A few days ago, Floren Aoiz was in Palma, a Navarrese abertzale activist with a long trajectory, currently responsible for the area of political relations with the State of EH Bildu. Invited by the Darder Mascaró Foundations and the La Col·lectiva association, he granted an interview with Anna Mascaró, from Ara Balears, in which he said very interesting things. For example: “In Euskal Herria there is a greater tendency towards sovereignty among Basque speakers (...) but there are also many non-Basque speaking sovereigntists. In recent years, more: it is a growth linked to the perception that sovereignty offers an alternative for society as a whole. An alternative not only of the left, but also linked to society's ability to govern itself. To understand self-government in a certain direction, which is the defense of public services, the defense of better living and working conditions... A model of coexistence. In the case of Euskal Herria, the aspiration for sovereignty means that we want to obtain this sovereignty with respect to the Spanish and French states. But in the world we live in, it is also a demand for democratic sovereignty against capital, against international capital flows and decisions in which peoples have very little say”.It is so. Nine, ten years ago, when Catalan sovereignism was able to propose a true alternative, that is to say: a Republic based precisely on coexistence, equal opportunities (this implies the defense of public services and good living and working conditions), it had an absolute majority in Parliament, it confronted the Spanish state and obtained —briefly, but it obtained it— world attention. Many saw it as a threat to the established order, but this was precisely the greatness of the proposal and what made, in the eyes of many others, the Catalan Republic not seem like a threat, but rather a hope. The old order was what the Spanish state represented; the Catalan Republic represented —it promised— a step forward in rights and freedoms, a new 21st-century Republic, progressive, advanced, mature, capable of including citizens rooted in the past and those who have just arrived. A country founded on the Catalan language and culture, in dialogue with the languages and cultures of the world.Political defeat led to another self-inflicted defeat. A tortured abandonment in internal hemorrhages, psychodramas, obsessive searches for culprits, and idealizations of pasts supposedly better than they ever existed as invoked. Withdrawal, conservatism, and ultra-conservatism: the attitudes of the fearful and the opportunists who believe their moment has come to command something, even if it's just scraps. There are those who still insist on denying the existence of a Catalan far-right, even when it's right in front of them, and those who consider a poll sums to an "independentist majority" with the seats of Junts and ERC plus those of Aliança Catalana. This is indeed the direct path to definitive failure.
