President Illa has offered, at an event by Efe and RTVE in Madrid, the "institutional cooperation" and "loyalty" of his government, and has considered that those who criticize the new financing model because Catalonia proposes it and not for its content are "bad Spaniards".
At this point in history, it has become quite clear that they are neither good nor bad, but that, simply, they are Spaniards. And there are many from the PSOE and the PP, and in large numbers, because any proposal or interest from Catalonia regarding financing, infrastructure, or language is an excellent cause for grievance that will be exploited for electoral purposes. That, as in the famous sketch from "Polònia",if Catalonia asks for a shit on a stick, all the communities will come out indignantly into the street because they will want, not one, but two shits on a stick. But did we have to wait for the Andalusian elections to pass to approve the budgets of the Generalitat!
We know by heart that anti-Catalanism is constitutive of Spanish political and social culture, whether Illa, Montilla, Pujol, or Puigdemont is governing. That is why, at almost the same time as the president was professing constitutional faith, the Supreme Court prohibited excluding Spanish from the signage of public schools and institutes in Catalonia. Are they bad Spaniards? No, they are Spaniards, who expect the province to pay and make Spain look good when visitors come. The only advances for Catalonia occur out of sheer necessity for the State (restoration of the Generalitat in 1977) or for minority Spanish governments, and are still constantly hindered by the judiciary, like the Statute of 2006 or now the amnesty. All the State can offer is a speech in perfect Catalan from the heir to the Crown, an act that commits to nothing nor translates into any effective transposition in the acceptance of a plurinationality. In relation to Catalonia, the vast majority of Spanish politicians are neither good nor bad. They are Spaniards.
