First post of the day. And on a subject which may not interest all – or even many – readers. Normal post later. . .

I’ve received a comment from someone [living in the USA, I guess] who tells me it’s nonsensical for me to reject the notion of Galicia as a nation. Well, I was anyway going to post this translation of a column in today’s Voz de Galicia but it now seems even more relevant. It lends some support to my response that Galicia will only be a nation if and when people out in the real world treat it as such. Until then, the simple fact is that – whatever historical, cultural, linguistic reasons the ‘nationalists’ adduce – it isn’t. Of course, I don’t expect these zealots to accept either my view or those of the writer below. But then, it isn’t they who need to be convinced for things to change; it’s the rest of the world. I fear they are rather up against it . . .

For Galicia to define itself as a nation would have the same juridical value as if it called itself an Atlantic bonsai or country of the Celts – none. The reason is very simple - a definition is only juridically significant when normative consequences flow from it. And, however much we twist around the subject, the term nation applied to Galicia would have no effect in the world of law. Galicia wouldn’t have its own constitutional position, nor would it be able to claim different rights, nor demand different treatment from either the Spanish state or foreign states.

This position, these rights and this treatment depend entirely on what the Constitution establishes on the matter. Therefore, the rumpus over the juridical value of the term nation is a swindle with which the parties are trying to steal from us the real debate deriving from the use of such a term – the debate over the political advisability of using an identifying definition which the immense majority of Galicians don’t share.

For this, and nothing else, is the question. Defining Galicia as nation may be juridically irrelevant but it has undeniable political significance. Its acceptance - via whatever formula and in whatever place in the Constitution [as an article or just in the Preamble] – would be for the defenders of Galician independence a stirrup with which they could, sooner or later, climb onto the horse of a demand for sovereignty. So it is perfectly coherent for those – the BNG – who have always demanded Galician independence to now defend the term nation and to make it the life or death of our new Constitution.

For the parties which have never accepted this minority claim it is as coherent as it is inexplicable to do so now. This is, of course, the case of the PP party which now says it’s willing to agree on a symbolic formula. To see what the result of their ingenious ambiguity would be, they only have to look to Catalunia, where it is now taken as read that this community is defined in its Constitution as a nation.

As regards the Socialist Party, the President must explain why he, who has never spoken of Galicia as a nation, has now had a Damascene conversion. And why, moreover, he believes, he has the right to impose his conversion to the concept of a pluri-national state both on a party which has never accompanied him on this journey and on voters who have expressly refused to define Galicia on the basis of a term which only serves to force down the throats of the immense majority of the region’s voters [78%] something demanded by only the noisy minority [19%] which voted for the BNG.

ROBERTO L. BLANCO VALDÉS