The (Catalan) Nativists are Getting Restless
While in Madrid the PP continues with its parliamentary hooliganism
In the clashes with police that occurred on the day of the Catalan independence “referendum” on 1 October, 2017 one person suffered a serious injury. His name, of all possible names, is Roger Español and he lost an eye to a foam pellet fired by the police. In 2018 he was awarded the Creu de San Jordi by the Catalan government, the highest honour in its power to grant.
Yesterday he returned it. After a ten minute meeting with the Catalan Culture Minister he said, “They have emptied this medal of content” and “Every pact with the state, with the PSOE, and Comunes has contributed to forgetting October 1”. He also rejects the amnesty law passed last week by Spain’s Congress saying because it covers police officers accused of overstepping the mark that day.
His views probably reflect those of the hard core of Catalan separatists who believe that their sacred cause has been sold out by both ERC and Junts, the two main nationalist parties, and that they are negotiating in Madrid not to advance independence but rather to reintegrate themselves fully into national politics while saving themselves from criminal prosecution. So while in Madrid the opposition parties and media roar about the amnesty law being a betrayal of Spain and an augury of its imminent break up in Barcelona the true believers in the Catalan nationalist cause are disgusted by their leaders behaviour.
Another straw in the wind suggesting discontent in nationalist ranks was the election of Sílvia Orriols last year as Mayor of Ripoll, a small town in the north of Catalonia. She’s a member of Allianza Catalana, a party that makes no attempt to dress up its xenophobia and nationalism in woolly human rights discourse. It wants an independent Catalonia purged of anyone who doesn’t have an exclusively Catalan identity. Its xenophobia is directed not just at immigrants from outside Europe but “immigrants” from elsewhere in Spain too.
Of the two nationalist parties Junts is the most affected by discontent among the nationalist faithful as it claims to be sole bearer of the political essence of Catalan nation and Carles Puigdemont to be the Moses of the Catalan people. This explains a lot of its carry on in Congress; the constant nationalist chest beating, and baiting of the PSOE is designed to draw attention away from the reality of the amnesty deal, that it brings Junts back into Spanish national politics-as-usual. ERC is less affected as it now makes no bones about its commitment to using solely legal and constitutional means to achieve independence. Nevertheless, if a significant number of discontented nationalist voters either stay at home on May 12 that’ll lower the overall number of nationalist deputies elected to the Catalan Parlament.
Meanwhile, back in Madrid the PP is doing handstands and backflips to make the passage of the amnesty bill into law as difficult as possible and it may end up before the Constitutional Court even before becoming law, if it indeed does. Such delays, however, redound to the benefit of the government as they make it impossible for Junts and ERC to do anything that might bring it down; the fall of the PSOE-Sumar government would mean the definitive end of the amnesty.
Since 2018 the first law of Spanish politics has been clear: it’s that in principle every new development benefits Pedro Sánchez. Fewer Catalan nationalists coming out to vote on May 12 and the amnesty bill taking forever to become settled law both suggest that it continues to hold true.
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