Nobody likes to speak ill of their country. Me neither. Self-criticism is tedious. It's easier to relativize, to look the other way, to see the speck in someone else's eye and not the log in your own. It's uncomfortable to put your finger on your own wounds. When the wound is open, it hurts. In this article, I do just that: apply a good splash of alcohol to see if our political, social, economic, and cultural body reacts. I confess I don't have much hope. The warning signs are clear.
We are witnessing the prelude to what could be a tsunami of ultra-nationalism. It's frightening. It's so defiling, it recalls dark times in other parts of the world. Was this the freedom we wanted, perhaps? Was this the yearning for independence? This wasn't it, comrades, this wasn't it. It's a disaster, a betrayal of the hopes of so many people to build a new country, generously open to all sensibilities and backgrounds, a generator of opportunities for everyone, including the newest Catalans. What mattered was the journey, not the destination, the right to decide (that is, democracy). In our haste, we lost our way. Of course, the poison also came generously from a Spain allergic to its own diversity, incapable of offering a political solution, an ultra-conservative Spain that is once again gaining strength day by day. That's also distressing.
What awaits us if we persist, offended, in navel-gazing? Now there is a real danger of Catalonia breaking apart, as Aznar, the oracle of that rancid, ever-squawking Spanishness, proclaimed threateningly. Everything could fall apart. I am torn between a dark bitterness and a "hope without optimism," as Havel said. political scientist Lea Ypi recently reminded us of this.It's hard not to imagine the worst, hard not to stare into the abyss: the xenophobic pincer movement (Alianza+Vox) could leave us stunned. Blanca Garcés, a researcher at CIDOB and member of the IEC, believes it could place us, percentage-wise. at the forefront of the European far right.
Orriolism is an inflamed reaction to sovereignist disillusionment. A rage without a project. A kind of pseudo-national Christianity, a 21st-century Carlism without a king and with an enraged goddess. It is a vulgar patriotism that creates monsters and sees ghosts. It will lead us to lose on three counts: a politically ungovernable country (without any viable parliamentary majority), a disdain for incomplete but real sovereignty (self-government achieved through the efforts of a couple of generations), and the destruction of coexistence and social cohesion.
This identity-driven inflammation hides an undisguised xenophobia that scapegoats the most vulnerable and those who are different: against Muslims (all lumped together), against immigrants (it doesn't matter that we need them for work), against the most recent arrivals who survive in poverty. Also against tourists and the expadosAnd against those who speak Spanish. Against everyone who deviates from the cliché of an imaginary, caricatured, pure Catalan identity. It's the exact opposite of the pluralistic and optimistic independence movement of the early days of the Process with Muriel Casals and Carme Forcadell. Those were naive but decent times. There was no room for hate speech.
The tables have turned. Now it's time to suspect everyone, look askance at our neighbors, disregard basic human decency, and find easy scapegoats for the crisis in our welfare state, our unease, the fragility of our language and education system... Such intellectual ineptitude is an insult to intelligence. It's Catalan Trumpism. Instead of MAGA, CAGA: "Catalonia Great again!"We are clinging to the worst of our old traditions of vulgar opportunism. We respond to the endemic demographic decline with fear and anger. We have forgotten the ideal of a country hungry for modernity, culture, and progress, enterprising, self-assured, and, for that very reason, welcoming. The bad omens are leading us into a dead end. Will we react in time, or will we let ourselves be swept down the easy slope of destructive collapse?"
