Is It Separatism? Or Survival of the Historic Nations of the Spanish State?
To the Editor:
The Kingdom of Spain has recently improved its image in the EU by releasing the Catalan political prisoners responsible for the 2017 independence referendum. But, at heart, it is utter hypocrisy, as the grassroots independence movement continues to suffer repression from Spanish ultra-nationalism. Spain is now attacking republican targets, minorities and rap musicians, such as Hasel and Valtronyc, prosecuted for insulting the Spanish crown and saying what is public knowledge: that ex-king Juan Carlos is a thief!
A French television news programme gave the biased headline “separatists exit.” This term “separatist” is connoted in France as violent, illegitimate and unsupportive, and not as a pro-independence movement born of an instinct to survive in the face of repression. Europeans, with a folkloric vision of Spain based on Castilian-Andalusian imagery (bullfighting, flamenco and the dancer on TV), have a profound misunderstanding of Spain which, like France before the sometimes violent and sometimes vexatious Jacobin unification, is a conglomeration of distinct peoples! There is a conflict over the future of a multi-national entity made up of nations established from east to west: the Catalan Countries, Navarre, Euskadi, Castile and the absorbed peripheral regions, Asturias/Leon and Galicia (of which Portugal is the historical extension).
Faced with this dilemma, the Jacobin, or rather Castilian vision defends a forced standardization through the Spanish language (in reality it is the Castilian language), even if it means making other cultures and languages disappear.
That is why Catalans, Basques, Galicians and Asturians defend their identity (and even reject symbols such as bullfighting and the monarchy). In the past, they sometimes accepted being Spanish without ever accepting being Castilian. The arrival of the republican left, in particular the Podemos party (which defended multi-nationality), raised hopes of an inclusive solution. However, this has not happened, quite the contrary, and the division between complete and incomplete Spaniards has been accentuated! Recently, Podemos has even advocated the exclusion of the Catalan dialect of the Balearic Islands from the Catalan linguistic group (which is absurd unless it is politically motivated). And we have also seen the incidents in Toxa (where Galicians demanding respect for their place names were repressed by the Guardia Civil). These kinds of events show that the civil war in the post-Franco kingdom is not over.
To deny this, from Europe, is to accentuate the historical division of a state built on mass killings and thousands of mass graves (it is the world runner-up after Cambodia!). If the methods have changed and the way is open to democracy, Catalans, Basques and Galicians have a legitimate right to survive as peoples. If this democratic way out is denied, we cannot condemn the desire for independence of minorities who suffer from the inequality of citizenship!
Tiago Douwens Prats
Fontenay-le-Fleury, France
Tiago:
Superficially, it’s a relief to read of internal conflicts having little or nothing to do with the U.S.
More seriously, your letter provides a very interesting perspective on an otherwise rather baffling situation.
The Editor
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