Once again, the Catalan Parliament was witness to a parliamentary session unbecoming of a consolidated democracy, a session in which trickery and filibustering were employed to try to pass —or block— the questionable transitional law. It i clear that Parliament has ceased to be a tearoom and no country is prepared to commit seppuku without putting up a fight first. Hopes of a smooth transition and a "normal" vote on October 1 have been drowned out by the shouting. Eventually, if there is a independence referendum, there will be all manner of complications and it will be pulled off thanks to the Catalan government’s determination.
While Parliament has had to sit through lessons in democracy and a "defence of freedom till hell freezes over", in the words of a PP spokesman, in Spain PM Rajoy met with opposition leaders Pedro Sánchez and Albert Rivera at the Moncloa [the PM’s official residence] to build the great coalition that only Catalonia seems capable of bringing together in Spanish politics. As Catalonia’s Gaziel wrote in The Hopelessness, —an article published in his posthumous work The Kind of People We Are—: "either ‘white’ Spain or ‘red’ Spain will emerge victorious. Nonetheless, both of them —as incompatible as they may seem— are united, henceforth, by a common sentiment: the aversion that they feel towards Catalonia’s unique nature, and their fanatical desire to stamp it out".
Rajoy displayed toughness on stage, but the signal coming from backstage is that he will show restraint once a snap election is called for on 1-O [1 of October]. Gaziel also wrote that Catalan politics "is not like an unlucky poker player, but rather a bad poker player [...]. You’ll soon realise he plays a spade when he ought to play a heart, and ups the ante when he ought to fold". It is time to show whether the lesson has been learnt.
