Other reasons about the fiasco of the 1-O

Since the referendum of October 1, 2017, in which a great popular victory ended in political failure, all kinds of culprits have been sought. Thus, everything from threats, dirty war, and state repression to supposed fears, cowardice, and internal betrayals have been considered. And while the gravity of external aggressions against the right to self-determination has been progressively relativized, if not forgotten altogether, internal weaknesses have been exaggerated to the point of creating an unbreathable climate of collective self-flagellation.

Far from it, I am of the opinion that the success of the popular support for the 2017 referendum and the subsequent independence fiasco must be analyzed beyond the attributions to collective heroic virtues and personal vices. And I believe it is time to put aside revenge and resentment, also shrewdly induced by the adversary. Therefore, the consideration of deeper reasons can help not only to turn the page on this infamous and old Cainite practice among losers, but also to know ourselves better as a subjected nation and to be able to propose truly winning future strategies.

Specifically, the thesis that I have been maintaining for years is that the Catalan nation has developed a deep culture of irreverence as a survival strategy. If I were to say it kindly, I would turn to the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner and the metaphor of the reed that resists storms thanks to its accommodating flexibility. In a less poetic image, however, I would illustrate it with the habit of abandoning one's own language in favor of the dominant one to avoid an unequal conflict that is considered lost. And so all forms of national irreverence, made of renunciations, submissions, and sycophancy before the assimilating power of the metropolis.

However, while it can be agreed that irreverence has a clear adaptive function, at the same time it translates into a serious deficit of institutional sense that, at the key moment of a hypothetical liberation, makes us terribly weak. Irreverence is a psychological and cultural disposition useful for resisting and surviving, but when the decisive hour of emancipation arrives, it becomes a burden that is very difficult to shed.

A clear example is the relationship with violence. If the declaration of independence had gone ahead, and given that the Spanish institutions were convinced—more them than us—that we could manage to be independent, I have no doubt that they would have brought in the army they already had prepared. If necessary, causing fatalities. On the other hand, our leaders were not so much fearful as they shared with the majority of Catalans—with few exceptions—that it was necessary to avoid shedding our own blood and that of others at any cost. A psychological and cultural framework that had already been expressed before in the hegemony of pacifist ideologies that during the Process imagined that a future Catalan State without an army was possible. An idea even more naive than that of "not a single paper on the ground."

I believe that our cultural irreverence is deeply rooted. From the contempt for the value of historical heritage to the vilification of authority and school discipline. From the fascination for supposedly transgressive art, to the contempt for the defense of good Catalan, also in journalism or politics. From the use of irony and sarcasm to shake off any institutional stain, to a great expertise in coarse language. From the high sensitivity to claim rights for everything, to the amnesia to remember the duties associated with them. From the discomfort to defend borders and migratory controls, to the generous "inclusive" definitions of belonging to the nation.

That irreverence is a weapon of defense for the weak in any situation of domination, whether in the relationship between adolescent children and their parents, idle students and their teachers, or protest movements and economic powers, is perfectly describable. But in all these circumstances, institutions are usually strong enough to maintain the framework within which the conflict occurs. And in the power relations between a nation under construction and an assimilating state, as well. That is to say, the final reference framework is always the State and, therefore, after facing a great subversive irreverence, willy-nilly, it imposes its law.

In short: in a strategy to "do it again," in addition to better anticipating the adversary's brutality and one's own cowardice, it would above all be necessary to better prepare the nation to move from resistant irreverence to an audacious, irreducible, and above all constructive cultural disposition, capable of assuming the inconveniences and institutionalizing costs inherent in the exercise of power.