In explaining the world, the original sin of academia tends to result in underestimation of current events. Symmetrically, the original sin of the talk show panelist or the superficial lightweight commentator usually consists of enthroning the fleeting anecdote, to the detriment of substantial references. These are two extremes that often lead to caricature, especially when: a) a journalist perpetrates a book of 200 pages (in 15 days) about something that has not even finished happening; b) an academic takes part in a current events program, but ends up talking about the Code of Hammurabi. I think there are ways to modulate both extremes.
I wrote this little prelude to refocus the question of Catalan sovereignty with 27S now on the horizon. I think that to try to explain certain distances and tensions only through hyper-coincidental considerations (the electoral calendar, etc.), or in the opposite sense, by appealing to twisted historical abstractions that bring up the events of Prats de Molló (1) once again, don’t help us to understand anything. Mas, Junqueras, and their respective parties are, above all, representatives of the people who voted for them. The nonsense begins when we reduce their heterogeneity to simple categories like "pro-sovereignty", "pro-independence", etc. It’s more complicated than that, and this is, in fact, the explanation for the distance and tensions mentioned above.
The Catalan independence movement ceased to be merely a fringe force at the beginning of the 1990s, under the leadership of Àngel Colom. The splitting off of the Party for Independence (PI) from Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) was the first hurdle. Later, the formation of the two tripartite coalition governments meant that this lurching growth resulted in many contradictory moments, a pure mirage. Pro-sovereignty as a sharp hegemonic force was born in 2010 and strengthened under the leadership of Artur Mas, a small detail that is often forgotten. This new sovereignty movement and that of 30 years ago --as was the case of Nacionalistes d’Esquerra (Nationalist Left), for example-- are like chalk and cheese. They are two different things, in the same way that the bulk of population represented by ERC, or CDC and UDC, or IC, or the CUP are very diverse realities.
In some cases--you only need to look at an electoral map-- we’re talking about population segments that, for example, are more rural than urban, more employees than employers or liberal professionals, etc. In other cases we’re talking about people more easily identifiable with the traditional middle class. This is neither good nor bad --it’s simply the way it is. So, setting aside national or even ideological affinities, the interests and expectations of these different segments of the population (which I am painting with a very broad brush, but are nevertheless perfectly identifiable) do not coincide. They can even be antagonistic. If the president of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, and the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, have struggled to reach agreement, it is because they are, responsibly, loyal to their voters. Careful though: this has nothing to do with the very false labels of "right / left axis", which in Catalonia have only been (and continue being) a trick to create shameful marriages of convenience (as true if the couple was CiU and the PP as if they were ERC and the PSOE).
It is perfectly legitimate for someone who does not have much to lose to speak with great joy and ignorance of remaining internationally isolated after a unilateral declaration of independence (DUI), of a departure from the European Union, of a marginal role in relation to the euro, etc. For other equally pro-sovereignty voters, however, this situation would be unacceptably harmful, intolerable --and not because they are right, or left, or center, but because they are the foundation of the system: those who pay the most taxes, who muck in, who create jobs. There is a single shared general objective --the final horizon of a new State-- but two ways of understanding how to get there. One is by means of a national transition, and another via a clean break. Both are legitimate, both have positive and negative aspects, but this does not mean that the voters will buy them as if they were the same product. CiU and ERC could only come to agreement on a very concrete thing. To add other matters to the debate would make it impossible to transform the upcoming regional elections into an internationally recognizable plebiscite. I guess everyone is aware of this, and will accept the consequences that ensue.
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(1) N.T. in 1926 Francesc Macià was arrested in France for conspiring to send a militia force from Prats de Molló (in French Catalonia) into the South with a view to fighting for Catalan independence. Macià’s popularity soared and later became President of Catalonia.
