‘Moderates’ against the Referendum
By Restraint, that stalwart of Catalan ‘pactism’ and now also of Spanish immobility ought to be related to political centrality. This new centrality has been appearing since the Constitutional Court’s speedy ruling which overturned the reform of the Statute. The desire for independence which sets the political agenda and the seats which one election after another are won by CiU and ERC stir up Pujol’s centrist legacy. When Jordi Pujol was president, marginality used to be found in the Fossar de les Moreres. Nowadays, what is both ‘marginal’ and respectable is the 12-O [movement] in Plaça Catalunya. Faced with this political earthquake, brought about by the State’s refusal to be plurinational, the linguistic trick is to label as ‘moderate’ what was previously seen as ‘centre’ (the space occupied by CiU and PSC, the dual Catalonia) and label as radical what now emerges as centre (the post-Pujolist CDC, ERC, and at the other end of the political spectrum perhaps, Ciutadans). It is a means to combat the hegemonies emerging from the establishment.
Is Wert’s law ‘moderate’? Or recentralization, the systematic attack on Catalan self-rule and the fiscal asphyxiation of one of the Mediterranean’s economic motors? Denying democracy is not moderate either (what we call ‘the right to decide’, the referendum) in the name of a Constitution which has failed to evolve and if it were to be put to the vote would be rejected in Catalonia. What is the least moderate nowadays is standing still, doing nothing, in the style of Mariano Rajoy. There is nothing moderate about threatening Catalonia with the bogeyman in the guise of Europe and repeating a thousand times that ‘if you leave home we’ll do our utmost to make sure you don’t get a job and you lose all your friends’. Fear, threats and signs of foul play don’t sound ‘moderate’ to me.
(‘Moderates’ against the Referendum, publicat a Intransit. Traducció de Moderats contra la consulta)
Is Wert’s law ‘moderate’? Or recentralization, the systematic attack on Catalan self-rule and the fiscal asphyxiation of one of the Mediterranean’s economic motors? Denying democracy is not moderate either (what we call ‘the right to decide’, the referendum) in the name of a Constitution which has failed to evolve and if it were to be put to the vote would be rejected in Catalonia. What is the least moderate nowadays is standing still, doing nothing, in the style of Mariano Rajoy. There is nothing moderate about threatening Catalonia with the bogeyman in the guise of Europe and repeating a thousand times that ‘if you leave home we’ll do our utmost to make sure you don’t get a job and you lose all your friends’. Fear, threats and signs of foul play don’t sound ‘moderate’ to me.
(‘Moderates’ against the Referendum, publicat a Intransit. Traducció de Moderats contra la consulta)