The telephone directory finally came. The second day of the investiture debate, Quim Torra stood before his fellow deputies to give a speech which, to begin with, evoked all the boring speeches by previous presidents, based on enumerating the measures they planned to enact during the legislature. It wasn't a very long speech but was followed closely by the chamber and the audience filling all the available rooms in the Parliament, today full to bursting. When people sense that things are about to change, it can be seen everywhere. We humans are like that. We Catalans aren't an exception.
With the first part of his speech, Torra will have satisfied all those columnists who last weekend dedicated themselves to looking down on him as being too intellectual. It's terrifying this defence of politician politicians and dismissal of intellectual politicians, of whom in Catalonia there have been many very good ones. From Jaume Bofill i Mates to Antoni Rovira i Virgili, including Lluís Nicolau d’Olwer, Just Cabot and Amadeu Hurtado. Politicians of the liberal, republican left of the 30s who disappeared during the Civil War or Franco's dictatorship. Without this break, Torra would have belonged to this fruitful political sector. The triumph of totalitarian ideas in the world, despite the defeat of Nazism, made progressive liberalism disappear from Catalonia to substitute it with sectarian, all-or-nothing ideologies. Torra takes up the liberal tradition at the head of a government from across the political spectrum, including social democrats, which defends the legacy of the 1st October referendum. Some politician politicians have left us an inheritance of a country carved up by corruption and bad management, Torra has to aim at generating the recovery of the public's confidence in politics. Spurring hope.
Torra defended the application of democracy, Arrimadas, on the other hand, again repeated the rhetoric of "us" and "you", that is, in a manner of speaking, "Serbian" rhetoric
Quim Torra's speech defended a government manifesto to take up the work of the previous president. It's for that reason that Inés Arrimadas took to the lectern with a speech which didn't manage to debate with the candidate beyond insulting him. Every day, Arrimadas appears a more tasteless, extreme, full-blooded Spanish nationalist leader, close to the European far-right which only knows how to do politics through shouting and threats. Torra defended the application of democracy, Arrimadas, on the other hand, again repeated the rhetoric of "us" and "you", that is, in a manner of speaking, "Serbian" rhetoric. She criticised Torra for some supposedly supremacist written comments using ethnic rhetoric. Arrimadas presents herself as the defender of a group of Catalans who today are only a minority. Torra's government, as the candidate made clear, is obliged to realise the maxim that Catalonia is a single people. Let's not fool ourselves, however. It needs great effort for Catalanness to reach every corner of the country.
Torra solemnly apologised for a handful of ambiguous tweets from years ago about Spaniards in Catalonia. Whoever didn't want to understand him did so in bad faith. Everyone knows that, personally, I'm not at all an admirer of either the Badia brothers1, nor the Nosaltres Sols2 activists. I've written that this isn't my tradition, and union supporters have used articles of mine (link in Catalan) over these days to attack the new president. I've argued fiercely with those who don't see that in the Catalonia of the 20s and 30s there were, as everywhere, parties and people ended up trapped by fascist of authoritarian and ethnicist ideas. Candidate Torra wanted to make it clear that these aren't his ideas. He apologised, a full-fledged apology, in case anyone had felt offended or questioned by his ideas. Politician intellectuals are often more modest than politician politicians and they apologise.
The opposition cannot expect the pro-independence bloc will renounce its objectives. The repression by the state, which Albert Rivera would like to redouble by extending the application of article 155, shows that the state hasn't managed to make the independence movement give in. Torra wanted to make it clear, from the very start, that for him and for his government, president Carles Puigdemont will remain the president of everyone. Our president. But he also wanted to explain that it's necessary to reactivate the measures -the telephone directory- that Catalonia needs to consider and unfurl in the future. So as to not lose its opportunities for economic and social prosperity. And despite this, whoever thinks that this legislature won't be determined by the conflict is wrong. The opposition is disconcerted and insists time and again on disparaging the candidate to destroy the independence project. First they tried it with batons, then with article 155 and now by returning to the old drone that the independence movement is racist and xenophobic. Desperation has led the conservatives, PSC, Comuns and the far-right to all attack the independence movement by smearing its candidate. Popular Catalanism is very well represented by Junts per Catalunya and ERC. As much or more so than by those, like Xavier Domènech (Comuns), who identify it with Marxism and anarchism.
A man as clever and well-read as Miquel Iceta has sloppily manipulated one word in an article by Torra to poke around in the division at the same time as calling for "stitching back together" politics and the country
PSC (the Socialist Party of Catalonia) are today more conservative than any other political party, they've become the most immobile in the chamber, steadfast defenders of a sterile, unreformable constitutionalism. To hide it, they've also signed up to personal disparage Torra. A man as clever and well-read as Miquel Iceta has sloppily manipulated one word in an article by Torra to poke around in the division at the same time as calling for "stitching back together" politics and the country. Breaking them isn't the best way to do so. The demagogical politician politician has emerged from Iceta to smear the intellectual politician of Torra. Those who would prefer for Catalonia to remain an autonomous community, like PSC, "should reject the imprisonment, exile, ideological persecution of citizens, the criminalisation of civil and political rights", said Torra. Miquel Iceta didn't even refer to this once. His party is worried about the compatibility between yellow loops and public spaces, but it seems they're not disturbed by democracy being broken with the imprisonment and exile of pro-independence Catalans. Nor are Comuns.
CUP's head deputy, Carles Riera, started his speech explaining his party's abstention with a quote attributed to Leonard Cohen3 which perfectly summarises the mood of the pro-independence, republican movement: "Sometimes, you know which side you're on seeing who is on the other side". Obviously, everyone should put themselves on the side they want. Quim Torra will be, as I wrote on Saturday, the president of an exceptional situation. Of a new phase which has to result in the "republic for all", the only way, as the Most Honourable Quim Torra, today now president of Catalonia, said at the end of his speech, "to avoid turning silence into a prison, exile into a non-place, day to day into a not being".
Translator's notes:
1. Josep (1903-1936) and Miquel (1906-1936) Badia were pro-independence Catalan politicians involved in the "events of 6th October [1934]", an insurrection leading to the declaration of the short-lived Catalan Republic, the fourth declaration of an independent Catalan state. They were assassinated, probably by anarchists, two years later.
2. Nosaltres Sols (We alone) was a Catalan pro-independence paramilitary organisation of the 1930s.
3. Many Spanish sources reproduce this quote, all attributing it to Leonard Cohen, but I've been unable to track it down in English. As such, I've had to translate from the Spanish.