Spain has a problem

Spain wants a submissive Catalonia, and it pains it because it doesn’t get its way

Xavier Bosch
2 min
Juan Ignacio Zoido és el ministre de l'Interior

JournalistSpain has a Minister of the Interior who, on the one hand wants Puigdemont to return to Spain in order to arrest him, while on the other, he puts in place numerous checkpoints to ensure the president is unable to return. Juan Ignacio Zoido can’t stand the thought of Parliament going ahead with Puidemont’s investiture, as if the votes and the will of the Catalan people counted for anything.

Spain has a Foreign Minister who states that the prison where Puigdemont will be sent boasts of amenities that would be the envy of many. Spain has a vice president who says that Rajoy has decapitated the independence movement and almost in the same breath declares that Spain has an independent judiciary.

Spain has a Supreme Court judge who puts down on paper the mother of all contradictions: I won’t have Puigdemont arrested in Denmark because that’s what he would like me to do. The judge is not only overstepping their authority: he is also rather shamelessly encroaching on political territory and, while he is at it, playing at being a third-rate fortune-teller who can read Puigdemont’s mind and guess his hidden intentions.

Spain has a prime minister who denies that a referendum ever took place on October 1, but who activates Article 155 in response to the result of that referendum. Spain’s leader of the opposition, Pedro Sánchez, is so meek and mild that he comes across as the minister who is the most loyal to the government’s ideas.

Spain has a king that looks like the ringleader behind the "Let ‘em have it" hooligans. A televised speech and a conference in Davos both serve to incite a crass variety of catalanophobia. Spain’s news outlets —not all of them, of course— not only hide reality but also invent a new one and repeat it a thousand times over, via its powerful mouthpieces, to make it come true. And, afterwards, they print articles in the Sunday supplements about this very same fake news. This Spain which wants what it can’t get has a problem. It wants a submissive Catalonia, and it pains it because it doesn’t get its way, and meanwhile, it loses credibility thanks to the existence of so many individuals that give off the sickly scent of decay.

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