Catalonia-Extremadura, the truth and the respect

The search for good neighborliness is always profitable, even more so if we are talking about Catalonia and Extremadura, with thousands of Catalans who have their family roots there. But good neighborliness, to be real, must be based on truth and respect.

Everyone who came to work in Catalonia (like my maternal grandfather) did not come to build our country but to improve their present and future. No one leaves their land thinking about building another, but, logically, thinking about improving their personal and family situation.

President Illa has spoken in Extremadura as if Catalonia had to ask for forgiveness for having dared to propose independence and now the reunion was beginning, when, in reality, when there was no talk of independence, two socialists like Rodríguez Ibarra or Bono were already winning elections with the xenophobic and lying tune of the unsolidary Catalan, which Catalans returning from vacations to their towns of origin later hear. Anti-Catalanism is a constitutive fact of Spanish political and social culture, and no one has ever come to apologize to us or offer reunions.

And this has not changed and will not change no matter how many professions of Spanishness Illa makes, as was made clear in the recent vote of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council: all the communities, except the Canary Islands, voted against the new financing for Catalonia (11 from the PP and 2 from the socialists). That the Extremaduran president said today that she has the "objective" of avoiding a "repeat" of a new migratory wave, as if Catalonia could unbalance her numbers, is an insult to intelligence. The story of a happy ending because Catalonia returns to Spain forgets the principle of reality.