The fact that Barcelona is hosting the Goya Awards ceremony shortly after the recent Gaudí Awards gala is yet another episode in the culture war between two visions of Barcelona and its role in Spain. This battle, on a political level, can be likened to that between sovereigntists and federalists. The former want Barcelona to act as the capital of Catalonia and the Catalan language; that is, to be the capital of the region. as if it were capital of a state, to guarantee the survival of the national identity. The latter group intends for Barcelona to embrace its share of Spanish capital status without reservation, in order to maximize its potential and contribute to a more pluralistic understanding of the Iberian Peninsula.
These two viewpoints stem from opposing analyses of what Spain is. While the sovereigntists base their arguments on empirical pessimism, the federalists maintain that a majority committed to a pluralistic state is possible, and therefore Catalonia must be fully involved. This reflects the Olympian spirit embodied by Pasqual Maragall until he ran up against the Madrid wall. Just as the federal republicans, the regenerationists, and, going back further, the Austrians who in 1714 attempted to make Catalonia the epicenter of a composite monarchy had also encountered such obstacles.
Today, a segment of the country remains convinced that Spain will eventually change because the PSOE depends on the support of the peripheral regions, and particularly Catalonia. But I wonder if this perception stems more from arithmetic factors, or wishful thinking, than from ideological conviction.
Another part of Catalonia has moved from pragmatic nationalism to a sovereignism that ran out of steam in 2017. These sectors are the ones that believe in a self-centered culture, in which the literary event of the year is the Night of Saint Lucia and not the Planeta Prize, and in which Catalan cinema is presented to the world without politicians thanks to the policies of less than the policies of the councilor Garriga) and to the talent that we continue to generate.
It's normal that these two strategies coexist in a melting pot of a country like ours. And it's also normal that people genuinely committed to the country's progress believe—especially since 2017—that what's needed is to gain ground within Spain as a whole.
But this approach has two weaknesses. The first: Everything Catalonia does in collaboration with Spain—such as hosting the Goya Awards—implies linguistic subordination. Spanishizing Catalonia, or Catalanizing Spain, however you want to put it, will always mean the subjugation of Catalan to the language of the State, which, moreover, is dragging us toward the Latin American cultural sphere. In this context, the occasional Goya Award for a film in Catalan, Basque, or Galician is simply the other way around.
And there's a second problem: if we step outside the cultural bubble, we find a country on the verge of public service collapse. A country where transportation, education, and healthcare—to name just three areas currently in dire straits—are floundering. This has only two explanations: either the Catalan government is incompetent, or those who advocate "Catalanizing Spain" are running up against the harsh reality of a public spending system based on Castilian centralism.
When the Goya Awards are presented in Barcelona, the city's and the country's highest (socialist) authorities will realize they're living in a mirage, because beyond the glamour of the gala, there are citizens literally fed up with paying taxes for third-rate public services. Perhaps they'll tell us that independence isn't the solution to this disaster. But what they won't be able to deny, I fear, is that dependency is the root cause.
