Catalonia and the two Spains

Spain celebrates its national holiday this Monday just after being called to elections in which the right and the far-right (if the redundancy may be excused) present themselves thirsty for revenge and the socialist centre-left and the left (if the Spanish national redundancy may be excused) will repeat the “No pasarán” of the most dramatic contemporary Spain.

Regarding what we can expect in Catalonia if the polls are confirmed, we have already had a taste of it with the bias of the justice system (which now threatens the Spanish president himself and his family) or with the government or parliamentary pacts between the PP and Vox in various autonomous communities. Without going any further, in Aragon they agreed to combat “the imposition of Catalan”, an expression that is not new but which announces what ill they will want us to die from and to what cause we will have to continue dedicating part of our efforts.

And there is still another precedent for what is to come, which is that of the Aznar government 2000-2004, with an absolute majority. That legislature, marked by the lies of the Iraq War and the traumatic episode of 11-M, we lived under a pressure of political atmosphere that made Spain a politically unlivable country. From that legislature came the Statute crisis and a good part of the reasons for undertaking the Process.

In these 2026 elections, the left will once again claim that the priority is social and not national, as if we did not know that not only are they not mutually exclusive, but there are also examples such as budgetary execution, the radial nature of the infrastructure, the attacks of the judiciary or the “Madrid has gone”. These are very bloody examples of how the lack of sovereignty is the breakdown that is most urgent to repair if we want to improve the lives of Catalans, whatever their social class may be.