In the last article i did a broad (and at times a bit disjointed) description of the current situation and historic background in Spain. This was necessary to dispel the myth of the Catalonian separatist movement as response to some supposed repression from the rest of Spain towards Catalonia. This false view is unfortunately widely held outside Spain as there is no international coverage of quality on this topic. The international public opinion, especially in the Anglosphere, seems to rely on some outdated and nostalgic Spanish Civil War recollections from Hemingway’s novels extrapolated to today (my apologies if it sounds condescending, but this is often the impression one gets by reading news or commentary in English about the Catalan issue).
In this post I will continue sketching how the current Catalan trial run is playing out. I will get more into the details of the past and present steps of this “experiment” and review some potential future steps.
Let’s first remember that the end goal is first to weaken of the current EU member states by removing power & sovereignty from the nation states and moving this power indirectly to the EU via regional institutions, and finally to dissolve the member states into a kind of Federation of European Regions, of course controlled by Brussels. This approach has been stated in several international forums and reiterated in Pedro Sanchez’s own book “Manual the Resistencia” (“Resistance Handbook”) – note the irony of naming the book you have written while being President as a “resistance manual”. Here Sanchez makes the case to cede even more of the State power to either supranational institutions (EU) or to regional / federal institutions (our case study).
As for the roadmap to national segregation, the first step, played out in Spain over the course of the last 20+ years, was to whitewash the old school nationalist / separatist movements (especially the Basque and Catalan ones). Let’s remember that those movements had their roots in 19th Century ethnic (= racist) nationalism. As late as 1976, Jordi Pujol the (literal!) Godfather and ubercorrupt master of puppets of Catalan politics, wrote an openly racist pamphlet (La inmigración, problema y esperanza de Cataluña) that charged against the “Andalusian race” (LOL!), among other pearls.
This openly racist angle (also very prominent among Basque nationalists) was replaced by the language and culture issues.
The result? Now, Catalan nationalists are not passé racists, they are just fighting to preserve their ancestral heritage, historic rights and their invaluable culture, whatever that might mean – please note they are very careful to avoid well defined wording and instead use the typical tactic of focusing on empty or ill defined concepts like democracy, (human) rights, freedoms, minorities, etc.
Another interesting move has been to put aside any remaining militant old school left wing nationalists. Both in the Basque (the ETA terrorist organization and its Herri Batasuna political supporters) and the Catalan (Terra Lliure) cases, there existed militant terrorist, National Liberation Front-type organizations, inspired on the colonial freedom struggles of the ‘50s to ‘70s. These organizations and their supporter base were definitely old school Socialists, and their ideology would have surely rejected the current woke Left. These organizations were dismantled in the ‘90s-2000s and their civil supporters integrated into “moderate Left” nationalist parties. Over time these parties have shown to be nationalist first and foremost, because, in any case, any policies towards the wellbeing of workers and unemployed have always taken less priority than the nationalist goals. They systematically support the mainstream center-right neoliberal nationalists at all political levels, and champion every woke, fake Left cause du jour.
Once your current crop of nationalists is conveniently rebranded and acceptable to the public, the next step is for them to control the education and public broadcaster institutions. In the Spanish case this was facilitated by the disproportionate power that nationalist parties have in Spain’s political system. This unbalancing effect was built on purpose into the Spanish Constitution by people who where directly influenced by the CIA and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (German Social Democratic Party). But this is another story...
In any case, the nationalist parties had an easy access to the levers of the opinion shaping mechanisms. This mass propaganda has shown to be very effective if allowed to run over the course of many years. In the Catalan case, everyone under the age of 30-35 has lived their entire life under the secessionist spell.
People believe in made-up Catalan unicorns. Image source.
Now your nationalists have become socially acceptable and the regional population has been appropriately brainwashed educated into your mythical worldview. Concurrently your education system will produce a huge increase of (now) native speakers of your regional language (note that increasing your regional language weight at schools will always undermine other subject ares of the school curriculum). The next step is to use the newly acquired power of your regional language. In our case, the most significant step up to date has been to bring the regional Spanish languages (Catalan, Basque and Galician) into the same status as Spanish at the national Parliament. For the sake of comparison, please imagine the British House of Commons having to use Scots, Gaelic or Welsh translators because the Members of Parliament have the privilege to speak in the language they fancy. Or the US Congress or Senate requiring Apache or Navajo translators because some minority people reject to use their common language in an official setting.
Clearly, this is not about language rights or language promotion, because the rights of regional language speakers in Spain are very well protected and its use is mandatory in all regional and local administrations that have a regional language. The point here is about bringing regions to the same administrative level as nation states.
The next logical step is to bring these regional languages into the EU institutions. This proposal has been floated already. Apparently, translation costs are the EU’s main issue against it. But this is a technical problem that will probably be eased in the short term with the development of more powerful IA translation tools. Once the precedent is set for an official regional language in the EU, others will be encouraged to follow, with the same ultimate goal of putting nation states and their constituent regions on the same legal, administrative and diplomatic level. If you think this is crazy, please check this: the Catalan regional government already as its own Foreign Affairs “Ministry” – that, while funded by Spain, often works against the Spanish Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The potential end state scenario:
The EU nation states have their sovereignty further fractured and divided between their regions.
The EU is not dealing with 27 member states but with 300 regions, see here. In the name of good management, the decision making process becomes more technocratic / obscure and even less democratic.
To avoid cluttering the text too much, I will develop more details in a follow up post that will include these points:
Why has been Catalonia at the front of this movement and not the Basque Country?
The tight relationship between Sánchez and the EU.
The complex role and workings of EU institutions.
Other EU member states that might be open for such designs.
If other EU members that don’t have cultural or linguistic minorities could also be affected.
Why it still does it make sense for local and regional administrations to have a controlled autonomy.
Now it´s your turn for debate, dear readers: what do you think about this roadmap? Do you think that something similar could be successful in your own countries? Or is the EU fatally overreaching here?
Please let me know your opinions in the comments section.