The
Catalan elections have passed and the Madrid caste just won't amend. They
confuse Catalan President Mas' setback with that of the will of the Catalan
people. I said so in an article on the night of the elections: the Catalan
Parliament has gone from 14 MPs who defended an immediate referendum on a
sovereign state for Catalonia in their programme in 2010, to a Parliament with
87. Or 116 if the referendum is set forth according to Spanish jurisdiction.
The hot potato is about to return, reheated, to Madrid.But the drama is when
the clash between Catalonia and Spain returns to harsh reality. The warning
from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for
2013: GDP down by 1.5% GDP and unemployment at 27%. If we look at our
neighbours, in France, nerves are on edge: President Hollande is in free-fall
without taking any drastic measures, and the Right in France is in
decomposition, from which will rise a strengthened far-right populism. And in
Italy, with elections on the horizon in which the classical anti-federal left
will win, the followers of Beppe Grillo the clown the second force, and in the north,
la Lega, the Northern
League, will surge again, but this time for independence.
A symptom of this is the recent special session of the Consiglio Regionale del Véneto, the Regional Council of the Véneto on November 28, 2012, which ended with a mandate for the presidents of the Giunta (Government) Luca Zaia and of the Consiglio (Parliament) Clodovaldo Ruffino to “establish institutional relations immediately with the European Union and the United Nations to guarantee the holding of a referendum to determine the will of the people of Véneto concerning their self-determination, endorsed by the ruling of a committee of experts and scholars without cost to the Region”.
What is happening to the dinosaurs of the south of Europe? There are more and more people who realise that the problem does not lay in the Right or the Left, but in the model of state and the culture that derives from it: that of the irresponsible Artful Dodger. This was confirmed to me after re-reading the transcript of the conference last September at the ICADE Club by Professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylvania, summarising the ills of Spain: dualism in its economic structure, acute demographic ageing, excruciating private sector debt, huge public deficit, a lost generation of over a million NEETs, and above all, a failed, inefficient institutional structure, which at the same time implies, through the irresponsible transmission of the dominant political caste, a generalised culture unconscious of the gravity of the situation.
In Madrid, and here in Catalonia, the most conservative –to be found among the bigwigs of the economic or media status quo– will not admit that the push towards the construction of sovereign nations, though no guarantee, is seen as an opportunity for wholesale regeneration, unfeasible within the framework of dinosaurs unable to evolve.
A symptom of this is the recent special session of the Consiglio Regionale del Véneto, the Regional Council of the Véneto on November 28, 2012, which ended with a mandate for the presidents of the Giunta (Government) Luca Zaia and of the Consiglio (Parliament) Clodovaldo Ruffino to “establish institutional relations immediately with the European Union and the United Nations to guarantee the holding of a referendum to determine the will of the people of Véneto concerning their self-determination, endorsed by the ruling of a committee of experts and scholars without cost to the Region”.
What is happening to the dinosaurs of the south of Europe? There are more and more people who realise that the problem does not lay in the Right or the Left, but in the model of state and the culture that derives from it: that of the irresponsible Artful Dodger. This was confirmed to me after re-reading the transcript of the conference last September at the ICADE Club by Professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylvania, summarising the ills of Spain: dualism in its economic structure, acute demographic ageing, excruciating private sector debt, huge public deficit, a lost generation of over a million NEETs, and above all, a failed, inefficient institutional structure, which at the same time implies, through the irresponsible transmission of the dominant political caste, a generalised culture unconscious of the gravity of the situation.
In Madrid, and here in Catalonia, the most conservative –to be found among the bigwigs of the economic or media status quo– will not admit that the push towards the construction of sovereign nations, though no guarantee, is seen as an opportunity for wholesale regeneration, unfeasible within the framework of dinosaurs unable to evolve.
Indeed, if we look to the Europe that functions, it orbits around two seas that hosted the city-states of the Hanseatic League: the Baltic and the North Sea. Where there were city-states, there are now nation-states. Homogeneous small and medium sized states emerging after the implosion in the 19th and 20th centuries of the old Russian, German, Swedish or Danish empires. The Baltic now features independent, dynamic, flexible republics of the global economy. And in the North Sea, Holland and Flanders, both ex-colonies of Spain, the latter in the process of emancipation; Norway, formerly belonging to Sweden; and Scotland, also claiming sovereignty.
Is it necessary to point out that the Mediterranean has never regained the prosperity and wealth it had, in relative terms within Europe, that it had in the times of the republic- and principality-states: Barcelona-Catalonia, or Valencia, Granada, Genoa, Provence, Florence, Venice and Naples?
Well, there you have it: the sooner the extinction of the dinosaurs is addressed, the better for all those concerned.
Josep Huguet Biosca, former Minister of the Government of Catalonia (2004-2010).
President of the Irla Foundation.
Industrial engineer.
President of the Irla Foundation.
Industrial engineer.
More from the same author:
...We catalans lost our freedom in 1714, and soon will be 300 years under spanish thumb, spain and france together with the vatican went against the Catalan nation in a war, we catalans never joint spain and france voluntarely, it was done by force, hope this time we will regain our freedom.
We should ask, if then the solution for southern Europe is the destruction of national barriers and reclaim the idea of a network of cities, towns and villages.