Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira (Cambrils, 1952) is a philologist and writer and has dedicated more than half his life to politics since, at the beginning of the 1970s, he joined the socialist PSAN. At the turn of the 21st century, as secretary general and then president of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), he was the key figure in the party's jump in electoral support and the emergence of pro-independence opinion. In 2003, he led ERC into the Catalan government through a left-wing pact with the PSC and ICV that dethroned the centre-right CiU from power in Catalonia after 23 years. In the role of "head minister" in the first of the so-called Tripartite governments (2003-2004), under president Pasqual Maragall, he left the government suddenly following the storm unleashed when he met with members of the terrorist group ETA in Perpignan. He returned to a government role in the second Tripartite, in 2006, under José Montilla, as minister for the vice-presidency, and as vice president. In 2010 he gave up politics and activism in ERC to dedicate himself to the university, as chair of Diversity at Barcelona's UPF. He's now "retired", but not from his passions: family, books, good cooking and political debate. It is not just on a whim when Carod-Rovira describes himself as "a Catalan without a party but with a country".
In 2008 you published the book ‘2014’, in which you predicted the move from a nationalism and pro-independence support that was, let's say, more emotional, to a political independence movement, which, as you foresaw, would become a majority view. Do you feel perhaps the prophet of everything, of everything that has come afterwards?
I have never spoken about nationalism. In fact, people don't notice that this is one of the words that has disappeared from the process. “Nationalism” and “nationalists” are words that are only used from the outside...
When you wrote the book, people did speak about that, about nationalism...
Yes, yes, of course. For me, the book has two features. One: a national project which is non-ethnic, non-essentialist, but rather inclusive and of free adhesion, which doesn't look at your origins but rather where you want to go. If I am content about one thing, it is that today this discourse is the majority view. This book was written in 2007 and published in 2008, when I was saying that in Catalonia, there is a place for everyone, wherever they were born, whichever language they speak, whatever surnames you have. When now I see that many other people also say this, I am glad to see that in my country there is a “national” discourse, not for the nationalists but for all nationals. Not only for those that read El Nacional but for all those who feel they are members of a national community because they, directly, want to be.
You said that it had two features, the book...
The other one is that there is a political conflict. Catalonia needs to resolve the Spanish conflict. The Spanish conflict has been generated by a state allergic to diversity, with all the consequences that that brings. And the future of Catalonia can only be resolved by voting. And I was saying this in line with the Catalan political tradition, and not just that of anti-Franco sentiment. It is often forgotten that the preamble of the Statute of Núria of 1931 said that Catalonia is endowed with this Statute in exercise of the right that it has, as a people, to self-determination. I feel satisfied that what I proposed at that time, to incorporate this into the public debate, has little by little taken root and people have adopted it as the majority option.
Now, where are we? Are we close to independence? Has the path been blocked?
We are nearer than ever because we have never come so far as we have now. What we do all have to recognize is that if we look back it is evident that things have not reached the outcome we want. For many reasons.
What are they?
I sometimes tell people about a conversation that I had three years ago in Corsica with the former French prime minister, Michel Rocard, who has since died. He said to me: "You Catalans... always making these beautiful demonstrations in the street... and the politics? When?" One of the problems of the process is that it has had an extraordinary surplus of tweets and legal reports which at the moment of truth didn't work and a colossal shortage of politics. And probably also of politicians. The brutal reaction of the Spanish state probably did such damage to us collectively because in some sectors of the independence movement there was a disdain for Spain as a state, that view that "Spain is a joke of a country...". If you want to have a state, you have to start having a sense of state. We have needed more people with a sense of state at the head of Catalan politics. The derision for Spain has prevented us from seeing that Spain has a professional diplomacy, 153 embassies open all over the world, an army and professional armed forces, intelligence services that work. And we do not have any of that.
The process has had an extraordinary surplus of tweets and legal reports that, when the moment of truth came, didn't work; and a colossal shortage of politics
You experienced this directly, the pressure of the state, when you were a member of the Catalan government. They followed you to Perpignan [to the interview with members of ETA in 2003]...
No, no, they didn't follow me.
How was it, then?
How did they know about it [the meeting]? According to someone who was in a position to know very well, who could have been in the best position to know, they intercepted a telephone call between two Basque people, one belonging to a political party and the other to an "armed organisation", in which they mentioned that this meeting had taken place. But the aspect that was worst received at that moment was that somebody had dared to do it [to talk with ETA] without being a state. These things are done by states.
[On 1st October] Europe allowed EU citizens to be attacked on European territory and for them to be stopped from going to vote
And the other reason that would explain what has not gone well in the independence process?
Overestimating Europe. Europe [it was said] will not allow citizens of the European Union, in European territory, to be attacked, for their right to vote to be impeded when they go out to vote... Well look, [on 1st October] Europe did allow it...
Speaking of the repression. It is paradoxical that in homes where people have books like, for example, Josep Benet's classic 'The Franco regime's attempted cultural genocide against Catalonia', others have now also been added, such as the diary of the minister Quim Forn, one of those imprisoned for the 1st October referendum, 'Writing from prison'...
... the things is, there is a continuity, a thread of repression, in the history of the state...
Did you imagine that when you were an activist and member of the Catalanist and left-wing movements at the end of the Franco regime, and during the transition, that in Catalonia there would once again be political prisoners and exiles? Did you imagine that, 40 years after the Spanish constitution?
What I imagined is that an independence process ― and this is also one of the things that we have to collectively ask whether we got sufficiently right ― is never immediate, nor easy, nor free. Spain will never let Catalonia go of its own will, fundamentally, for economic reasons. It has always been more worried about Catalonia that about the Basque Country. The economic weight, the demographic weight, the real weight of the language in each of the two societies... the danger to Spain's DNA has always been Catalan society and not violence. More damage was done to Spain by ballot boxes on 1st October than all the violent actions that have taken place throughout history. It's true that we didn't know in which way [the reaction of the State] would take place, but I do believe that, without spending too much energy analyzing the past, it is worthwhile to stop and think a little of what has not had a good outcome in the past so we can avoid repeating errors.
An independence process is never immediate, nor easy, nor free. Spain will never let Catalonia go of its own will, fundamentally, for economic reasons
Such as?
We went into the independence process with so much enthusiasm and patriotic joy that we didn't know well enough how to assess what was at stake. Among other things, the 16 billion euros that every year go to Madrid and do not come back. A Spain without Catalonia is a Spain which will have to rethink many things, which will have to get its act together, which will have to see if it wants to retain other territories. It will have to think about organizing itself differently. If not, what Catalonia is doing now, will before long be done by the Balearics, the Valencian Country...
The independence movement has kept on repeating majorities in Parliament, but it doesn't reach 50% of votes, even though it is very close. The debate about how to broaden the base is open. How, after all that has happened?
In this country where we haven't had our own state for centuries, which in a certain way is the homeland of anarchism ― the CNT, the FAI, the Partit Sindicalista... all of them began in Catalonia and the Valencian Country― there is an individualism that is partly the result of being devoid of a state. Everything that comes from the state, we are against it...
The people, the populace, are the only "state structure" that we really had and that we continue to have
Also the principle of authority?
Probably. This explains why there aren't Catalan military leaders, why there are few Catalan judges... As the state was what it was and represented what it represented, against Catalonia, it was difficult to find Catalans who would expand the ranks of the Spanish army and the administration of justice. This was a thing that was part of the state, not our thing... Well, here we have kept on encouraging one another in the sense that there was a people who, in a way are themselves the only thing you could call a "structure of state" that we really had and that we continue having. The only state structure that we have is the people, the populace. We kept on encouraging one another. The people pushed the government forward, convinced that the government had done its homwork, and the government, whether or not it had done its homework, considered that it had to keep going because the people were pushing it... To sum up, we managed to believe that everything would be easier than it was. However: we can't propose to carry on in the current situation. The current situation is basically characterized by two aspects, in my opinion. The clear absence of political and civil leaderships. You have mentioned Josep Benet... Years ago, you had a Josep Benet, you had a Max Cahner... names that, each one in their area, represented many people of different ideologies but you knew that you could have a point of connection there. Nowadays we have a severe problem of political leadership. And there is not a unitary strategy. That doesn't mean having a single party. In each nation, society has its own reality. The Scots are all in a single party because they have always been. There is no diversity of independence parties with presence in the Scottish Parliament. There is just the Scottish National Party, and they are the ones that people vote for most. But here we come from a historical tradition with a diversity of political options. We can't continue any longer without attempting to solve this, these two issues. That doesn't mean, I repeat, having a single electoral strategy, unified under a single name. However, I do back a unified approach for the European Parliament.
We have a severe problem of political leadership. And there is not a unitary strategy. We can't continue any longer without attempting to solve this
You have proposed a list for the European elections which would go from the radical-left CUP to former members of the PP...
I know former Popular Party deputies who today are pro-independence. I know former Socialist ministers who today are in favour of Catalonia having its own state structure. There are at least two institutions that we Catalans do not aspire to govern. One, our objective must not be to govern or to fix Spain ― if Spain doesn't want to fix itself, what can we do? We have been trying for centuries and there is no way. And nor should we take on many positions in the European Union. Therefore, in the context we are in, in the Spanish parliament (as long as we are in the Spanish state) and in the European Parliament, we have to stand with a national list, with a country list. Not so much to join parties together but so that people who want Catalonia to have its own state will vote for it. Knowing that we will not go to Madrid or to Europe to decide if we should adopt a certain educational model, or a certain social model, but to go there in terms of national presence. We will go there to demonstrate that there is a national community which wants to exercise the right to self-determination; that it is part of the European Union and that the state to which it belongs drastically limits its fundamental rights.
For the Spanish parliament―as long as we are in the Spanish state― and in the European parliament, we have to present a national list, a country list
Your old party... old because you long ago retired from politics and stopped being active in ERC...
... 8 years ago...
... there was a unitary experience, ERC with Convergència as it was still then called, in the Junts pel Sí list, in the 2015 elections... but they didn't want to repeat it. Not for the European elections either.
That wasn't a unitary list. I'm talking about something else. I'm not talking about ERC anymore than about the old Convergència. I'm talking about a list where the different sensibilities of the independence movement, which have different models in education, health, transport, infrastructures, gender discrimination, etcetera, discuss all these things in Catalonia, for the government of Catalonia to resolve...
That is, internally within the country...
Exactly. And we have to go to the European parliament as Catalans. Because if we don't, what will happen is that if you add it all up, if you add JxCat, ERC and the CUP, they add up to more than Ciudadanos, yes, but it will turn that the winner is Ciudadanos. I'm talking about a national list, a country list where there are young people, well-prepared, multilingual, and people with political experience coming from different ideological backgrounds.
Aren't you then talking about a unitary list headed by Junqueras or Puigdemont?
The political groups have to decide this. I don't see that it is incompatible. For me, it is not at all contradictory that Puigdemont or Junqueras could head a list of these characteristics. As long as those behind them in the list express this plurality. I don't want to put any names on it. But I'm sure that we all have in our heads the names of excellent people who have been deputies for the CUP in the Catalan Parliament that could go on this list; people who have sat down at Socialist cabinet meetings; ministers in the government of Catalonia at different times; from the PSC, or people that have PP deputies and today back independence positions.
In the current government there are two people who were your colleagues in the Tripartite governments: Josep Bargalló, of ERC, who is very close to you, and Ernest Maragall, then in the PSC and now also in ERC. In a certain way what you are proposing was already there back then, and now it is too, in the Catalan government...
I don't want to get involved in the matter of different party labels because I left ERC 8 years ago. Like the majority of people, I am a Catalan without a party but with a country. I have a country, I don't have a party. And I am a left-wing Catalan, as I have been all my life.
Like the majority of people, I am a Catalan without a party but with a country. I have a country, I don't have a party
Maybe you could also be there, in the current Government...
No, I have been already, in government, and [going back there] doesn't form part of my priorities at all... But I mean that there is a tendency to ruin positive things that others have done. We would probably not be here if the tripartite government had not promoted a Statute [of Autonomy]. For me, the Statute move was a winning move.
Why?
Because it had a win-win logic. If it was passed [in its full, original form], Catalonia would recover an extraordinary extent of decision-making and political power, more than anybody had had.
But this didn't happen.
This didn't happen. If the Statute had been passed, it would have brought us much closer to the final objective. For some, I suppose that for the PSC, for [left-wing] Initiative, for the Convergència of the period, it was the maximum to which they could aspire; and for others, those who wanted independence, there was still some distance left to travel. But if it wasn't passed, then in the end what would happen, is what has happened since. There was no margin to do more. We have to be mature and generous enough in our opinions to avoid permanently criticising the progress that others make. When people say: "This thing about broadening the base is a betrayal!" No-one [in the independence movement] is against the idea that there should be more people in favour of independence than at present, are they? If instead of being 47.5%, we had such a brutally obvious social presence, you wouldn't be interviewing me now, because we would have already resolved it. Nobody can oppose the idea, not so much of broadening the base, as of "working to strengthen our shared struggles", an expression that Jordi Cuixart uses and that I like very much. And here comes the second part. It is evident that we will not grow by convincing people to expect alliances with the PP or Cs. But it seems to me a basic error to persistently attack the [left-wing, no-aligned] Commons who are favourable to a self-determination referendum. How else can we hope to obtain a majority? It's clear that that on its own won't give us enough, no. Besides this, the government has to govern, the president has to preside, the parliament has to "parley"... They have to enact measures that convince people to take the step towards the independence cause, because it improves their living conditions.
It is a basic error to persistently attack the Commons who are favourable to a self-determination referendum. How else can we hope to obtain a majority?
Are you critical of president Quim Torra...
No, no, I'm not criticizing anybody...
With the Torra government...
No, I believe that it's not so much a question of government...
Is it a question of political direction? Is the problem president Torra? President Puigdemont? Vice president Oriol Junqueras?
No, I'm not putting names in there. Because if this is a collective process... There is a very simple question...
Tell me.
When [Catalan writer] Josep Pla arrived in New York for the first time and saw Manhattan and saw all the lights he asked: "Who pays for all this?" The very taxi driver that brought me here [to the El Nacional office] asked me the same question: "But listen, Mr. Carod-Rovira, who's in charge here?" Are we able to say who is in charge here? Who? President Torra? President Puigdemont? Vice president Junqueras? Judge Llarena? Who is in charge here? Is it the ANC? Òmnium? There are no clear, unquestionable references, and that means you can criticise them as much as you need to, but you know that they are your references.
Who's in charge here? President Torra? President Puigdemont? Vice president Junqueras? Judge Llarena? Is it the ANC? Òmnium?
In the independence movement it is said that "the people rule, the government obeys"...
I don't like orders, I believe that they greatly oversimplify reality. So: with all the people who we have together now, we can do many things, because there have never been so many of us. But: it has also become clear that we can't do everything, if we could, we could already have done so. Something hasn't worked. Thus, it's a sum of many factors. There are people who can be in favour of independence for cultural reasons; others will say: "no, I want it because we'll live better", because social inequalities will be able to be managed better... Every time I find more people who are in favour of independence for democratic reasons. They are sick of the Spanish state not being able to present an attractive and positive project for Catalonia.
But, in the end, how is independence achieved? The Spanish state is radically opposed to a Scottish-style referendum.
In 1922, Antoni Rovira i Virgili, from Tarragona, gave a famous lecture: “Catalonia's paths to freedom”. The years go by and the paths are still more or less the same. One: in an independence process, you traditionally get a result, with a military victory in a war, it's scenario number one and is totally discarded ―we have no army, therefore, this solution has zero feasibility. Two: when you have such an immense majority of the people of Catalonia in favour that things fall under their own weight and if not, due to the force of gravity, you can't do anything against this; if instead of 2 million people you have 4, it is all over: there is no state that can stop it, but at the moment we are not in this phase. There is another path, which is the one that says: "there has to be a referendum agreed on with the state" because it is the only way accepted internationally ―as people don't like wars, or violence. I prefer to talk more about a forced referendum than an agreed-on referendum. Because Spain will never agree willingly to a referendum, when the result could entail the loss of a part of the territory that generates 21% of its GDP. Therefore, it will only do so if there is international pressure. International pressure which, at the moment, means Germany fundamentally. And Germany and the European Union will only pressure Spain for a referendum, requiring both an agreement between the Spanish and Catalan governments and international protection and involvement, only if we have already pressured them from here.
I prefer to talk more about a forced referendum than an agreed-on referendum
The 1st October referendum was also like this, in a way, don't you think?
People were saying things like: "It's that no one has recognized us". But, how can we ask those externally to endorse what we haven't even done ourselves internally? And when we did it, we didn't even know if we had proclaimed independence, or if we didn't... Everybody knows what we did on the 1st October, for me the most important date in our history between 11th September 1714 and now. It is more complicated to explain what we did on 10th October and on 27th; it is frankly a lot more complicated. So, since Spain will never willingly allow us this, we have to make them allow it. And this is where we have to keep on combining different solutions. There is not a single magical solution. Up till now, we Catalans have used our status as citizens, attempting to exercise the right to vote because we are reasonable, sensible people, who understand that things are not solved by baton blows, but we have not exercised another condition which we have: our status as "activists", if you like, as customers and consumers. Here we have not even started to scratch the surface. Two million voters, a million people in the Avinguda Diagonal, if we propose things to ourselves, we can do many, many things to force major businesses, not just Spanish, not just Catalan, but also German, North American... to force the state to move. To say: "Listen, this can't go on for much longer. Agree to a referendum. Formulate the question of whether these people want to leave or want to remain here". And that's it. And the result is accepted. And if we win, it is not that we leave. It is Spain who leaves Catalonia.
In our status as customers and consumers, we can do many things so that major businesses force the state to agree on a referendum
And if not?
Then we do it again, it doesn't matter, because our cause is not exhausted in a single vote. The Scots have not renounced independence even though they didn't win their referendum. This is the other thing: unlike Scots and Quebeckers, we have never lost a referendum. Never. It is curious to hear prime minister Sánchez in Canada saying, with reference to the 9-N [9th November 2014 independence consultation ] and the 1st October, that "in Catalonia two referendums have been held". It made me think of what went on in the 1950s, I believe that it was at UNESCO, when Catalan was forbidden as a language for publishing and printing, that Franco government representatives sometimes produced secretly published books in Catalan to prove that the language was not banned. We have never lost any referendum. In the Catalan Parliament there is a pro-independence majority and we have never understood well enough the strength that it has.
Unlike Scots and Quebeckers, we have never lost a referendum. Never
What happened on the 27th October?
Sincerely, I don't know. I have talked to different people, each one tells you a different version... I do know that a certain person, one of those who at the moment cannot have a normal life, either because they are in prison or because they are in exile, in a letter sent to me, said: "when we get out, among all of us, we will have to mutually forgive ourselves for many things". I believe that, unfortunately, maybe what happened is that in the sociological goodness of the moment, when it seemed to us that the inertia of the independence movement was unstoppable, that made us jump off the springboard into the swimming pool when there was not the indispensable minimum level of water to prevent us from damaging ourselves badly. And that's all. And it is a matter of not jumping in again without water. But also knowing that it is not only that you make progress when you grow but that, sometimes, you have to make forward progress in order to grow. If you do not take certain steps, it will be almost impossible to get people to believe that this is for real. For me, one of the hardest moments of the process was when president Rajoy sent that letter to president Puigdemont asking: have you proclaimed independence or not? That was in some ways the expression of our impotence and also the degree to which we were lacking people with a sense of state. I don't mean that there were not any. More people with a sense of state would mean that the state we want would be prioritised, instead of the immediate electoral future of one of the groups. Or maybe of all of them.