When I was very young, I heard or read a quote from the historian Josep Maria Ainaud de Lasarte that, due to its lucidity, I kept in my pocket. Ainaud said that the relationship between Catalonia and Spain was a tie of powerlessness: the historical powerlessness of Spanish power to end the Catalan difference, and the powerlessness of Catalonia to get rid of Spanish power. Ortega y Gasset was probably thinking the same thing when he formulated the "relevance"as the only possible strategy in the face of the unsolvable"Catalan problem". We would, therefore, be faced with a relationship based on resignation, where neither party is ever happy.
(I would add that the relationship is also based on a lack of historical legitimacy - it is pertinent to ask whether without the violence of 1640-1659, 17-11 7, Catalonia would be part of Spain today - and also on a very current lack of consent, given that the law that establishes the self-government of Catalonia and the relationship with the Spanish state, that is, the current Statute, is not the one voted for by the people, but the one modified a posteriori by the Constitutional Court, which seems to discredit the political class and public opinion completely.
But there is a third impotence that must be added to the analysis so that it doesn't come across as lame: that of Catalonia's political and economic elites in ruling Spain. It is striking, because it rarely happens, that the leading industrial region, leading exporting region, and leading tax-contributing region of a state has such a small presence in the command rooms of the state in question. So small and, above all, so innocuous from the point of view of self-interest. The powers of the state, both formal and informal, are hegemonized by Castilian Spain. Catalonia does not rule in Spain. Catalonia protests, Catalonia stalks, sometimes Catalonia influences, but Catalonia does not rule. Castile rules, or if you prefer, Greater Castile, understood as all those territories with a single national identity that coincides with Spain. The state is theirs.
That Catalonia doesn't rule could be demonstrated by various methods, such as listing the birthplaces of the 500 key figures in the deep state, that is, the structures that don't change with political alternation. But it can also be proven by applying common sense to a simple observation of the facts. A Catalonia that ruled—I'm speaking strictly in terms of regional power—would receive public investment proportional to the fiscal effort it makes. Barcelona would be connected to Valencia by high-speed rail (they're the second and third largest cities in Spain!), the Mediterranean Corridor would have been built since the 1990s to facilitate exports, the commuter rail system would be functioning normally, the Port would have been connected to the border with the European gauge for decades, and the Catalan language wouldn't have to fear the courts of its own state. Very basic things, which have nothing to do with an independence program, but rather with common sense.
This has been and is the impotence of the Catalan elites: their inability to command Spain, or, if that were asking too much of them, their inability to command respect. It's not that they haven't acted as a Catalan nationalist ruling class; it's that they haven't acted as a wolf pack defending the most basic regional interests. Fifty years after Franco's death, and 24 years after Pasqual Maragall's prophetic article—"Madrid is leaving", diary The Country, February 26, 2001–, we can affirm that, indeed, Madrid has left, and that it has done so in the face of the passivity, incompetence, and/or complicity of our insignificant elites who, to make matters worse and with irritating cynicism, now blame all the evils on the sole action –ist. A process that would never have begun if, beforehand, they had done their job minimally well.
The tie of impotence, then, is not double, but triple. That of Spanish power that cannot erase the Catalan difference; that of Catalonia that is incapable of shaking off Spain and living on the margins in freedom; and that of the Catalan elites that are incapable of exercising power in Spain in favor of the basic regional interests of Catalonia. However, there is a nuance that helps us understand that this is a three-way tie with a winner: the Spanish deep state has failed in its maximum program (erasing Catalonia), but not in its minimum program (keeping it on the map, subordinate, and paying). Catalonia, on the other hand, has failed in its maximum program (independence) but also in its minimum program (making itself respected). In our country, then, no one is in a position to give lessons. No one.
