Together and continuity

The acceleration of life -things happen faster and faster and we do more and more things at the same time- stresses us and distracts us from what is essential. In contrast, there is a value that is once again gaining importance: continuity, permanence. The prestige of what is lasting. Antiquity. When everything is ephemeral and fungible and obsolete, when objects and ideas and friendships seem created to be used and thrown away, when people, in addition to being thirsty consumers of sensations and objects with an expiry date, have also become non-reusable consumable subjects, then it is especially attractive to encounter something that comes from afar and persists: a lineage, a landscape, a classic book, a monumental building, a belief, a company, an association, a love...

A political party? Power is voracious and destructive. It is struggle. And at the same time it is cooperation. The human entities that are created around it usually boil internally with bloody ideological and personal battles, but at the same time they create networks, ties. The simmering of power is an energy in constant tension. That is why when a political party transcends eras and regimes, it arouses admiration, envy: its faithful have done something right. The most durable power structure in history is the Catholic Church. The prestige and attraction of the figure of the Pope, beyond the ritual and aesthetic spectacle that surrounds it, has above all to do with its millennial becoming. Saving the distances, we could say the same about China as a country or empire.

Catalonia has more past than present or future. This can be read negatively or positively. Despite contemporary weaknesses and crises, it has persisted. A few days ago, Raimon Obiols told Esther Vera that he knows Jordi Pujol better than vice versa. He based this on Carl Schmitt's idea that the weak know more about the powerful than vice versa. Well, following this line of thought, we can also say that, indeed, Catalonia knows Spain better than Spain knows Catalonia: through beatings and misunderstandings, from here we know how they operate and yet we do not give up our will to be and our secular attempt to change the type of relationship. From Madrid, they continue to not fully understand who we are, what we want, and why we want it. They tend to reduce Catalan sovereign desires to hatred and greed; they find it difficult to give us the benefit of the doubt: what if, as the weak we are, we only wanted the best for everyone?

Let's return to the parties and continuity: Pujol's Convergence has disappeared. Decades earlier, Cambó's Lliga also disappeared. In contrast, the PSC - the unity of Catalan socialism that emerged in the Transition of the 70s - and ERC - the avalanche party of Macià and Companys, catalyst of the republican upheaval of the 30s - continue among us. Conservative nationalism has split between Junts and Aliança, in a competition of patriotic purity, Catalonia inwards: they have abandoned Catalonia outwards (the Europeanist and Spain-transforming vocation, so typical of Catalanism). They have sacrificed the continuity of their dual essence: inwards and outwards. They have gotten lost or stuck in the 'processista' adventure, in the wound, in victimhood. Will they return to the desire to build, to add, to layer onto a Catalan identity that, like any identity, is always evolving?

The CEO survey -like ARA's a few months ago- is clear: Aliança d’Orriols catalyzes frustrated Catalanism (due to the Process, housing, language...) which desperately seeks culprits, with a desire for division, to punish someone. Of course: it doesn't lack motives. But without realizing it, it's a vote against the continuity of Catalanism as a transformative historical force. Junts will have to decide which side to take: the side of the ultra revolt or the side of gradualist democratic Catalanism. It's a foregone conclusion. The same is happening all over the world: either the far-right (Trump and co.) or a reformulated social democracy (Sheinbaum, Mamdani...) based on the recognition that liberal democracy has been too complacent.