From the pacified Consell de Cent street, Jordi Amat explains in his new book The Battles of Barcelona: Cultural Imaginaries of a City in Dispute There is a difficult-to-resolve relationship between the Catalan nation and its capital. In these debates, many pro-independence commentators have participated, and consistently so, although Amat seems to have ignored us (or so he pretends). I would say that, among all of Amat's accurate assertions (Barcelona is indeed a "political body without a head"), the most unfortunate misstep is his obsession with sparing the independence movement. This is a constant in Barcelona's friendly and smiling "social democracy" when faced with the evidence that the Process was the most popular, daring, progressive, participatory, electrifying, creative, and internationalizing event (and even the one with the greatest social consensus) that Barcelona has seen since the Olympic Games. The difference is that no decent pro-independence supporter would ever underestimate the importance of the Olympic Games. They may criticize aspects and consequences, but never treat it condescendingly. As we know, even within the establishment, there are still stratified classes.
I appreciate Jordi, but above all, I know him. Therefore, I think I understand what he means: that Maragall's work remains and that the Process is over. Like "pipe dreams," which is how the current mayor, Collboni, defines it, who curiously never dares to say anything similar about LGBTQ+ rights or about Palestine. His reasoning is that Barcelona hasn't had any nationalist or pro-independence mayors beyond Trias's four years. Before that, we have to go back to Pi i Sunyer (a Republican) or to Dr. Robert. This lack of nationalist influence in municipal government must mean something. The flawed part of the argument is too blatant, and that's the purpose of this article. I'll start with a brief point: candidate Trias, a pro-independence supporter, clearly won the last elections. The unnatural pacts the Socialists made with the PP cannot make us forget this incontrovertible fact, as Amat seems to want. No: the Process is not "over."
"You can't make fiction out of fiction," is suggested as a hypothesis in Joan Burdeus's interview in Amat.The Countryin reference to the lack of an independentist imaginary surrounding the city. But this is again a biased assertion: even Cerdà's utopian socialism would then undoubtedly be rotten fiction. The Process was real, I dare say. In Barcelona. Amat tends to believe that the battle for the "land" or for the nation has unfolded in the backyard, renouncing the battle for the city, as if the independence movement were some kind of elusive and invasive "Tractoralia." This, too, is rotten fiction: the battle for Barcelona is exactly the same as the battle for the land. The same pain, the same tears, the same creature. One cannot be "the city of rights and peace" without addressing the right to self-determination. Barcelonans know this perfectly well, both those who hang the Estelada flag from their balconies and those who don't. Robert Hughes also knows it, in his book Barcelona (which stops at 92 but could perfectly be said Catalonia), identifies the city's problems with those of the country. And indeed, there is thought before, after, and beyond pacified streets and pacified souls.
In fact, if Barcelona has any "battle" left to fight, it is precisely this one. Access to housing, the loss of identity, language (we recall the reactions to the Catalanophobic play promoted by the City Council, or to the ice cream parlor in Gràcia), the feeling of being expelled, the people beaten down at the ballot box; it all boils down to the same thing: land. Barcelonans. Catalans. Certainly, at times the independence movement is too reactive and must also offer a tangible, practical proposal. We have been putting forward some of these proposals repeatedly. Barcelona is not opening up, it is becoming more like Madrid; the housing crisis is not a case of mismanagement of success, but rather a resounding failure; it will be necessary to establish, even if only temporarily, protectionist policies for Barcelonans; to return to a middle-class economy, to speculate less and create more; superblocks make sense in natural areas, like the surroundings of the Sagrada Família or Plaça Catalunya, not on arbitrary thoroughfares or in artificial spaces. In fact, artificial pacification has never made sense anywhere. Not for a street, not for a city, not for a country.
