Cardinal points of the independence movement

Just hours before she was due to testify before the commission of inquiry into Operation Catalunya, audio recordings emerged (via RAC1) showing that María Dolores de Cospedal was already deeply involved in the dirty war against Catalan independence in 2014, when she was secretary general of the People's Party (PP). Meanwhile, this weekend, a manifesto appeared, signed by four former mayors of Ripoll (Pere Jordi Piella and Jaume Camps of the PSC; Teresa Jordà of the ERC; and Jordi Munell of Junts) denouncing the xenophobia of the current mayor, Silvia Orriols, and her "authoritarian and sectarian" way of governing. Orriols, for her part, responded in her usual fashion: with a video in which she presents herself as a victim, accuses her predecessors of being caciques, and presents herself (and her party, Aliança Catalana) as "true democrats." During the same weekend, a current Junts mayor of a major city, Agustí Arbós, from Olot, in an interview on Digital Nation winks quite explicitly at the Catalan Alliance with a speech that places immigrants as the cause of the deterioration of the living conditions of "Catalans" ("We must radically stop the massive influx of people to maintain the welfare state," said the young offspring of the new Catalan right). Finally, a few days ago we witnessed a rather intemperate exchange of insults between Gabriel Rufián and Francisco de Dalmases, just days after Oriol Junqueras had invited Jordi Turull to "put aside the reproaches" regarding the Spanish government's achievement of "sovereignty quotas" during the 30th ERC Congress that he endorsed.

All of this news has been coming in the last few days, and it pretty clearly defines the cardinal points around which the independence movement has been moving for some time now (and will likely continue to do so in the months and years to come). In the north, there is resentment over the dirty war and the undemocratic abuses of the Spanish state; in the south, the war between parties, often expressed through personal grudges and outbursts of childish rage; in the east, the pull of the far right, naturalized by sectors of the traditional right that embrace its principles; in the west, the ambiguities and balancing acts of both ERC and Junts between continuing to promise independence to their voters and, at the same time, participating in Spanish governance.

The four points visibly combine poorly, losing their way not only for the parties but also for broad sectors of the independence movement, which experienced its peak years when the idea of founding a republic was linked to democratic improvement, progress, and social cohesion. The major parties (and also, in their own way, the CUP) are pushing forward day by day, but they have lost their majority in Parliament and also a good part of their credibility, which has not been revived even in the face of confirmation of the democratically unacceptable game played by the inhabitants of the state's sewers.