Catalonia's President Mas, upon signing the Pact for Freedom with opposition leader Oriol Junqueras, identified the political moment: We are setting sail. In the acceptance speech on presidential inauguration day, he referred to the difficulties an enterprise of this scale had, particularly because it would surmount the status quo.
I agree. The people of Catalonia has expressed this with one and a half million demonstrators in the streets, and at the ballot boxes with two odd million votes in favour of exercising the right to decide and setting course for our own State. And it hasn't been done as some kind of cavalier, childish, romantic adventure, nor manipulated by what has been labelled the perverse nationalist elites said to lie to the population and brainwash their children in schools.
No: It has come about because the middle and working classes, until recently far from being pro-independence, have realised the harm being part of Spain has done to Catalans. Paying confiscatory taxes without getting the services to match. Governed by inefficient bureaucrats who take decisions based on political prejudice. Excluded because of their cultural and linguistic identity. Conscious that the legal framework projected at the end of the Franco dictatorship is now being used to go back on what was then established.
It is the Spanish oligarchy and its instrument of power, the centralist State, whose abuse forces divorce. A trauma for the weaker of the pair, that has to leave without having defined means of subsistence. And the stronger party threatening and aggravating the abuse. However, the task of building a new State is not just to get away from the abuse, but also to improve on everything that does not function in the current status quo. That is why it has to be carried out with the greatest possible involvement of as many political and social players as possible. No one would understand it if the opportunity to rethink the administration and bring it closer to more efficient, transparent European models were wasted. And the democratic system, abating the risk of corruption and bringing it nearer to the most advanced participative democracies. And closing the gap in the social pyramid, now unjust in comparison to the Nordic countries, between those who swim in abundance and those who live in misery.
That would be the change to the status quo President Mas was referring to. It will be necessary to overcome, then, a corporatism dressed up as right- or left-wing ideology and which wants nothing to change. It is a moment at which, if we are to hope for a better future, we must take the unique opportunity to make a regenerative breakthrough implicit in building a new country and getting everyone to take their part in doing so.
That is where we will see whether the political and social leaders have what it takes to be true statesmen, whether they are able to properly analyse this extraordinary situation and avoid feeding the short-term bias of their supporters. And what it takes to denounce and hold out against the manoeuvres opposing the process, from the back offices or from the sewers, the part of the business community linked to the oligarchy and the Spanish state's security forces. A white-collar coup d'etat intending to usurp the will of the people as expressed in Parliament.
We know there will be resistance, in good faith by people who doubt, or who hurt to think of emancipation. We will have to convince them, one by one. Work for political parties, social actors and organisations. We know there will also be those of bad faith, who will try to scupper the ship, or try to stop it from sailing.
These we shall fight by the word and show them up before the people. We must be united, calm and persevering. Depending on the state of the sea and the expertise of the navigators, we will be able to sail a straight course, or skip from isle to isle, or follow the coastline.
But where there is no doubt is that we will set sail.
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.
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