The PP, Catalonia and the Canadian conservatives | Opinion

Posted On: August 26, 2023

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The question of Catalonia’s suitability for Spain can come back to worry us at any time. For two reasons. The first is that the pacts between Vox and the PP, and in particular their measures against the linguistic, cultural and political diversity of the country, do not bode well. The other is that nationalism does not die, it sleeps and sometimes it wakes up not so much because of its successes as because of the mistakes of those who declare themselves its worst enemies. Separatism offers simple solutions to complex realities. Centralizing nationalism does the same. They feed each other. On the contrary, if the Spanish political experience of the last five years has shown anything, it is that prudence and the will to dialogue are the most appropriate means of calming tempers in the streets and highlighting the deep contradictions of every movement. separatist within a democratic framework. He process it may or may not be over, and maybe we have all collectively learned something from the mistakes of the past. We’ll see.

Now follows a perspective of the situation in Canada. For three decades, the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada has been a permanent guide in Spain, both for those who seek the independence of Catalonia and for those who oppose it. The referendums of 1980 and especially of 1995 (where the no to independence won by barely 54,000 votes) have been carefully analysed: strategies, proposals, successes and failures of both. Much attention was also given to what is known as the Clarity Act of 2000, which laid the foundation for any future land consultation in Canada. On the other hand, less attention — and this deserves a great deal — has been given to the attitude of Canadian political forces in the face of the sovereignist challenge, and in particular to that of the Conservative Party of Canada, which, in principle, is the political force which the most points of ideological contact with the Spanish People’s Party. This attitude is crucial, because nationalism is above all a belief founded and nourished by emotions, and depending on how emotions are treated, even more than realities, very different political situations can be achieved.

Canadian and Spanish conservatives are defenders of state unity. But not only are the rhetoric and actions of the former very different from those of the latter, but they also start from very different situations. From the beginning, we do not yet see in Spain a leader of the PP or, even more, a Catalan candidate for the presidency of the government (and it is not that the PSOE has exactly excelled with Josep Borrell). It is normal in Canada. Of the last six Prime Ministers that this country has had, four were from Quebec and one of them was a Conservative (respectively Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Justin Trudeau and Brian Mulroney). The current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is a Quebecer, and the leader of the Conservative opposition, Pierre Poilievre, is a francophone from Ontario who beat another Quebecer, Jean Charest, in the party primaries. Can anyone in Spain imagine a president of the Catalan government, with an opposition leader, say, from Castellón and a Valencian? But it is also true that in the referendums of 1980 and 1995, the prime ministers of Canada at that time were the two Quebec Liberals (Pierre Trudeau and Chrétien, respectively). Can you also imagine what some Spanish political and media circles would have said in a similar situation?

So far, two things have become clear. First, the weight of Quebecers in Canadian politics is incomparably greater than that of Catalans in Spain. The other is that Canadians, including those who vote Conservative, refrain from judging their politicians based on their geographic and cultural backgrounds, and do not question the patriotism of their leaders – whether Conservative or Liberal. – in the face of separatist challenges. And this is not a pure electoral calculation. The Conservative Party, which until the end of the 1980s was a crucial force in the Quebec political landscape, has since been replaced by other nationalist conservative parties, much like the now defunct Catalan CiU. At the federal level, in the last federal election of 2021, he obtained barely 10 of the 78 seats in dispute in Quebec. But this conservative decline in Quebec, not very different from that of the PP in Catalonia, did not lead the party to demonize Quebeckers in order to obtain votes in other regions of the country, such as in the West, where there is a certain anti-politics. French popular sentiment. Again, ask the reader to compare recent attitudes in the two countries.

But there is more. The linguistic laws of Quebec can be appreciated or not, inside and outside the Belle Province. These issues are sometimes controversial, but the rest of Canadians long ago decided that it was up to Quebeckers to decide these issues themselves. You won’t see the Canadian media, or politicians of any color, tearing their hair out or, even worse, spreading sometimes embarrassing hoaxes about how children are educated there or how hospitals operate. This may be the reason why support for separatism in Quebec, which once had half the population behind it, has declined significantly and has stagnated for years, now being the preferred option for barely a third of voters. .

After the recent elections in Spain, it could happen, and it may already happen, that politicians are willing to continue to use the new anti-Catalanism disguised as constitutionalism to win, outside of Catalonia (or the basque), the voices that they don’t get there. We can expect the worst from Vox, but the problem is what the People’s Party is doing. Perhaps the most illustrious minds of this one manage to rectify and that the party approaches the problem of the plurinationality of Spain with generosity, a true patriotism and on the long term. But the first two decades of the PP in this century didn’t go exactly in that direction, nor is it what we keep hearing. At the same time, the line of certain media linked to this party is very worrying, because it is radical and constant, which continues to prefer to make citizens salivate where they should be disseminating a critical reflection on what the polls say. In summary, it would be appropriate for the PP to seriously discuss, as soon as possible, two problems of the party and, because it is a state problem, of Spain. One concerns attitude, that is, not using demonizing rhetoric against Spaniards who do not see the national question as they do. Another question, which concerns not only the Spanish conservatives, but almost all the parties, is the way of inserting Catalonia in the State and, in its own formations, the Catalan politicians. We have a structural problem. Compare the following data with Canadian reality: no Catalan has governed Spain since the First Republic. In almost as many years since Sir Wilfrid Laurier came to power in 1896, 10 Quebecers have been Prime Ministers of Canada. Almost a century and a half of experience should not be a simple statistical discrepancy, but the verification of a very serious political anomaly in Spain and with Catalonia.