Is Catalonia a Country of Crazies?

Catalonia's latest efforts to secede from Spain have been eliciting extremely negative reactions in the Spanish media. Catalans who want to secede from Spain are described as crazy, selfish, stuck in the past, and their prime minister as an opportunist who is just trying to divert the public's attention away from his pathetic performance. These soothsayer wannabes add that secession would be devastating for both Catalonia and Spain. Also, most foreign correspondents just limit themselves to passing this unfiltered spin by Spanish pundits on to their readership, who often have no clue about the facts. What people actually think in Catalonia is oftentimes ignored, however crucial this may be.

This article is an attempt at building a conceptual bridge that may allow critics to better understand the problem. For example, the usual comparison with Bavaria or the old division of Germany in states completely misses the point. In order to have a better understanding of the situation, I would like to ask that my antagonistic readers go along with me on a made-up tale which I believe is completely applicable to the current situation. Let's set aside any adherence to historical or geographical facts and let's imagine the following scenario:

• 500 years ago, as a result of dynastic machinations, the kingdom of Germany joined the Russian empire. Germany and Russia ended up sharing the same king, but Germany retained its self-governing institutions.

• 300 years ago, for whatever reason, the Russian army invaded Germany. Berlin fell after a long siege, a part of the city was razed to the ground, and on the very same spot the Russians built a huge army base in order to prevent further uprisings. Germany's self-governing institutions were abolished and Germany became a Russian province. Russia forbid Germans from speaking German in public, and they shut down all German universities—except for a new one they built in a small town comparable to Celle, Kempten, or Görlitz. From then on, the language spoken in schools was to be Russian.
• After many changing and painful years, and after a harsh dictatorship, democracy finally arrived in Russia and Germans were hopeful that their new autonomy might translate into more freedom, self-governing institutions, free use of their language, and equal treatment with the Russians.

However, thirty years later, this is the situation:

• Germany is forced to hand to Russia all taxes collected. The amount that gets sent back to Germany is negotiated yearly. The difference between the taxes collected and the amount that Germany receives is well over 8% of Germany's GDP, and it's draining the country's resources. Because of this, and in order to be able to pay the bills, Germany's autonomous government is forced to get increasingly indebted.
• Germans notice that the taxes that Russia takes away from them are being used to prop up a bloated central government infrastructure and economically reckless projects—unused airports, empty freeways, high speed trains nobody rides.
• All attempts at restoring the use of German in Germany are branded as totalitarian, racist, or stubborn, while Russian still enjoys all the benefits of a state-backed language. According to the Russian constitution, German “can” be learned; Russian “has to” be learned. Educational policy is being imposed from Moscow for the most part.
• Russian public servants working in Germany are not expected to understand German—for example, judges, policemen, tax officers. This means that when a person in Frankfurt, in Baden, or in Leipzig wants to report a robbery to the neighborhood police station, they almost always need to do so in Russian, if they want to be understood.
  
  

The list could go on and on, but I'm going to stop here. The question I really wish to ask is this: if a huge number of Germans decided to protest against the state of affairs and demonstrated massively in favor of Germany's independence and in favor of seceding from Russia, would you also brand these Germans as stupid, stubborn, out of touch with reality? There is an old saying that goes, only he who wears the shoe knows where it hurts. No one could make one and a half million people take to the streets, as it happened on September 11th, 2012, unless the shoe was really hurting.

Pere Grau

Barcelona, 1930. Living in Hamburg since 1960. Economist, writer (several poetry prizes), honorary member of Catalan studies magazine Llengua Nacional and online newspaper El Matí Digital.
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