The science of the typewriter

“Some intellectual is sitting at his computer and writing as if the information was truly known. The intellectual never says ‘I don’t know that’ or ‘I’m not really sure about that’. If he did, he couldn’t sell his articles because someone else would appear saying they had all the answers”.

That quote is from a 1955 interview with one of the most important physicists in history, Richard P. Feynman. It must be recognised that, in Catalonia, the science of the typewriter is now overflowing with speculation. Let’s try, however, to go over some of the certainties of the moment.

The public prosecutor is pulling all the stops

We can talk about the Spanish government’s change of strategy, which is seeing its first tangible results. If the reaction to the convocation of the unofficial 2014 independence referendum was one of incredulity and then humiliation, the current judicial strategy is that of a steamroller who tries to scare civil servants and high-ranking officials with threats of not only bans from public office, but of prison time. The strategy of deterrence not only aims to put off the workers and public officials who have to sign the administrative orders, but also the businesses that are expected to provide the necessary services, to some of whom it has been admitted explicitly that the visits with requests for information are part of the fear campaign.

The public prosecutor’s behaviour creates anxiety and has generated an internal feeling of the acceleration of events. The next steps will be taken jointly, despite the real worries about the banning of actors on the front line of Catalan politics. If indeed no one expresses their worries in public, in private more than one player fears for their career as they watch the lukewarm public response to the bans from public offices of ex-president Mas and ministers Ortega, Rigau and Homs over the 2014 vote. The government privately admits the existence of certain discrepancies in the calendar for the new referendum, that they are rushing to set the machinery in motion and aware of the seriousness of the consequences. Now, people are starting to say it is “now or never” or, to put it another way, “anyone who doesn’t move ahead will be washed away by the tide” or “if anyone wants to get off, they don’t have long”.

Doubling up efforts on the foreign front

The former Spanish foreign minister, García-Margallo, has acknowledged the great activity unfolding using public funds to counteract Catalonia’s presence abroad. At the same time, Catalan diplomacy is acting with the utmost discretion, not announcing its schedule until shortly before the meetings in question, to prevent Spain’s constant meddling. Despite the many difficulties, this week president Puigdemont attended a meeting of the Ambassadors Circle at the Carter Centre, a not insignificant mediator of international conflicts.

Also on Friday, in a coherent response to an initial question about Scotland, the right-wing candidate for the French presidency, François Fillon, showed knowledge of and flexibility towards Catalonia. The Catalan issue and the independence process are already a topic on the diplomatic agenda. Even the Spanish government has a department of comparative studies that deals with Quebec, Scotland and Catalonia. One of its advisers attended a debate about Catalonia last Monday in Madrid. Despite the impatience of many, in diplomatic terms, Catalonia has quickly put its demands for independence on the map. Recently an ERC (Catalan Republic Left) minister informally admitted that, even in the best case scenario, only a few years ago he wouldn’t have imagined opinion polls with virtual dead-heats we see now.

Time is running out and who is the interlocutor?

The tension is tangible in Catalonia and also in Spain, where political circles are wondering who the interlocutor will be when the seemingly inevitable crash comes. President Puigdemont, ruling himself out of the future race, is seen as a lame duck. He is not unlike a second-term US president, when the focus turns to who their successor will be. With the system of parties from the Spanish transition to democracy imploding, opinion polls show that the ERC and the Comuns could benefit, whilst the ruling PDECat will have to put its renewal and fresh leadership to the test. The very same Spanish politicians who reminisce about “those amenable Catalans now long gone” are the ones who pulled the plug on them. The current unpredictability of the referendum process leaves the political future as a question mark. Admitting the uncertainty is uncomfortable, but useful.

We started this article with the scientific certainties of the young Feynman about social affairs. Twenty-one years later, in 1976, Feynman included physics in the spheres of uncertainty and said “In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth”. Never before had we been surrounded by so much truth…