Does Catalonia need a government?

The most important, paradoxical (and little commented on) fact of the last elections on 14-F is that separatism finally reached the historic goal of 52% of the votes in a Parliament election while its main parties, Junts per Catalunya and Esquerra, lost a total of 707,974 votes compared to the previous electoral contest. This source of contradictions explains the feeling of a timeout in which Catalan politics is now immersed. On the one hand, separatism has reached the social majority that its leaders had considered key to initiating a secession process, whether unilateral or agreed with the state. On the other hand, this symbolic threshold is reached at a moment of great weakness for separatism, with a very attenuated capacity for social mobilization (not only because of the pandemic) and with its main parties notoriously estranged and almost exclusively and childishly fixated on squabbles typical of the formation of an autonomist government.

These 707,974 desertions are not the only result of many voters' fear of filling the ballot boxes in an environment of viral contagion. There is a significant portion of separatist voters naturally fatigued by the promises that parties have systematically failed to keep in recent decades, a lack of responsibility towards the citizenry that Catalan leaders had managed to mitigate with the unquestionable and unjust repression of the state against political prisoners. But, fortunately, there are many voters who have understood (finally!) that the actions of an antiquated and radicalized judiciary are not an excuse to fool voters with roadmaps that end up as dead letters and historic days that only serve to fill the streets with flags. Abstentionism not only responded to this disappointment, but also to a political class that has sung for the last ten years the song according to which the Generalitat is a practically useless administration.

If electoral programs were more than just dead letters, Junts per Catalunya would have made the lifting of the DUI an indispensable condition for the formation of a government. But spring does not seem to excite the convergents much, and their star electoral promise has once again been converted into the preparation of what the pretentious call "a new assault on the state." The reality, as everyone knows, is different: currently, the independence movement has little desire for confrontation, breathes more than calmly in this autonomic pax, and has ended up becoming a sovereignism that only radicalizes when it shouts slogans about amnesty. In parallel, Junts will end up entering the Government for the simple reason that the autonomous administration not only supports 200 high-ranking officials who feed many mouths and serve to pay for many mortgages and extracurricular activities for their offspring, but also because the convergent elites have a logical thirst for ministries, high-ranking positions, and ad hoc appointments.

The actions of an antiquated and radicalized judiciary are not an excuse to fool voters with roadmaps that end up as dead letters and historical days that only serve to fill the streets with flags.

In this sense, we are all aware that the dramatization of these last few weeks regarding the formation of a government has nothing to do with roadmaps or with the role of the Consell per la República in the liberation of the tribe, but rather with the distribution of autonomous power and, especially, what concerns the control of public media. Quite intelligently, Elsa Artadi is plotting a Govern pact that ensures her almost total omnipresence in the ministriesof expenditure; namely, a Vice-presidency to manage the money that will rain down from Europe, a mega-department of Health that, under the excuse of the pandemic, will have almost free budgetary rein, and also the portfolio of Territory. To Pere Aragonés, who is the closest thing to a convergent that Esquerra has, all this seems fine, because he is interested in his party finally having a Molt Honorable leader and that this makes him the star interlocutor with Madrid.

The calm independence movement, in short, responds affirmatively to the need for a government in Catalonia, shielding itself in the need to return Catalan politics to the level of management, which was what, I insist, the same political agents who now long to rule had told us was only good for managing crumbs. Giving a sexy character back to governmental management will not be easy for them, especially after an activist and absolutely futile presidency like Quim Torra's, riddled with ministries in which Alba Vergés and Chakir El Homrani have demonstrated a level of administrative wisdom that would not make them suitable even for the concierge of a private company. However, Aragonés and company trust that a country where Salvador Illa has been able to be a political revulsive and win elections after his disastrous work as minister, will be indulgent when evaluating their future list of ministers.

However, the Catalan elites and the ineptocracy of the parties would do well not to forget the ghostly presence of these 707,974 souls for whom the memory of 1-O is more than an object of nostalgia and who will not forget their political objectives no matter how much Aragonés and Borràs sell them the idea of a prosperous country preparing the revolution sine die. Does Catalonia need a government? Evidently, like any political community, but our leaders must know that offices and the Parliament are not everything, and that there is an increasing critical mass that is not willing to mortgage its freedom in a management of minimums. Catalonia will not be governed from Waterloo nor with a government without leadership, that is evident, but neither will it be a relevant political actor in the future if its leaders continue with the mental chip of the last decade. Often, history changes in the subsoil, and there the independence movement enjoys 707,974 very relevant souls.

Catalunya will not be governed from Waterloo nor with a leaderless Government, that is evident, but neither will it be a relevant political actor in the future if its leaders continue with the mental chip of the last decade

Often, the most important measures of a symphony are those of waiting, the spaces of silence that prelude an uncontrollable burst of the orchestral mass.Time will tell if the parsimony of these days preludes a silent coda or a thunderous march that will shake up the entire political and social board of the countryI, those of the apologists of calm and of getting by, would not breathe very easily...