What extreme left?

The control session on the commuter train system was once again a predictable partisan back-and-forth session, in which the government and opposition tried to shift blame on each other for a mess for which, in effect, they all have a right to feel their fair share of responsibility. Using neglect and disinvestment as political weapons is a pumice stone strategy, but that is exactly what Spanish nationalism has been doing in Catalonia for decades. Salvador Illa's idea is to turn this situation around in his favor: if he achieves a real improvement in the commuter train system from the political situation generated by the coincidence of socialist governments in Catalonia and Spain, he can boast of having achieved more for Catalonia than successive pro-independence governments. The same goes for other sensitive issues, such as funding or the Catalan language. For now, what was seen and heard this Wednesday in the Parliament does not inspire optimism.

At the start of the debate, Junts spokesperson Albert Batet briefly strayed from the topic to poke a wedge into what he considered "a giant step in Catalonia's self-government": the Junts agreement with the Spanish government on immigration. Leaving aside the fact that the exact scope of this agreement is still unknown, and that both sides explain it very differently (this also happens with ERC's pardoning of the FLA, and in general, with all the agreements between Pedro Sánchez's government and the Catalan separatists), Batet wanted to emphasize that it could only prevent this "unity." This is one of the arguments favored by mainstream right-wing parties when justifying agreements, pacts, or dialogues with far-right parties: the existence of so-called "far-left" parties that would be the equivalent of those on the other extreme.

But what are these far-left parties? Sumar and Podemos in Spanish politics? The CUP and the Catalan-style Comuns? Today, these are social-democratic parties with a reformist agenda, and trying to compare their supposed "extremism" with the ultra-nationalist and xenophobic ideology of Vox or Aliança Catalana is insidious and illegitimate. The far left with any influence in Catalan politics has been gone for a long time (groups like Arran are closer to self-parody than anything else), and we should be glad that this is the case, because they are an indescribably sectarian and dogmatic bore, masters of demagoguery at the expense of the idea, so bourgeois. Now, we do have the far right in the Balquena, and unfortunately, everything suggests that we will have plenty of time. If the PP or Juntos are not capable of doing like the CDU in Germany, Marche in France, or the Tories In the United Kingdom (that is, categorically ruling out any approximation to the far right), they will do so with their conscience and dignity. But they should not try to put a bandage before the wound with false parallels.