The acceleration of life – things happen faster and faster and we do more and more things at the same time – stresses us out 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 obsolescent; when objects and ideas and friendships seem to be made to be used and thrown away; when people, in addition to being consumers thirsty for sensations and objects with an expiration 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 tend to boil internally with bloody ideological and personal battles, but at the same time they create networks, bonds. The simmering of power is an energy in constant tension. That is why, when a political party crosses epochs and regimes, it arouses admiration, envy: its faithful have done something right. The most durable structure of power in history is the Catholic Church. The prestige and attractiveness of the figure of the Pope, beyond the ritual and aesthetic spectacle that surrounds him, has above all to do with his millennial becoming. Saving the distances, the same could be said of 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 the other way around. 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 the other way around: through beatings and misunderstandings, from here we know how they operate and, nevertheless, we do not give up our will to be and our secular attempt to change the type of relationship. From Madrid they still don't quite 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 hard 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 Catalana, in a competition of patriotic purity, within Catalonia: 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 lost their way or become stuck in the pro-referendum adventure, in the wound, in victimhood. Will they return to the desire to build, to add, to layer upon a Catalan identity that, like any identity, is always evolving?
The CEO survey –like the one from ARA a few months ago– is clear: Aliança Catalana d’Orriols catalyzes the frustrated Catalan (due to the Process, housing, language...) who are desperately looking for culprits, with a desire for rupture, to punish someone. Of course: there is no shortage of reasons. But without realizing it, it is 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 done deal. The same is happening all over the world: either the far-right (Trump and company) or a reformulated social democracy (Sheinbaum, Mamdani...) based on the recognition that liberal democracy has been too self-complacent.
