What will be Catalonia (or will not be)

In the nineties, Jordi Pujol was asked in an interview about the validity of Torras i Bages' quote (“Catalonia will be Christian or it will not be”). “What can be affirmed is that Catalonia will be Catalan or it will not be – he replied–. It will be something else, but it will not be Catalonia”. Three decades later, we must ask ourselves if the terms Catalonia and Catalan have the same meaning, and if we are on our way to being that “something else”.What characterizes a national community? There are basic conditions – a population with group consciousness, and a more or less stable territory – that Catalonia has met for more or less a millennium. But its territory has stretched and shrunk, and its population has undergone continuous mutations due to migratory flows (from Occitania, from the Peninsula, from the rest of the world). If the country has survived, until the 18th century, it is thanks to the integrating factor of its own language and government institutions. And in recent centuries, quite the contrary, it has been the absence of political structures that has given a new spirit to Catalan identity, a profoundly apolitical and even antipolitical spirit – which is expressed in a community and entrepreneurial spirit, but also in cyclical revolts and the inability to understand the modern sense of the exercise of power. In these thousand years, there has been a dynamic, changing, porous Catalan people, rooted enough to absorb new contingents of population; but from the 20th century onwards, demographic weakness, combined with high economic development and the lack of a protective political framework, has caused this precarious balance to break, Catalan to lose its hegemony, and identities to separate or overlap. At the turn of the 21st century, new waves from all corners of the world have complicated this trend, which, if it is already a trial by fire for any national community, is even more so for a small nation, which not only does not have its own state, but is in constant conflict with a state of homogenizing tendencies. Catalonia has overcome crises, revolts, wars and, since 1714, a denationalizing offensive on all fronts. If this is the case, why shouldn't it survive the current circumstances? Well, because they are unprecedented circumstances. Until now, we said that the Catalan people have survived oppression without governing tools, but what is now in question is, on the contrary, whether these same tools can survive without a Catalan people behind them, as we have understood it in recent centuries. Catalan people has survived oppression without governing tools, but what is now in question is, on the contrary, whether these same tools can survive without a Catalan people behind them, as we have understood it in recent centuries. Demographics are cold and relentless, and no matter how many political tools we have, people are people, with their extraordinarily diverse origins. Faced with this reality, we will only be able to continue affirming, with Pujol, that “Catalonia will be Catalan or it will not be” if we are capable of refounding our collective being, preserving our roots, incorporating new blood, and providing ourselves with values and a project that strengthens and incorporates. But this is such a huge, so titanic, undertaking that we cannot do it with one hand tied behind our backs: we need a state that gives us a frame of reference, resources, and authority to manage inevitable social and demographic changes at the right pace. The first step to get there is the strategic unity of all democrats who consider that Catalonia must continue to exist as a nation. Without sectarianism and without reproaches. Otherwise, our shipwreck in the face of the globalizing wave is guaranteed. It is no longer a question of being a better country, as we said ten years ago. It is a question of being:Catalonia will be sovereign... or perhaps it will not be. It will, in effect, be something else.