Antoni Bassas' analysis: "The Execution of Companions and the Spanish Political Project"

This morning marked the 85th anniversary of the execution of President Lluís Companys by the Spanish government. The President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, laid a wreath at the foot of Companys's grave in the Fossar de la Pedrera in the Montjuïc Cemetery in Barcelona.

Companys was shot for what he was, not for what he might have done. He was shot, after a travesty of a trial, because he was the president of Catalonia. And in the 1940 fascist dictatorship's vision of Spain, Catalonia couldn't have a president because it wasn't a country, it was simply a Spanish region. That historical tension hasn't disappeared. In fact, the great concession of the Transition, made by Spain with great fear and some realism and a desire for reconciliation, was that Catalonia had the right to an institutional architecture, which led to the return as president of Catalonia of someone, Josep Tarradellas, who had been an advisor to Lluís Companys. Of course, so that it wouldn't be said, they decreed that everyone should be allowed to have coffee.

Today, reducing Catalonia to a region remains a raison d'être of Spanish culture and politics, with varying degrees of nuance. Podemos doesn't want Catalonia to have jurisdiction over immigration, the PSOE is playing dumb when it comes to financing our money, and what can we say about the PP, with its belligerence against the Catalan language, or Vox in any way?

That's why it was interesting to hear Feijóo yesterday, who chose Barcelona to present his plan on immigration, which includes the language requirement: a B2 level of Spanish, which is quite high, with the explicit idea of inviting Latin Americans and not North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans, and Asians. We're as usual: demanding good Spanish. Demanding Catalan is racist. In short:

"Our goal is to restore nationality to its highest meaning. It should be a merit and a reward for effort and true integration, and not a mere bureaucratic process. In other words, Spanish nationality is not given as a gift; it is deserved."

Feijóo became entangled in the always slippery and dangerous mission of define what it means to be Spanish, and said that it was "sharing a common project, values and a destiny, and feeling part of something bigger." He did not define what values, nor what destiny (a word very much to the taste of the Falangists), but in view of the PP's political offer, it is clear that this is their project, not ours.

Good morning.