"The past is prologue"
Shakespeare, The storm
Although we always tiptoe around it, last Thursday marked the 40th anniversary of... No Catalan independence from NATO. With 54% of the vote. And yes, wouldn't you know it, it was a democratic referendum amidst an official fear campaign. And yes, it divided public opinion, but the next day, in a democratic surprise, everyone was still there, on both sides. And yes, look at that—and it's well worth remembering this when the empire howls again—it represented an immense popular mobilization for the NoAs if it were the last exhausted attempt to prove that the mirage of a democratic transition doesn't completely vanish down the drain. Results aside—a resounding "no" from the Basque Country with 68% of the vote and opposition also from the Canary Islands—what remained was a drastic summary, a disastrous trend, and a lasting practice: doing the exact opposite of what was preached.White man speaking with a forked tongue"," Krahe sang about Felipe. That "No way" from the socialists went down in history as a classic example of political maneuvering, chameleon-like ideological defection, and the passage of time as the only true judge. I suppose there's no more iconic image than the rallies of the eighties for the No starring the pacifist Javier Solana, who ended up becoming Secretary General of NATO. Forty years later, oh boy, out comes American Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Trump pawn, bellowing about Spain's lack of cooperation in the imperial and illegal war in Iran, reminding everyone that they were once great allies. We should ask him to clarify exactly what he is. beforeAre we talking about the illegal war in Iraq, the hornet's nest for which we are still paying the price? Or are we referring to something from before the very beginning? If anyone remembers, passed down orally from grandparents, NATO is made up of those military personnel who maintained, legitimized, and sustained Franco's regime for all the years it lasted. Little to be grateful for, as you can see. As an aside, there's the insightful lawsuit that Lluís Llach filed against the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) for failing to uphold its electoral promises. The judge essentially told him he was absolutely right and lamented the lack of any legal basis for issuing a ruling. And all Llach was asking for was a single peseta in damages.
The day before the date mentioned in the previous paragraph, last Wednesday, also marked the 22nd anniversary of the terrible 11-M attacks in Madrid. Mayor Oreja, undauntedHe did not waste the occasion, alongside Aznar, to identify the intellectual authorship "In the secret services of a neighboring country." They open their eyes wide in shock, because he places the conspiracy within French Freemasonry. Without any proof, of course. This nonsense only serves to confirm that conspiracy theories are neither so new nor did they suddenly appear out of thin air last night. They've been around for a long time and have been slipping away like water. However, the current contempt for the victims of the DANA storm is too directly linked to the contempt for the associations of victims of the 11-M attacks, and those vicious and merciless attacks against the dignity and integrity of Pilar Manjón. But, since oblivion doesn't always prevail, it must be remembered far and wide that the last death of that fateful March occurred in Pamplona, when the baker Ángel Berrueta refused to hang a poster blaming ETA for the Madrid bombings. Those who tried to force him went up to his house, grabbed a gun, came back down, and murdered him. A son stabbed his son, and a father shot him four times. The father who fired the shots was National Police officer Valeriano de la Peña. Son and father were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in prison, respectively. They soon obtained atypical and irregular prison furloughs. The officer was never dismissed and continued to receive his salary. Such are the ironies of democracy, when democracy itself is a joke. But how everything fits together in retrospect. So much so, that at times it seems we haven't moved much at all. Or that we're rapidly moving backward.
The dilemma of the rearview mirror—always essential and advisable for any non-reckless driving—is that you can focus too far back and ignore all the contradictions of the future. Often you must stop and remember to breathe. The day before the day mentioned in the previous paragraph, last Tuesday, marked exactly 103 years since the cold-blooded murder, carried out with criminal, patronage-like characteristics, of Salvador Seguí. the Sugar Boy, and of his inseparable Francesc Comas ParonasDespite the ban on Seguí's funeral in Barcelona, 200,000 people attended the farewell to their comrade, in the city that forges a strong sense of community in the darkest of times. A coincidence of the calendar, it has always seemed prophetic to me that Ovidi Montllor, red on the outside and black on the inside, went on vacation on the same day as Seguí. And like a rearview mirror, if it doesn't get distracted, it records everything, soon it will be 50 years since the shooting death of the anarchist militant Oriol Solé Sugranyes as he was about to cross the Pyrenean border that will never be a border, but which then was. A matter of life or death. On April 6th, yes, it will be 50 years since the spectacular escape from Segovia—and it was Ovidi who played Oriol in Imanol Uribe's film, where he sang The chanterelle in the prison dining hall—. After all, it's as if the rearview mirror keeps reminding us that, in reality, with every step, we're still trying to escape. Still.
2025, yes, it ended with the supposed 50th anniversary of the commemoration of Franco's death in bed. The noun is bed, not Franco. But rereading An infinite sorrowFrom Josep Maria Muñoz's excellent book (Arcadia, 2025), I think that without a rearview mirror, we'll be lame and blind, and we'll forget quite a few things. One, for example: that as soon as we were allowed to vote again, it turns out that 75% of Catalan society brought down Francoism electorally in one fell swoop. Spontaneous? That was anything but. The Catalan rupture, the plot of resistance, and the network of all the reconstructions had begun, without interruption, on a dark April 1, 1939. In between, decades of countless efforts, of chipping away at stone and iron, ice and bitterness, of patching every rag, of filling every gap. The rearview mirror, which so often gets dirty or breaks, needs to be carefully repaired and cleaned periodically, so as not to increase the feeling of being nowhere, to fine-tune where we are, and to discover... mutatis mutandisThat contemporary crossroads are laden with the prologue of the past. The rearview mirror meticulously details causes and effects, fragility and destruction, wastelands and exiles. But also, and above all, written on the penultimate Friday of winter, the paths out, the map of the work, and the wellspring of hope. They are there.
