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Confessions of a traitor

2021-06-30T08:31:30.224Z


This country needs a reconciliation every day. Better to try the dialogue and lower the tension as far as possible


Prisoners of the 'procés' pose with a banner after leaving the Lledoners prison, on June 23, 2021. Angel Garcia / Bloomberg

A school janitor hit me on the slap for speaking Catalan with a colleague.

I did not pay much attention to the matter: at that time, in the mid-sixties, many inexplicable things happened, and at home we were more or less red, which could explain almost everything.

Perhaps for the janitor (a former miner with silicosis and, as I discovered over the years, good feelings) I was a traitor to the Spanish language.

Or maybe my neck was just the closest.

At 19 I was one of those few who voted no in the referendum on the Constitution.

I did it because the monarchical thing did not convince me at all.

I remember the tone of the public debate around the referendum: those of us who rejected the constitutional text were either irredentist fascists or separatist terrorists or even, when the debate heated up, both at the same time.

People who betrayed the spirit of reconciliation.

A few years later, I published, together with Jaume Reixac and Francesc Baiges, a book on Catalan Banking (

More than a bank, more than a crisis

) that Jordi Pujol did not like at all, nor did the crowd that revere him like it at all.

For the first time they called me a traitor with profusion, in person and also from a distance.

There were those who considered my disloyalty to the Catalan homeland almost normal for the fact of being a

parakeet

and not believing any of the supposed anti-Franco heroics of Barcelona. Now I can reveal another trait of my treacherous personality: after a season of eccentric Germanphilia, I became a supporter of the Italy team. I don't remember feeling the slightest enthusiasm for the Spanish soccer team, except for a moment when Iniesta scored the final goal in South Africa and lifted his shirt. By this I mean that I already have enough experience in the task of being a traitor to Catalonia and Spain simultaneously.

When Artur Mas decided to cover up his neoliberal policies by encouraging independence movement (which is not an invention and has always been there; there are traces of it in my own neurons), it seemed to me that Pujol's protégé was committing a dangerous stupidity.

I declared myself against independence, but in favor of a referendum, if it could be legally organized.

My statements have never had the slightest relevance, luckily, but, bloody equidistance, I went back to look bad with some and with others.

More information

  • In favor of pardons |

    A leap of faith

  • The Government requires separatism to overcome its "extreme positions"

Now I am in favor of pardons. Not because I think they will be of any use, but because I am convinced that keeping Oriol Junqueras and others in prison only serves to poison the environment in Catalonia (already toxic in itself) and reinforce independence convictions; because the penalties for sedition seem excessive to me; And because of the context: if possibility were to be avoided and a strict judgment applied to Spanish politicians and institutions, there would be nothing left standing. This country needs a reconciliation every day. Better to try the dialogue and lower the tension as far as possible, if possible. Although I understand the distrust of the independence movement towards Pedro Sánchez. I wouldn't trust it either.

It turns out that now both the "independent" Catalonia and the "good" Spain, the patriots, put the King himself in our humble refuge of traitors.

I do not know what to think.

This is the last straw.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-06-30

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