Only a couple of decades ago, there was a strong social and political current that demanded improve the quality of western democracies. The EU, for example, sought to reform its operation. There was discussion about representativeness, proportionality or meritocracy. The crisis of 2008, the unfair distribution of its costs and corruption gave wings to populism and sank to reformism as a political ideal, considering it insufficient, excessively Lampedusian. After ten years, populism has proven ineffective to solve the problems that it intended and has been uncovered for what it is, the prelude to authoritarianism. Almost when the bell rang PSOE and PP have renewed the expired constitutional bodies that debased democracy in Spain. A whole lesson for those Catalan parties that fill their mouths with democracy and accuse Spain of being like Turkey while They accumulate more than 200 statutory positions without renewal, among them the one who should be a great inspector such as the Síndic de Greuges.
If we review the history of more than 40 years of democracy, we observe that the extended mandates have coincided with the departure of the PP and CiU governments, which have tried to retain majorities when they did not have them. You don’t have to be sectarian to see it. Qualified majorities are claimed to avoid the roll of governments, but then used to act as blocking minorities. In the same way that a qualified vote is required to convert the organizations into mere quotas, I vote you for a militant in exchange for you swallowing a magistrate who turned a blind eye to my corruptions. On too many occasions, we forget that democracy is also a culture and not just a formality in voting or in the legal architecture.
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Catalonia should learn
The agreement between Sánchez and Casado this week should have been done much earlier and better. They have played with the credibility of the institutions to the limit. They have had to wait for the two party conclaves to pass, as if the militants could not understand that democracy is a form of pact. Now it would be up to the Catalan parties not to be left behind. The control bodies, some public companies and consultative institutions have expired almost since the ‘procés’ began. Its renewal requires the participation of the PSC, and that of the Commons would be recommended. These two parties, added to those that govern today make up the complex ‘mainstream’ of Catalan society. And it would be good if it were reflected in the institutions, although some consider them insufficient.
From regeneration to resistance
On September 6 and 7, 2017, the independence movement lost the regenerative momentum it had and that it served him, after the financial crisis of 2008, to attract certain middle classes, urban and rural, who have not had revolutionary temptations since the second republic. The judicial journey after that shortcut that overflowed legality slowly but inexorably turned the independence movement into a resistance movement moving it away from what could have been a regenerator, with more or less credibility. One way to resume what one day they wanted to be, would be to speed up the changes in the bodies and agencies that the Statute reserves for the election by qualified majorities, which in the current context is equivalent to breaking blocks, a practice that is more than necessary in Catalonia. to get out of the quagmire. In this matter, the independentists have the opportunity to deny those who consider them an indigenous form of populism. The resistance mentality feeds certain sectarian behaviors to the extent that it justifies the lack of democratic quality in the name of the exceptionality derived from the persecution. Spain accumulates, like all democracies, many deficits that it must overcome. And it will do it before through regeneration than through revolution. Catalonia, after the frustrated revolution, has to recover that longing for democratic quality that mature societies had.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com