Antoni Bassas' analysis: 'Podemos' demagoguery and self-serving fear of immigration'

Today is one of those days when it becomes abundantly clear that the great political debate of these times is immigration. Perceptions about immigration drive feelings, instincts, fear, and therefore votes. And the parties are playing hardball. In Catalonia and around the world.

In Catalonia, a land of immigrants, this has been a sensitive issue for decades. Jordi Pujol dedicated himself intensely to the issue in the 1960s and 1970s, and was at the forefront of it in the 1980s and 1990s, already as president, concerned about the possible loss of Catalan identity and language and ensuring what we call "the Catalan dream." The PSUC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Union) worked to welcome and integrate the immigrant working class in Catalonia, if you'll pardon the redundancy. But at that time, the discourse was much more about integration and social and national construction than fear.

Today when Together demands immigration powers for the Generalitat He is calling for a shift in state powers for the Generalitat (Catalan government), which speaks to the same concerns as years ago, but in a very different context: immigrants come from all over the world, particularly from the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and they have arrived in significant numbers. In Catalonia, the foreign population represents 18%, 1.44 million out of 8 million. In Spain, it's 13.5%.

But Catalonia will not, for the time being, have jurisdiction over immigration matters because Podemos will vote against it this afternoon, as will the PP and Vox, but for different reasons. Podemos already claims that the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) implement racist policies, and Junts, through Turull last weekend, has called them anti-Catalan. This is... the response of Podemos spokesperson Pablo Fernández: "When the Socialist Party and the Popular Party were applying Article 155 in Catalonia, the only state political party that came out in favor of Catalan self-government and the Catalan people's right to decide was Podemos. For this man to come now and call us Catalanophobes is unworthy and infallible. The face of shame."

The presumption of racism by an entire police force subject to the law of a democratic state is an accusation with an argumentative strength similar to that of cotton. It would have been as sincere to say that they want to make the Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz government lose votes by pointing out that they have the support of a party, Junts, that is vying for the votes that the Catalan far-right is snatching away in the polls. But this would have been too long, and talking about racism, on the other hand, is ideal for a headline and marking a progressive ideological position in the controversy, which is what Podemos is also about. That Junts is keeping an eye on the Catalan Alliance is obvious, but from there to justifying a "no" with the word "racism" lies an abyss of insulting demagoguery. Podemos knows that, for the moment, if there is a progressive territory in Spain, it is Catalonia. In fact, it was Junts' votes that prevented Spain from having a PP and Vox government today.

The immigration debate is complicated: immigrants are part of the country that demands public services, and since they tend to have low salaries, they contribute less with their taxes and contributions. But if they're here, it's because someone (usually local) has given them work, and because we have an economy that demands that kind of labor and pays those salaries. There's too much irrational fear and interest in the immigration debate, and much less desire to find solutions. Because the migration phenomenon, given the current state of the world, is here to stay, and walls aren't going to stop it.

Good morning.