Catalonia’s dead-end debate

After the Christmas vacations they will start gearing up the electoral machine. In May there will be EU elections, and some are not ruling out elections in Andalusia, if the new premier there decides to appeal directly to the people.

The year will be a delicate one from the political viewpoint. Economic recovery, if it happens, will have no appreciable effect on the public; on the contrary, we shall see how the cutbacks have turned into real structural reforms that affect the nucleus of Spain's systems of healthcare, education, justice and public assistance. Obscuring all of this, and impeding any other analysis, is the Catalan debate, now placed front and center by Artur Mas's intention to call a referendum on independence before the end of next year.

The situation is going to depend greatly on how this last aspect is handled. On the part of Mas's CiU group of course, but also of the ruling Popular Party (PP). The prime minister has already warned that the Catalan referendum has no place in the Constitution, so that no Spanish government can ever authorize it. Rajoy has the support of the Socialists on this point, meaning a total of 295 parliamentary seats out of 350. Opposition leader Rubalcaba terms the proposed vote a "referendum on self-determination." But Rajoy has yet to supply the voices of his party with any articulate line to take — other than that of mere negation — on the Catalan question. Indeed his party may be tempted to believe that whipping up Spanish nationalism of the more bigoted sort is a good idea. If they enter this debate in a disorderly and unfairly aggressive manner, they may arouse confusion, and fuel the flames of secessionism. The temptation will be especially intense in Andalusia where, if early elections are held, the PP will be at a loose end, with no prominent regional leader and with nothing else to say.

Universal healthcare has been substituted by a private system for bearers of health insurance, and Catalans and Spaniards as a whole have been unable to react

What the PP does will necessarily influence events in Catalonia. When the moment comes, CiU will have to choose between breaking with constitutional legality and holding the referendum, or dumping their secessionist allies, letting the regional government fall and calling new regional elections — so as somehow to make it clear just how strong the secessionist parties are.

Rajoy is no doubt putting his trust in the second possibility, and in the influence of a fairly narrow circle of Catalan personalities when it comes to deactivating any unconstitutional move by the regional government. But some people around him are worried about his lack of an alternative plan, and his incapacity to analyze the situation in terms of Catalan public opinion and its internal dynamics.

Obliged as we are, then, to spend 2014 with our eyes on the Catalan scene, we have little attention to spare for other questions that are important for our collective coexistence. The Spanish public is being distracted with the excuse of Catalonia, and the Catalan public with the excuse of Spain. There is no other way to explain the absence of debate on facts as brutal as these, for example: the new judicial fees have caused a 45-percent drop in legal claims concerning social rights; Spain's public healthcare system is being dismantled day by day; and no particular effort is being made to analyze the results. This means a serious reversal in one of the few things by which we all set store: the principles of Social Security healthcare. Free and universal public healthcare has been substituted by a private system for bearers of health insurance, and Catalans and Spaniards as a whole have been unable to react.

In the rest of Spain we miss the driving force that Catalonia has always possessed in terms of the struggle against abuse and injustice. And Catalonia probably also ought to miss the rest of the Spanish people, for exactly the same reasons.