Ahead of history

The combatant. By the time the second course arrived we’d been talking about cinema and drinking Burgundy for a while. The restaurant was in a quaint hotel in Beaune, set between vineyards and not far from the medieval city wall. My fellow diners were a random mix. Journalists and participants in a French film festival. Opposite me was sat an elderly lady who was one of those people who appears small until your eyes meet her gaze. She was soberly dressed and spoke in a friendly, effortlessly cultured manner. We had been chatting for a long time about everything and nothing when she casually rolled up her sleeves. It was getting warm. She had a number tattooed on her forearm. I’d never seen them in person before and I fell silent, unable to take my eyes off those numbers in black ink on her slim arm. She ended up telling me of her Jewish background, the family house between the vineyards, the harvest, the deportation. How she had survived alongside her sister, who, shortly after returning to their empty family home, hung herself in the garden. No tears, not a word too many. That harshness that freezes the soul and to which the only reply is silence.

I often recall that number tattooed on her arm. Simone Veil, who died on Friday aged 89, must have had a similar one. Veil, née Jacob, was born in Nice. She was detained by the French Gestapo at the age of 16 and shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her sister Madeleine and her mother, Yvonne. Her elder sister, Denise, a member of the Resistance, survived Ravensbrück, but her father and brother never returned from their deportation to Lithuania. Veil was ahead of her time. A committed Europeanist, she was the first president of the European Parliament and campaigned for her country to vote in favour of the European Constitution in the 2005 referendum. As Giscard d'Estaing’s Minister of Health, she passed France’s first abortion law in 1975, declaring to a nearly all-male National Assembly that abortion is always a tragedy. In 2010, she entered the French Academy as a "model of independence". Veil inspired respect and dignity. She was ahead of history.

France emerged victorious from World War II and expelled Petain’s Vichy supporters from the narrative of the true face of France, the country of proud republican values, of freedom, equality and fraternity. Reconciliation has led to victory, the recognition and superiority of the France of the Resistance versus collaborationist, occupied France.

OTHER MEMORIES. This same week saw the 40th anniversary of the first democratic elections to be held after the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. In a plenary session in the absence of King Juan Carlos at the Palace’s request —despite his role as one of the principal protagonists of the political Transition—, the Spanish political class invoked the values that at one time allowed for the drafting of the Constitution and which today no longer inspire the construction of a diverse Spain but, rather, a step backwards to impose uniformity. Meanwhile, the Catalan Parliament has managed to declare the trials of the Franco regime null and void. The courts were unanimously declared invalid. Decades after the dictatorship, reconciliation is not the result of collective amnesia, as has been the case up to now, but rather by righting injustices and laying the foundations for a minimum common denominator of democratic civic rights that recognises the victims. Spain needs to rethink itself. And by the time its political class reaches this conclusion, the will of Catalonia’s people will have left a common project far behind.

FOLLOWING THEIR CONSCIENCE. The Spanish state’s political immobility, attempts to coerce civil servants with interrogations by the Guardia Civil, together with the Catalan government’s strategy of closing its ranks, are all putting pressure on Catalan administration employees and those within the government itself. Awaiting the announcement scheduled for 4 July, which is due to provide information as to how the referendum will be convened, unease has begun to affect several levels of the administration. Some voices lament "the decline of the debate and the lack of information", decision-making at the highest level by advisers who "aren’t putting their political career or their personal assets on the line", together with the secrecy surrounding everything in an attempt to avoid a pre-emptive intervention by the state, meaning decisions are made by a small clique of individuals. Such unease affects several levels of the government, including certain "dyed-in-the-wool" independentistes who are unhappy with the way in which decisions are being taken. They also feel as if it is being taken for granted that they will implement measures which may well reduce popular support for the movement by making it more radical. Difficult times are on the horizon, with the next milestone for the credibility of the independence process arriving on the 4th, when the law for the referendum will be announced together with certain details of how it is to be held.

President Puigdemont and Vice President Junqueras are torn between the need for discretion in order not to set the state’s judicial apparatus in motion and the need to release sufficient information so as to obtain the complicity and the support of their own administration and public opinion. Mobilization requires a leap of faith in the ability of the independence movement to navigate what may turn out to be a raging storm. Public representatives, whether they are ministers, civil servants or mayors, will need to be brave and to act in accordance with their conscience. It will not be an easy decision at the individual level, but only a massive commitment can push ahead this decisive phase. Yesterday, some 500 out of Catalonia’s 948 city councils, representing 43% of the population, declared themselves to be in favour of participating in holding the referendum. The mayor of Barcelona did not attend. The clock is ticking.