Insults coming from Brand Spain

Lately it has become fashionable to utter all kinds of insults to the Catalans. From “Nazis” to” thieves” through to “child abusers”. But the xenophobic tradition belongs more to the "Eternal Spain".
It was the Kingdom of Castile which started with the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, doing likewise with the Muslims in 1609. Amidst the Nazi horror, Franco (who indeed strongly supported Hitler) abandoned thousands of Spanish republicans and Spanish Jews to their fate, driving them to a certain death in the Nazi camps. "There are no Spaniards outside Spain" the vicious official motto stated.
After the expulsion of the Jews, the Catalans started to replace the Jews in the Castilian’s collective imagination taking on the role of a scapegoat.  In the 17th century, the famous Castilian writer Quevedo named the Catalans the "three-handed thieves", amongst other things that we won’t list to avoid boring the reader. This anti-catalanism has survived in Spain until today. It is a clear case of ownership. Catalonia is not Spain. Catalonia belongs to Spain –and possessions have no rights.
Today, social media have become a propagator and catalyst of this anti-Catalan feeling. Webs like http : / / apuntem.cat are devoted to record all this flood of popular hatred, which is more repressed amongst the Spanish ruling elite.

But from time to time someone let’s their hair down. In the 1950's it was Luis de Galinsoga, editor of La Vanguardia, (then the main newspaper in Barcelona and Catalonia as a whole), who hurled that infamous "all Catalans are shit". Now we are faced with the news that the no. 2 in the Brand Spain organization (devoted to "clean" the image of Spain in the world), Mr. Juan Carlos Gafo, ex-chief of Protocol in the PM office and former Spanish ambassador in the Lebanon really went for it in Twitter stating something like: "shitty Catalans; they don't deserve anything". This was his reaction to the booing to the Spanish anthem during the opening of the World Swimming Championship in Barcelona.
Is very significant that someone at this level should make such a serious mistake, and it is very telling of the chasm that has been opened between the Spanish and the Catalan societies, even amongst part of their ruling elites. It also seems to reaffirm the fact that the Catalan community has distanced itself from the Spanish community, a distancing that Madrid has always been very aware of.
On the other hand, it is striking that a leading representative of the Brand Spain should consider a simple booing to the Spanish anthem to be worse than the ongoing Noos case (alleged corruption involving the Monarchy), Bárcenas / Gürtel / PP (alleged corruption for illegal funding for more than 20 years involving one of the two parties of the government in Spain) or Bankia / Preferential shares (large-scale scam affecting small savers). None of these affairs provoked any reaction whatsoever in Mr. Gafo
In brief, the Spanish situation is deteriorating by the day despite the Brand Spain –and the Catalans, with their eagerness to be able to hold a referendum, continue to be a magnet for Spanish xenophobia.
Perhaps the independence of Catalonia will be necessary to normalize a flawed centuries-old relationship with its Spanish neighbour.

Àlex Furest
Economist