1. How nice it is to be a grandfather of a grandson, at last
and
2. I think it's a good excuse to do what I very rarely do and take a day off . . .
Hasta mañana.
Except I've just read this and think it merits posting here, by Matthe Parris in The Times:-
Catalans don’t really want independence
Tinpot politicians in
Madrid and Barcelona have fuelled a crisis that could have been
resolved with a little respect
No further from our
offices at The Times than the northern reaches of our own
country, a crisis is unfolding that’s bigger than Brexit. It could
even bring violent civil conflict to one of our more important
European allies, and threaten the very existence of the kingdom of
Spain.
Relations between
Catalonia and the rest of Spain are at breaking point.
Democratic politics in
the Iberian peninsula has seized up due to a catastrophic failure of
the leaderships of both the Spanish and Catalan governments.
Political midgets and tinpot nationalists on both sides have puffed
themselves into an entirely avoidable High Noon and nobody has the
statesmanship or courage to block their ears to the cheers of the mob
and lead their deluded followers back to safety. Of such are the
stupid accidents of history composed.
How different from our
own dear country.
This weekend, Catalonia
faces an imminent threat by the Spanish government to suspend the
partial self-rule that this country-within-a-country enjoys, and
forcibly return Catalonia to direct rule from Madrid. The Spanish
prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, threatens this unless the Catalan
government in Barcelona backs away from a proclamation of
independence it made after the referendum held in defiance of Madrid
at the start of October.
I have seen this
coming. It was so foreseeable that many of us half-persuaded
ourselves that sense must surely prevail. Three times in the last
seven years I’ve described the danger in The Times, trying to
persuade readers of the importance of the story. Most of my family
live in rural Catalonia near the Pyrenees and have done so since
General Franco’s time. My mother co-founded and ran a school of
English in her nearby town for a quarter of a century; both my
sisters and a brother are married locally; and I’d say all of them
and all their children and grandchildren are for independence — in
most cases fiercely so. Many have been off on demonstrations, some
helping with the recent referendum which with brutal hamfistedness
Madrid tried to stop. They’ve been bombarding me with petitions,
links to sympathetic journalism and photographs of bloodied would-be
voters on referendum day.
My family will not like
what I am going to write.
I don’t believe that
in their heart-of-hearts the Catalan people really want independence.
Millions of them say and think they do, but what they deeply want is
something different. They want respect; they want a recognised
identity as a nation; they love the Catalan language which almost
every Catalan speaks, often as a first language, and its poetry,
literature and folklore; they know their long and sometimes separate
history; they’re proud of Catalonia’s contribution to European
culture; they bristle (as the Scots and Welsh do) at the sneers of
the boss-nation, and the deprecation of their nationhood as mere
parochialism, and of their language as a peasant dialect.
They hate being spoken
of as unsophisticated, crude, money-making drudges: bumpkins and
businessmen, dowdy beside the silken manners and stiff-necked pride
that is Castile.
And, yes, as one of the
richest regions in Spain, they may wish to keep a bit more of their
own money: there does exist a strand of economic self-interest in
Catalan separatism but it does not predominate, and Catalonia’s
sense of social obligation to all parts of the peninsula with which
its own economy is inextricably entwined, is strong and humanitarian.
All this surely adds up to
independence, you may say. Well, that’s certainly what the leaders
of the various separatist parties that now form the Catalan regional
government tell their supporters; and it was enough to get a box-tick
from most of the 40-odd per cent on the electoral roll who actually
voted in this month’s “illegal” referendum. But quiz Catalan
separatists on the practical components of sovereign statehood and a
curious (and, I believe, telltale) ambivalence surfaces. Army? Navy?
Air force? Worldwide network of fully-fledged embassies? Heaps of
treaties to be separately negotiated? Border posts with the rest of
Spain? At this point in the conversation Catalan separatists tend to
become studiedly vague. Details, details . . . oh and anyway we’ll
be in the European Union and Brussels can take care of all that . . .
But there has never been any reason
to suppose the EU will somehow step in and help prise Catalonia from
Madrid’s grip, and every reason to know the EU won’t. Yet
“Europe”, like the Promised Land, floats in the Catalan
imagination as a deus ex machina ready to swoop in and guarantee life
after Madrid.
Try to get down to the brass tacks of
this rescue by Brussels, however, and your Catalan interlocutor goes
all vague again. They’d rather not think about it. Because it’s
not the mechanics of sovereign statehood that really floats their
boat: it’s the two-fingered salute to Spain.
Don’t you see, can Madrid not see,
can the ill-advised Spanish royal family not see, can the Spanish
voters to whom right and left in Madrid are foolishly pandering not
see, that we have here nearly all the components of a way through? I
come back to those words “respect” and “identity”. Instead of
treating Catalan dreams of sovereignty as a matter for rage, contempt
or irritation, Madrid could address Catalonia’s underlying hunger
for recognition. It was a historic error in the early days of
post-Franco democracy to give to the bomb-happy Basque country powers
of home rule and fiscal autonomy, then later change the constitution
to stop peaceable Catalonia from getting parity.
So change the constitution again! Why
not? Well, I said we had the components of a workable compromise; but
one is missing: a willingness by Madrid to climb down a couple of
rungs. I believe that Catalans, who are secretly horrified by where
things are going but too proud and angry to say so, would climb down
a couple of rungs too. This is so do-able.
But I doubt it will happen. There are
some seriously second-rate people at the top in both Madrid and
Barcelona, and rabble-rousers at work too. Madrid’s default-setting
is the fist. Force will probably work, after a fashion. On balance I
expect the Catalans to retreat soon, in confusion and badly bruised.
This is a nation that specialises in victimhood, and at some deep
level something about this episode and its images of blood and broken
bones will not be altogether displeasing to them.
And so the wounds will fester,
Spain’s economic recovery will take a knock, and we all shall be
back here again in a few years’ time. Who will step forward to stop
this? Cometh the hour in Spain (and Britain) and cometh . . . no one.
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