Amnesty as a national sentiment

In 2017, months before the independence referendum illegally called by the Generalitat, I bought a flat in Madrid. I remember that the day I went to visit it for the first time the entire façade was covered by red flags. "I didn't know Spain was playing today," I said to the guy at the real estate agency. "There is no party," he replied. Indeed, those flags were there to condemn Puigdemont's initiative. Or to condemn Catalan nationalism. Maybe to censor the whole of Catalonia. It is not easy to decipher the message of a flag when a feeling waves. In my old neighborhood the only flag that splashed the occasional balcony was the rainbow. The Spanish was reserved for days of celebration rather than confrontation. "It's an old military building," said the real estate company. As if that information could decipher something.

Soon after, the Spanish flag adorned many more windows in the capital and no one expected a sporting event anymore. I had to travel to Barcelona and there the symbolic display was much greater. There were yellow ribbons on the windows, on the lapels, on the taxis, on the sidewalks... As soon as we arrived, the city looked like a luminous pilgrimage. Only people were exhausted and very sad. In some families it had been forbidden to talk about it, also in groups of friends, at work, in couples. The conflict in Madrid was lived in the streets, but in Catalonia it had crossed the door of millions of homes.

More information

Puigdemont demands an amnesty law before starting to negotiate the investiture of Sánchez

Many things happened and we felt many others when 5.3 million Catalans were called to vote in an illegally called independence referendum. Personally, I remember feeling ashamed, a terrifying embarrassment at everything that was happening in my country in full view of the world. I remember the embarrassment I felt listening to Puigdemont appeal to human rights while embezzling everyone's money and feelings. He wanted no one to see him. Just as I wished that Piolín boat where part of the 6,000 agents that the Ministry of the Interior deployed were housed would become invisible. I was ashamed that thousands of officers lived for a month in inhospitable conditions. But the worst was the violence. The images of police with helmets and shields went around the world beating elderly people, dragging young people on the ground, kicking and causing more than 1,000 injuries on a day where everything bad that could happen, happened. There was violence and unfair voting. Then Puigdemont assured that he would declare independence and Rajoy concluded his own: "Today there has not been a referendum of self-determination in Catalonia."

After the pain and shame, a majority of Spaniards decreed a sentimental amnesty. And so, millions of citizens took down the flags from their balconies, those who one day voted in an illegal referendum returned to the democratic polls, healthy political discrepancies returned to the tables and good coexistence was defended above any other model of State. Today, however, it seems that amnesty is exclusively a legal issue, as if legality and reality were the same thing. But the truth is that when we can only refer to the law to think about the world, we run the risk of losing the sense of reality. The law is the best tool we have to judge conflicts. But you must listen to society when you need its help to overcome them.

Sign up for the weekly Ideas newsletter here.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Read more

I'm already a subscriber