Published originally in Spanish. Manuel Jabois. El País.
Four years ago, I had to sit down with Oriol Junqueras for a ‘cute’ interview — a summer genre I’m not great at because I’m not that cute. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and booked an interview with the adult-cinema director Erika Lust for a series to be published in August. This type of interview requires questions which are not clearly related to the interviewee’s profession, or in which the latter sort of takes a back seat. I prepared some questions for both, all rather pathetic, and on my way to the headquarters of Esquerra (Junqueras’s party) I was informed that my time with Junqueras would be limited to fifteen minutes. I was so nervous when I got there that I pulled out my notes and started asking the questions I’d drawn up for the porn director — things like, ‘When directing, are three better than two?’ Junqueras, who knew this was a summer interview, answered my questions assuming there was some type of political subtext. When I realised my mistake, I tried to save my bacon (which was never actually at risk) by asking him point blank whether he watched porn. Junqueras looked at his watch, then at his press secretary and finally at me. ‘Where does your surname come from?’, he asked with a historian’s curiosity. As un-erotically as I could, I told him it was French. We continued the interview without further confusion, and towards the end he spoke at length about etymology.
I often think back on that encounter — first of all, because I have never since been able to watch adult films without first revising the etymology of my name; secondly, because whenever I hear Junqueras speak I feel like his answers work for any type of question. Two years ago, I wanted to find out why and I asked to spend the Diada (Catalonia’s official holiday) with him. That’s when it dawned on me — he was a sentimental man. He had once said that he recalled being a nine-year-old advocate of independence, against the Spanish Constitution. At an age at which many children still remember being torn away from their pacifier, Junqueras was already planning his separation from Spain. Sentimental and predestined. Thus the tendency of the independence movement’s most learned man to cry when speaking of intangibles.
The last time he did so was on 22 September, the day after the arrests made by the Civil Guard — Junqueras wandered from one TV station to the next, his broken voice declaring that ‘before being a democrat, I’m a good guy’. That he was acting on his conscience, convinced that he was doing it for the good of citizens. He was right about everything. Yet there were two insoluble problems with his discourse. The first is that there are other good people in Catalonia. The second is that bad people have the same rights as good ones, and something even better in telling them apart: the same obligations. What Junqueras wanted us to grant was that his self-concept was above government by the people. But there’s no democracy in the world in which anyone can make decisions outside the law claiming that, before being a democrat, he’s a good person who does good. Even if he is, and even if he believes he does. Elections are the instrument that both good and bad people must use to govern citizens after they choose what they believe is best for them. Hence the existence of the law — so that good and bad people can look to a common code. And this is, ultimately, the reason why it’s convenient to be a democrat — to make sure the code can be followed, reformed and destroyed, if so desired, when a majority of good and bad people want to.
Behind the longest conflicts there are usually good people; evil is quick to be detected. The independence process is essentially a matter of people who are fully convinced of their goodness and their contribution –despite the paradox– to the common good. The Diada is a model of a peaceful family celebration; universities and secondary schools have become the heart of the revolt — sleepless nights singing ‘Un beso y una flor’ (a Spanish song from the early 70s); public schools have organised 72-hour after-school activities — schools full of children playing and having a weekend sleepover. Even repression has shown up to shut down this end-of-year prom aboard a giant ship painted with Looney Tunes cartoons. How could one not want this, how could one not join the revolution of so many good people? When someone gets emotional you don’t ask if it’s legal or illegal. Is the state going to ban happiness? Isn’t it logical to ask, when one is happy, if it isn’t the law that’s wrong? Are voting, democracy, freedom and smiles against the law?
A possible answer is that there are nine-year-olds who haven’t yet learned to stand against the constitution and who ask their parents why they’re not allowed to spend the weekend with their friends at school, and they can’t be told that those parties are not for the kids, but for the parents. A possible answer is that behind those three million people in a state of ecstasy there are another three million peering out their curtains in fear as they see themselves kicked out of their country without moving house. That’s why there’s a part of Spain that’s against all this not out of national pride, or out of patriotism or in defence of the nation’s unity, which I personally care little about; but rather to ensure that, now and always, a group of people cannot unilaterally decide to take away the rights of others because they believe that they are better and have been more aware of their own suffering than the rest, in Catalonia and elsewhere. Because it may sometimes seem that they only have suffered under Franco; that they only have paid the price of the Popular Party’s systematic corruption; that they only have seen their social rights and services cut; that they only recoil in disgust at the sight of Fascist teenagers singing Cara al Sol (Falange’s anthem) at Cibeles; that they only have been afflicted by the oppressive entity known as Madrid — so oppressive, in fact, that the citizens of Madrid declared independence from their own city by making Manuela Carmena their mayor. In the name of self-interest they have tried to accumulate all the suffering and leave none to anyone else. This is the only way to understand how the happy Catalan bourgeoisie can portray themselves not as accomplices and instigators of a corrupt right, but rather as victims of an unfathomable aggression which has suddenly awakened their national identity.
How then, can the Government not lose the battle for international public opinion? If the response to this flower-power revolution consists of frequently dysfunctional courts; of the political police force of the Home Office bugging offices; of the public prosecutor taking aim; of Civil Guard marches leaving for Catalonia as if heading for Gibraltar to realise an old imperial dream; or of the demand that the law be respected, made by a party who hasn’t always been great at doing so. How can the government not lose the battle for international public opinion if its Communications Office, the highest authority in its relationship with the media, has decided its Whatsapp profile picture should be a screenshot of the referendum website blocked by the Civil Guard? All while trying to convince us that the cries of “go get ‘em”, heard as agents left for Catalonia, represent only a small vociferous minority.
Against such a backdrop, it’s no wonder that during Friday’s press conference, Junqueras and Romeva once again, with Turull instead of Mas, offered turnout figures for Sunday. They’ve each set out to live their own dream. But nothing has changed since that failed interview in 2013 that Junqueras straightened out: the independence movement has cut itself off from the questions and thus from the responsibilities, and if asked how to change a tyre will tell you the key is independence. It’s built a world full of solutions which will tolerate no problems except those originating on the outside. A nation that even admits that it’s become stronger thanks to those acting as ‘factories’ of independence supporters in Madrid, from Aznar to Rajoy. That has raised its spirits thanks to the country they’re running away from, not the one they’re running towards. With many answers to provide, but almost no questions left to ask.
