To desecrate the Maternity of Elna

As the writer Joan Lluís Lluís has stated on social media, the fact that the Elna Maternity Hospital is under the control of the fascists of Reagrupament Nacional is repugnant. It is also painful, due to its powerful symbolic significance. For those unfamiliar with the case, the Elna Maternity Hospital was a healthcare institution founded in 1939 by the Swiss educator and philanthropist Elisabeth Eidenbenz (also known as the Swiss Maternity Hospital) in the town of Elna, in the Roussillon de Argelès region. Its purpose was to house and assist pregnant women forced into exile by the Spanish Civil War. It operated until 1944, when the Nazis closed it during the occupation of France, and its memory was not recovered until the early 2000s. At that time, the Elna town council acquired the building to convert it into a memorial. To learn about its history, the books by historian Assumpta Montellà on Eidenbenz and the Elna Maternity Hospital are recommended, as well as the documentary —co-produced by TV3— The Light of Elna, directed by Silvia Quer.

Some might say that, precisely because Regrupament Nacional won the elections in Northern Catalonia, we can spare ourselves the lamentations: this was the will of the people, and there's nothing more to discuss. However, to view it solely in this way would be to distort the truth. We come from the 20th century and therefore know (or should know) that electoral victories for the far right, far from demonstrating the optimal functioning of democracy, always indicate a dysfunction. The far right does nothing more than use the mechanisms of liberal democracy (suffrage, representation, institutions, separation of powers) to seize its centers of power and control them for its own benefit. They are parasites of the system, who gain access to power and maintain it through the constant use of lies and rhetoric.

When this dysfunction occurs, it's worth asking what makes it possible. That the left is disoriented and unable to respond to the questions and needs of the population in a world subjected to multiple crises is part of the issue (it's also a cliché for lazy and cynical analysts, who repeat it like a broken record). Attempts by the traditional right to incorporate some of the discourse and messages of the far right, and thus curb its impact at the polls, also don't seem to have worked well: this has only resulted in governments like those of Germany, France, or the United Kingdom (center-right or center-left governments that imitate the far right), or outright failures. Meanwhile, the European Union also seems incapable of providing a response (in terms of both message and political action) to prevent the fascists of the 21st century from having fun desecrating the memorials erected against their 20th-century predecessors.