Please forgive me speaking about myself, but I've spoken out against the banning of bullfights for political, ideological, ecological, commercial and festibe reasons, and I went to the last, wonderful bullfight by José Tomás at the Monumental bullring (in Barcelona). However, as a democrat, I understood that the decision of the majority had to be accepted. This week it is expected that the go-ahead will be given in the Congress of Deputies to a popular legislative initiative that proposes that bullfights be classified as an activity of cultural interest, with the aim of overruling the Catalan and of imposing once more, whether-you-like-them-or-not, the holding of bullfights in Catalonia. The affair acquires a far from folkloric political dimension because it throws into doubt the very existence of politics and of democracy in Catalonia and even the usefulness of its institutions of self-government.
It just so happens that the PLI that led to the ban arose from a petition signed by people in Catalonia, while the PLI to overrule it was promoted by signatures of citizens the vast majority of whom do not live in Catalonia. That is, those who don't live in Catalonia are able to impose their criterion those that do live in Catalonia in matters that only affect the latter and not the former. To put it another way, it doesn't matter how the Catalans want to live, because they have to organize their coexistence as the majority of the rest of Spaniards, that don't even live in Catalonia, choose.
The bullfighting issue could be regarded as an anecdote were it not part of a systematic trend. The Parliament of Catalonia adopted a declaration on sovereignty and the Spanish Government has announced it will ask the Constitutional Court to annul it. The Parliament decided by a vast majority how to organize its linguistic coexistence in education in accordance with the political and social majorities in Catalonia, but the Spanish Government and courts decided that it is the coexistence criterion that the political and social majorities in the rest of Spain want not for themselves but for Catalonia that has to be applied. Since the ruling of the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, any initiative of any importance that is adopted by Catalonia's democratic institutions is likely to be on the road to annulment. Right now the Spanish Government has challenged and frozen laws, decrees or other norms adopted in Catalonia that affect taxes, the financial system, the health systema, the education system and the organization of commerce...
The Spanish Government and the main parties keep calling repeatedly for the "train collision" between Catalonia and Spain to be avoided, but it is always in exchange for Catalonia giving up politics, without bearing in mind that when people realize that the Catalan Parliament is of no use for channeling the will of the citizens, what is most likely, according to the laws of physics, is that that will will eventually overflow.
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