Félix Ovejero interviewed by Emilia Landaluce. Originally in Spanish. El Mundo.
What such a boring, the Catalan issue…
You see it. I wish we could be talking about poetry. But everything seems to lead us to the same place. And we must stick our neck out. That was, in essence, what I was referring to in my penultimate book, El compromiso del creador [The Creator’s Commitment]. To the obligation not to ignore the challenges and face them with a purpose of truth.
What we have failed to do here?
The problem in Catalonia is that we are facing an ideology —nationalism— deeply reactionary that we have to fight against to, the same as sexism or racism. And no matters if it is supported by just one person or a million. That doesn’t make it any better. By virtue of us sharing an ethnical or cultural feature, we have rights that we are denying to the others. The citizen status, for starters. The notion that it is possible to erect a frontier and turn your fellow citizen into a foreigner is, by all standards, a supreme form of xenophobia.
Well, if the common element in identity is language, then the hundreds of millions of people that speak Spanish would have one nation.
Obvious! But consider that you live in Madrid and I live in Barcelona and we have a lot more in common with someone who is living in Paris or New York than with a farmer in the Aran Valley or in Limoncito in Bolivia. Identity based on language is a hoax incompatible with good science. And let’s not forget, of course, that the common language and also spoken by a large majority of Catalans is Spanish.
We always hear about a silent majority against nationalism. Why they don’t raise their voices?
In an article of 1996 entitled Public Lies, Private Truths, I detailed, following Timur Kuran, that if you are listening to something that seems supported by a majority, even if it’s a canard, you either keep silent or tune your preferences to adapt them to the group’s tastes. What I hope is that the 10% of public dissidents can rose to 30%. From there, the cost of discrepancy begins to decline, and more people joins up to remind that the king is naked.
You blame the left.
The left, for multiple circumstances, seems to claim the moral authority to determine the nobleness of a cause, and so it has ratified nationalism. They don’t realize that there are no conceptual differences between some Catalans deciding to leave while taking with them what belongs to all of us, a part of the political territory, and, for instance, the Spaniards deciding to let Extremadura down because they are poorer. There is nothing most communist than the political territory where everything belongs to everyone and no one owns particularly nothing. It is simply being a citizen, each of us, wherever you come from.
Why the same left that has been the stand-bearer of the fight against sexism or of homosexual equality now is so yielding to something so discriminatory as nationalism?
This requires a more comprehensive analysis. Catalan elites have a significant role in the ideological constitution of the left inherited from the Franco era. We must not forget that under Franco regime we were on a materially and socially privileged situation and that is where a cohort that later would hold important decision-making positions, germinated. The left affirms, for instance, that the Spanish Civil War was waged against nationalism, when there was far more repression in Andalusia or Salamanca than in Basque Country… All those myths were false. And then the prosecution of identity. In fact, the problem, at least from the 1960s onward, was not so much to publish in Catalan as publishing Marx. You can take a look back at the literary prizes, magazines…
The left’s eagerness to cling to issues like identity may be caused by the fact that the right has taken up social democrat positions.
Sure, but anybody who looked back to the 19th century left, and compared it to the left in 20th, would notice that the old left was committed to rationalism and progress, that was critic of religion and national identities. Marx envisions the concept of nation resulting from French Revolution as a group of citizens committed to the defence of their rights and freedoms, and despise the nations based on identity or ethnics. The left —our left, to be precise— has found the worst replacements. Indeed, the post-modernism paved the way to the spread of the irrationalism seeds.
What is a nation?
The notion, as used by nationalists, is analytically fruitless and we better should abandon it as we did with the phlogiston theory. The nation is a concept that nationalists circulate allowing them to speak on its behalf. The efforts to define that concept collapse. What is it? A group of individuals who have a common feature which is objective, cultural; in that case, it is either empirically false the moment we concrete the appealed culture; or is subjective, with individuals believing that they are a nation, in which case it is circular. It’s true that you can always find people who share a world vision, specially the rich people territorially concentred. But nobody would consider to hold a referendum to break up with the political community.
The left has bought into the identitarian movement.
Undoubtedly. The most urging problem we have now is that there are people like Pablo Iglesias or Ada Colau speak of destroying Spain when we have achieved a nation of citizens and plural identities (Why should it be more important the fact that I am Catalan than my class, sexual or religious identity?) Why should be have to come back to the concept of tribes and communities that actually are encapsulations? They are not empirically real. In Catalonia only a 33% think like that and forces the majority to fit into the supposed identity which, I insist, it’s an invention.
The first thing the non nationalist left does in its manifestos is to say that they, at least, are not from the Popular Party or Ciudadanos. As if this were a tare.
The left to which I used to feel close, suffers from an allergy anti Popular Party that has no possible justification. The left should admit that the best model for activism was the Popular Party and the Socialist Party in the Basque Country in the lead years. That was a real fight for freedoms, and not Colau’s.
Colau’s position is not very clear…
In Economics there is the concept of opportunity cost (a decision costs with respect to the best alternative we can have). So the opportunity cost for Colau is zero, because what was her job before becoming the mayor? That is why she doesn’t sign the city hall in the referendum, because she can lose it all if she gets disqualified from office. Remember that the Popular Party and the Socialist Party members risked their lives in the Basque Country. So they shouldn’t lecture the Popular Party on democracy.
The left’s cordon sanitaire exists.
Of course. Socialist Party has been surrendering its space to Popular Party and now the only thing left for them is nationalism. How is it possible that the left in Spain tolerates the creation of borders based on linguistics? They don’t realize that a physician from Extremadura can no longer find a job in Manresa hospitals… No doubt that for Catalan nationalists is so much better that no one comes to spoil their party.
Are you still a leftist?
Yes I am. In recent years I have been in relationship with Gustavo Bueno’s pupils, and they are a hope for the left. It is a school of thought that is streets ahead of Complutense people, which by the way is awful. I’m not surprised to see what came up from there.
What about Mr Pedro Sánchez?
He is a vacuous flimsy man. You can see that in his way of speaking, in how he goofs off… He lives by echo.
It is said that the presence of Civil Guard and National Police increase the number of independentists.
That’s ignorance. That was said by a judge instructing a case related with the illegal handling of census. But the people are not informed… Did the Popular Party’s voters get infuriated when the police entered the party’s offices?
But people doesn’t seem very happy with the Civil Guard being…
What happens is that this is about recognizing a reality that might be tense. That’s why I find so embarrassing the statements of businessmen. They say that we have to yield to people who want to tear up a community. Why not speak on behalf of that majority of Catalans so long neglected? Some Catalan politicians have used to routinely spit (saying that Spaniards are lazy and rob us) on the rest of Spaniards. I am surprised that I don’t get slapped when I say I’m Catalan.
But Catalans seems ready to believe the lies. And the pro-independence sentiment has grown from 20% to 48%…
That is propaganda. It all started with the lies about fiscal balance, which have been refuted in many occasions. The message has to be repeated until it gets through and reverse the situation.
Is there fear for what could happen tomorrow?
That middle class that used to come to protest is going to climb down in fears of the CUP running amok. That segment was less present in last Diadas… Then there is that segment of kale borroka [the Basque term for “streetfighting”] and we must not forget the lessons from the Basque Country. It was said that if Otegi goes to jail, we would have another Troy. And nothing happened. Quite the opposite. The sense of impunity would have intimidated to those not aligned with ETA.
Has Mr Rajoy acted properly?
His big mistake was to trust in people who said that nothing was going to happen. Pinochet was beside Allende before launching his coup against him! How could Mrs Sáenz de Santamaría buy onto the fairy tales from this people!
There are non-independentist people that support to hold a legal referendum.
And that accepting that there is a legitimate decision unity? This is like to saying that we the males are going to vote while depriving women from the right to vote. Those things are illegitimate. You can’t deprive the others from vote. This is blackmail.
You were one of the co-founders of Ciudadanos.
They are moral heroes here in Catalonia. I do think they have made two mistakes: to abandon social democracy favouring an inconsistent liberal project and to water down their critics to nationalism.
What has Catalonia lost in the last years?
Civilization, liberty… Now Catalonia is more parochial than before. After Civil War, anyone could arrive to Madrid or Barcelona and integrate because no one cared about the origins. Nationalism needed to build up an identity linked to the shared world vision, linked to the language… It’s preposterous. What they are not taking into account is that they have tried to build an ethnic nation upon a social demographic frame that doesn’t fit to their expectations, because most of them speak Spanish.
Is there any room for another leftist party?
In Spain there’s room for a leftist party that dares to challenge Podemos for its comeback to carlism, the stifling identity communities and also its defence of the most reactionary religions. A new party would need to regain a very simple platform: equality and efficiency. And that everybody in Spain can have access to any position in his/her country based exclusively on the qualification that the particular profession requires, and not based on tribal particularities such as language. This is very hard to build.
Ada Colau told me that she is not a supporter of independence.
She is nothing. I can tell you that, when the terrorist attack in Las Ramblas, both Colau and Puigdemont were overwhelmed. What did they know about dealing with a terrorist attack? And suddenly they had to made adult decisions and face the idea of having deaths. Those who live in perpetual adolescence think that their acts never have consequences. On the day of the attacks, Mr Rajoy should had to assume the narrative because we were in the midst of a terrorist attack. But the state inferiority complex put the demonstration on the hands of the Catalan National Assembly.
Some point to the Constitutional Court sentence on the Catalan Estatut as the cause of all this.
That is also a lie. No one was asking for the Estatut. The same month that the Socialist Party started to talk about it, appeared a recent poll showing that Catalonia was the most satisfied region with its self-governance. What a pity that we have to reminding this litter of data! Now that we could be talking about poetry…
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
