. There is one part that belongs to the structuring of the State, but another belongs to the more social part.
There is a massive loss of elite prestige throughout the world.
Yes, exactly. However there is a part of the Catalan elites that tries to convince others that this is a problem of others and not theirs. The nationalism as it is raised in Catalonia is not only a cultural and identity nationalism. There are some very strong elites who are proposing an alternative exit to their own perpetuation, to maintain their social position. The PP has convinced its voters that the economic crisis is clearing and that corruption is not a problem. There are seven or eight million Spaniards who vote for the PP. The Socialist Party was missing for some time and we could be moving from a social movement to a political party with five million votes, something unthinkable in the bipartisan and Transition schemes.
All this amid a deterioration of the media. A deterioration not only means that there is no longer any independence, but that the young people have changed the habits of buying the newspaper, going to the media to find out. The digital age is changing the way of thinking, the way of conceiving, the way of teaching. Historians are changing the way we teach and investigate history.
I know that it seems that the whole problem is territorial, that the whole problem is Catalonia and the territory, but I believe that what we are witnessing is a bankruptcy of some of the most consolidated values that had until that moment, but that anyone who travels he is seeing it. But there are signs that go against Catalonia. For example, Brexit, which has not been as effective and fast as it seemed. The EU around Angela Merkel to put away away from Trump. They want order, what is not needed at the moment is disintegration and disorder. This is acting against Catalonia. At CNN and the BBC there is a speech in which Catalonia is no longer so dear, Before they were seen as fighters against an oppression. This speech is disappearing.
Kosovo became independent because it had the US and the main EU countries behind it. But Catalonia has no one.
He does not have anyone. But they are telling young Catalans that they will be in the EU the next day and that they will be in international treaties. And that is false because they have not signed, Madrid has signed them.
It is clear that there is a problem of structuring the state. But I insist on this: what idea had the Spaniards of Spain in the last 20 or 30 years of the twentieth century compared to the previous pessimism? What was the idea of education, of the values that this education was bringing, of health for all with respect to that of our parents and grandparents?
There is a moment in which we verify that a system works for the first time in the history of Spain. That system has begun to be in crisis. That now they want to convince us that this is all product of 78, how bad the Transition was made, is a reading of the past manipulated from the present, which does not mean that the present is happy, because the present is no longer happy. But it is not true that the past was always happy because there is no need to see where Spain was in 1975.
The victory of the PP by absolute majority allowed him to occupy all the institutions: the Parliament, the justice. On the other hand, in the United States the separation of powers works with Donald Trump, who is a book autocrat.
And the Republican party itself will not accept it, Paul Ryan will not accept it. From that point of view, the PP has three advantages over the US: they have incredible discipline; have gone over corruption and have media control, with the complicity of important groups, which has also done a lot of damage. In Spain we are facing a crisis not only brought by the economy, the institutional and territorial question. We should reflect on whether in democracy, beyond the formal, the people have something to say. This is the debate, that of the appropriation of power by strong elites and democratically legitimized.
And ineffective to protect citizens from the economic crisis.
Ineffective to give an economic alternative. In the triumph of liberal capitalism, that of the people who defended the labor reforms to bring down important achievements, there has been no one in front. It looked like he could have Barack Obama but that was over. Social democracy was left naked because part of its social discourse was also defended by liberalism after many decades. It is curious how the Europe that leaves behind the era of the fascismos, the war and the violence, begins to make waters at the beginning of the 21st century.
The crisis will worsen if democracies become more fragile. If the state is able to redistribute goods and services, people perceive it as a good state. What is happening is that that state has stopped redistributing goods and services, which was the main contribution to social stability after World War II. Why are we here? Because there are no politicians committed to society and that is producing political extremism, not only in Spain. It is producing a violent and hostile nationalism to the democratic system. We see it in Poland, in Russia and in some excommunist countries. But we have also seen it with the Brexit or in France with Marie Le Pen.
The crises that triggered the First and Second World War provided the teaching of what it says: to avoid populism it is necessary to redistribute wealth and bet on the social state. But that distribution has been cut and not only cut, but goes back. Why not return to the recipe that worked?
Exactly. The commitment to extend social services to the majority of citizens through the State comes after the crisis of 29. It stops fascisms and war, and returns after 45. The crisis before the First World War is very different ; is the advent of mass society. But the commitment to extend social services through the state was achieved in 1945 in most Western societies. It served to overcome the backwardness in collective equipment, in infrastructure and, above all, in the healthcare system. Why was the entry into the EU of Spain and Portugal so important in the 1980s? Because that's what we were given. Not only was democracy, was to equate ourselves in a process in which the state assists the least protected, with collective facilities and an important healthcare system. That also gave hope to the countries of Eastern Europe. It happens in Czechoslovakia with Havel, in Hungary and in other countries. Why has this prosperity been squandered? Why do the blackest fragments of history reappear in Europe? Because some of the signs of identity have been lost in Social Democracy, but also of democracy. There are people who say that you can not go back to the situation before the crisis because there is no turning back. And there are other people who have not dared to defend these policies of redistribution of wealth through the States. Why has this prosperity been squandered? Why do the blackest fragments of history reappear in Europe? Because some of the signs of identity have been lost in Social Democracy, but also of democracy. There are people who say that you can not go back to the situation before the crisis because there is no turning back. And there are other people who have not dared to defend these policies of redistribution of wealth through the States. Why has this prosperity been squandered? Why do the blackest fragments of history reappear in Europe? Because some of the signs of identity have been lost in Social Democracy, but also of democracy. There are people who say that you can not go back to the situation before the crisis because there is no turning back. And there are other people who have not dared to defend these policies of redistribution of wealth through the States.
It seems that the post-Communist left still does not find its story.
The only way to clear the black fragments of Europe is to return to the point where the state consolidates the commitment to citizens that social services will be extended. That has been lost. And to distribute income more equitably. Whenever someone tries to introduce alternatives for a more equitable distribution of income, people come out of order that says that means taxes to the rich. In the 50s and 60s it was very clear, and in the 70s, too. We arrived late, but we arrived. That is why the Spaniards got so caught up in Europe, not only democracy and freedom, we also discovered what was a non-repressive state, with an important benefactor through mechanisms of political, administrative and municipal representation.
We must recover some of the fundamental axes of democracy, and that democracy came after what Eric Hobsbawm called the Europe of extremes. It was an apprenticeship after years of violence and confrontation. Now we need a learning to get out of the institutional, economic, cultural, political bankruptcy of Europe. It is possible that nationalisms, apart from States, can not be an alternative in this that I am raising.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Catalonia?
Soon or soon we will see a process of independence in Catalonia. I am convinced. I am not optimistic in the way we are going to manage all this. I am not optimistic in the way the State will manage it, in the way the Government will manage it. I think that in the independentism part, there are currently voices that reason and argue, that are able to redirect the negotiation, not only to incite people and stimulate the street. So from that point of view I am not optimistic, but I believe that the process of independence of Catalonia is unstoppable. I do not know if I'm going to see it, but the process is unstoppable. So, in the end, when you take stock, someone will have to explain why the process that was not unstoppable ended up being unstoppable.
Source: http://www.eldiario.es/politica/voy-proceso-independencia-Catalunya-imparable_0_688031278.html
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