Manuel Valls and Catalanism

Manuel Valls, former Prime Minister of France, says that he "likes Catalanism", but that for him "Catalonia is also Spanish and European". He will be coming to campaign against Catalonia’s pro-independence movement ahead of the December 21st elections, he considers logical the application of Article 155 of the Constitution to take control of the Generalitat and dissolve Parliament, and doesn't believe that the government ministers being held without bail are political prisoners (What are they then: delinquents? criminals?). Is it possible to like Catalanism and, at the same time, agree with putting a Catalanist government in prison and usurping the political institutions that represent Catalan sovereignty? Is it possible, for example, to support Barça and hope for them to lose to Madrid?

Given that Manuel Valls, despite his family background, probably has his concept of Catalanism a bit scrambled, let me refresh his memory: Catalanism, as is well-known, is a political movement born at the end of the 19th century to give voice to the cultural, economic, and social aspirations of a Catalonia that felt misunderstood and mistreated by a centralist government in Spain, which it wanted to reform. It was the failure of the liberal Spanish state of that century, a state kidnapped by the despotic and oligarchic elites of Spain’s royal court, and offspring of the Catalan historical Renaissance, a movement that arose as part of European romanticism.

In the 20th century, Catalanism prevailed politically, and was only deposed by two dictatorships that brought with them prohibitions, imprisonments, war, firing squads, backwardness, utter poverty .... With the Transition, after the long night of the Franco dictatorship, Catalanism believed that its hour had arrived, that of true autonomy and a pluri-national Spain. That mirage didn't last long. The attempted coup d'état of February 23, 1981, along with the later LOAPA (Law for Harmonization of the Autonomic Process), was the first warning sign. The progress made since then (schooling, TV3, Mossos, language, financing...) are now in peril, especially after the 2006 Statute was truck down, which resulted in Catalanism abandoning the idea of reforming Spain and setting a course towards a State of its own within the European framework. It would become a pro-sovereignty process that unfortunately led to the flowering of the blackest heart of Spain, more nationalist and Jacobin (he should know something about that, right?), led by the PP with the unconditional support of the monarchy, Ciudadanos, and the PSOE.

So then, dear Manuel Valls, Catalanism is seen today in Spain as an enemy to defeat, to annihilate. Because Catalanism today is mostly pro-independence and, at the very least, pro-sovereignty. More than 70% of Catalans want to decide their own future in an authorized referendum, a referendum that Spanish nationalism refuses to negotiate, and that has always been clamored for by the Catalanist politicians and social leaders who are unjustly in prison or exile. I say all this so that he knows what he is talking about when he says that he "likes" Catalanism. And if he truly likes it, than he shouldn't come and campaign against it in the lead-up to December 21st, but instead help to make an authorized, agreed-upon referendum a reality. Thank you.