I read with great attention the article by my friend Joan Majó published here on 18 July ("The dilemma facing impotence"). He established an interesting connection between the national aspirations of Catalonia, the problems of Spain and the challenges of the European Union. Certainly these three pieces of the chessboard are linked together by complex bonds, and we can't rule out that the growing disinterest, even disaffection, of many Catalans towards the EU has a lot to do with the growing disinterest, even disaffection, of the leaders in Brussels towards Catalan aspirations. It would be advisable, however, to rule out the dilemma between a sovereign Catalonia increasingly distant from the EU, and a Catalonia fully integrated into the Union but with the current status quo. "A plural and federal Europe that replaces the Europe of nation-states will make the EU stronger and facilitate the increase of our self-rule in those areas that currently fall on the states. On the other hand, any improvement of our self-rule resulting from the disappearance or weakening of our link with the EU could seemingly bring advances, but would be ultimately negative." These considerations appear to me very opportune precisely because now the European elections are behind us we and can talk calmly, beyond the electioneering slogans, about questions of great importance such as this one.
However, I am convinced --and this is what I will try to argue here-- that even though this "plural and federal Europe that replaces the Europe of nation-states" can be imagined, it is constitutively impossible. The identity of Catalonia and the other stateless nations creates a conflict within the EU precisely because it was founded as a response to a very concrete interpretation of the Second World War in which any national claim that did not fit into the status quo and the borders established at the Conference of Yalta was considered unacceptable. In the mental landscape of a German or French person of a certain generation, the process that Catalonia is going through appears to be something more akin to the Sudetenland, Alsace or Saarland, for example, than to the independence of Norway from Sweden in 1905. The EU, in short, is inseparable from that traumatized view. France and Germany joined hands because they had common interests, and closed the door to any possibility of a Europe that is not made up of states. Although there are many ways of understanding identity, from the founding perspective of the EU all of those related to national liberation movements are essentialist and exclusive, and potentially dangerous. See, for example, the recent sour and almost flippant response by Junker to Catalan MEP Josep Mª Terricabras. Or Merkel's words a few days ago. The list would be endless. This attitude, though, is not against Catalonia specifically, but rather generically against any change in the territorial status quo, even if it is the result of the most meticulous democratic procedures. If Scotland wins their independence bid, for example, it is expected that the new state would have to pass through a complex and useless bureaucratic process that would delay its accession and would, most probably, be damaging to its interests. I repeat that all of this is not by chance but, rather, a consequence of the very founding act of the EU, when France and Germany decided that borders must be sacred to avoid future squabbles.
Ideas-- all of them, without exception-- can be debated using rational considerations. Mindsets, however, are immune to arguments and, precisely for that reason, they are mindsets. The mindset upon which today's EU was based has inexorably marked its institutional identity. Only six years passed between the fall of Berlin in May of 1945 and the Treaty of Paris of April 1951 (that of the European Community of Coal and Steel). This fact cannot be changed so easily. But nor is it so easy to change Catalonia's non-negotiable pro-Europe stance, even from the most remote point of its foundation: the resumption of the Jocs Florals (literally, "Floral Games") in 1859 constituted a romantic re-creation of the medieval origins of the event. Held since 1323 in Toulouse, they were a sign of the emergence of European culture of the time. Catalonia, Europe: behold two mental landscapes sadly at odds due to a game of misunderstandings.
