A Nineveh pygmy is devastating Catalonia today - Josep Carner stated when Civil War came to an end - and it seems that the sand of time has passed in vain, that forty years of Franco’s dictatorship plus forty more years of democracy in Spain have only managed to increase, even more, the hatred and contempt for all those millions of citizens who neither are or wish to become Spaniards, people who are different, who belong to a national minority, an active discrepancy. Some say that before separatism started winning elections, we all loved each other very much and that we lived very well in Spanish Catalonia, dancing sardanas, but the fact is that historically, Catalonia is a nuisance and an ungovernable colony. When General Espartero said "it is necessary to bomb Barcelona every fifty years for the good of Spain", there were no independence supporters but there was already hatred, along with bad taste jokes about Catalans. Indeed, there are plenty of jokes about Catalans, Basques, sissies and Jews, jokes against the unfortunate, but you never hear a joke about mainstream Spaniards or about people from Madrid, simply because hate and ridicule are one-sided.
Nowadays, Spanish political system and its Spanish nationalism continues to punish and imprison pro-independence figures as it did in years past with other kind of dissidents. Actually, it doesn't care if they're asking for separation from Spain violently or peacefully, because it doesn't care if the political rights of pro-sovereignty leaders are violated. Spain’s territorial integrity is a supreme value, above anything else. They solemnly proclaim that Spain is democracy and democracy is Spain, creating a useful confusion that shows a hard, uncritical fundamentalism. Spanish democracy has become a new secular religion; Spanish courts are its priests where any dissent can eventually be punished. Where, traditionally, Spanish fundamentalism, Spanish nationalism, had written "God, fatherland and king", today it goes for "Democracy and Spain" with the same mystical attitude, with the arrogance of the newly converted, as if Spain had anything in common with Pericles' Greece or the Baron of Montesquieu. A power without counterbalances or any sense of self-criticism, Spanish democracy counts with the European government’s complicity but does not convince international public opinion at all. With such continuous fundamentalist talk of democracy and law, the 1978 regime discredits itself by its authoritarianism. For those still belonging to traditional religions, fundamentalism, Spanish nationalism, delivers its message in another format, recently proclaimed by Cardinal Rouco Varela: "Spain is a moral good."
In the same way that, not so many years ago, we were told that Francisco Franco was Spain’s leader "by the grace of God", today we are assured that wanting independence for Catalonia is against the Spanish Constitution, and, by extension, against democracy. We are assured that the world is once again divided between good and bad, among those who do good, such as Cardinal Rouco or President Juncker, and the others, the wicked, President Carles Puigdemont or Albert Pla. In fact, the Spanish Constitution, like any democratic Constitution, does not demand blind allegiance; on the contrary, it theoretically protects dissent. Not complying with the Spanish Constitution happens to be constitutional, no matter how many regulations and protocols they point to and no matter how many political prisoners they pardon for feigning today that they have been humiliated enough, chastened enough, pledging that they will not keep working in favour of Catalonia’s independence. It's not that they want to kill them, just destroy them from a human and political point of view. I know that the Holy and Immaculate Spanish repression will not appease itself by making politicians kneel down, threatening Catalan schoolteachers and intimidating parents who have taken their children to recent demonstrations. I know that soon the media will somehow be affected too. It will be easy to check and fun too for that matter. It will be when we give credit to the words of Jean-Claude Juncker, yesterday dressed in an academic bonnet that looks like a floor lamp, in Salamanca, where they endowed him with an honorary doctorate. Ah, Salamanca! What a beautiful university! So ancient and noble. Was it not there that Miguel de Unamuno gave his famous speech against the Spanish fundamentalists of his time, those from “Falange y de las JONS”? His famous phrase "you will win the fight but not the argument" ... It's all there, as I said, it seems that time stands still.