The fable of the gullible fool

"Sometimes he thinks that he could have been born British or Norwegian and lived in a solid democracy where you can decide without collective drama"

Esther Vera
4 min
Faula d’un il·lús

The citizen, still perplexed by the seriousness of recent events, has an ongoing internal debate, torn between emotion and reason. He opens his shop as he does every day and goes to work worried about whether the economy will slow down. The anxiety over staying afloat during the recession is still too fresh, and while during most of the independence process the economy didn't get carried away by politics, now he can see around him that this has changed since October 1st. The violence, its international exposure, and the flight of business headquarters are not the best calling cards for his company, nor for the brand image of his city, which has to compete with the main European capitals. He is not in a good mood. As a gullible fool, he sometimes thinks that he could have been born British or Norwegian and lived in a solid democracy where he could decide without collective drama.

Our perplexed citizen has long since become accustomed to reducing his business exposure to administration contracts and putting his efforts into exporting instead. He is thankful now, as the Catalan administration isn't contracting anything because Madrid’s direct rule has brought it to a standstill.

Our citizen’s attorney has an office in Madrid, too, and his partners call him to ask whether he supports independence. His attorney hesitates between voting for Ciudadanos or the PP, but has nevertheless become suspect in the eyes of his Spanish partners because the firm hasn't abandoned Catalonia and it is best to keep a low profile. This week he went to the HQ of Foment [an employers’ group] to listen to Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy, and he heard him tell business leaders not to move their businesses out of Catalonia. For a moment, seated in one of the last tables for guests, he recalled how the PP government had passed ad hoc legislation favoring the flight of company headquarters from Catalonia, but the lady next to him distracted him by asking him to pass the water and the topic changed.

Our citizen has a daughter who works as a lawyer for the Catalan administration. On Sunday she explained over lunch how she has been writing reports in Spanish because she was told that "this way we will all understand each other" and sending them straight to Madrid; that there is not much activity and the appeals which they had intended to file against the suspension of Catalan laws by the central government have been dropped. This affects legislation such as the audiovisual law, which has a direct impact on the budget for Culture, already increasingly lean. One of her hundred best friends works for a TV media company and is focused on exporting a cartoon series. Increasingly, fewer general programs are sold to TV3, because the Catalan public broadcaster can't predict the real consequences of Madrid’s economic intervention and is struggling to work out its mid-term program plans.

Our average hero is angry because he dislikes the fact that half the Catalan government is in prison and the president, removed by Article 155, is in Brussels. What is happening now reminds him of the end of the Franco years, and he is afraid of the consequences of Madrid’s direct rule on schools, the Catalan language, and TV because the actions of some judges and political leaders hint at a democratic regression. He is mortified that peaceful people who have led exemplary demonstrations in recent years are in prison and cannot see their children, nor express their ideas civically. He is indignant when he sees his legitimate president powerless in Brussels. He believes that the Catalan government erred in its strategy, and he sometimes wants to turn on them, but he is clear that now it is necessary to re-do the work of the last forty years and hold further demonstrations to free the prisoners, and to stay alert. His wife says that some have practiced sleight-of-hand by disregarding the difficulties of real politics. She runs a restaurant whose turnover has dropped and, when she is angry, she says she will vote for Miquel Iceta’s socialist party because it is the useful vote for blocking the conservative Ciudadanos and the PP. Her husband answers that the PSC voted to trigger Article 155, which has left the Generalitat in the hands of Rajoy, and reminds her that the Catalan police are still ruled by Madrid and that police boss Major Trapero is in an office handling paperwork while he awaits a judicial decision for not having acted like the Spanish Police on October 1st. For a moment our man thinks that maybe independence is a utopia, that he will cast a blank vote, and that it would be best for his business not to take a political stand.

On his way to the train he goes into a bar and finds a newspaper with an article by Duran i Lleida titled Fiction and Reality. Our friend has a revelation, an epiphany. Our average man feels that he has been treated like a dupe, insulted. He decided long ago that he preferred hope to cynicism, and truth to deception and moral degradation. The man realizes that this issue of sovereignty is here for the long haul, but that Spain has never given even a breath of air to those who want to reform it from within, and that they confuse negotiation with humiliation. Duran i Lleida reminds him what Spain is politically. Why should it be different, now? He suddenly remembers the Catalan Statute and the ruling handed down by the Constitutional Court, the Mediterranean railway corridor, the trouble with El Prat airport, the meagre investments in infrastructure, problems with the Port, the complete lack of collaboration from Spanish diplomacy in matters of exports, the commuter train service, the system for financing the regional governments, the "Spanish-ization" of Catalan children. He remembers how he has always had to apologize for speaking Catalan and the feeling of being patronized. He suddenly remembers why he stopped believing that the road to Catalan progress passes through Spain. He thinks that Catalan sovereignty will be a long journey, but that there is no turning back. That much, at least, is clear.

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