Photo by Òmnium Cultural
In this new conversation at the Review of Democracy, Catalan independence activist and lawyer Benet Salellas reflects on the concept of catalanisme and discusses progressive arguments in favor of amnesty for Catalan activists.
Krzysztof Katkowski: I would like to begin with a general question: what is catalanisme politic? You write about this concept in your book Amnistia, propostes per a un debat necessari. Thanks to the evolution of Spanish politics, the idea of Catalanism has been debated much more recently.
Benet Salellas: For me, it is a form of resistance. It is a political and cultural current that began at the end of the 19th century and has been evolving ever since, intermingling with all the phenomena that have existed in Catalan and Spanish political life in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In my eyes, it also comes from a crisis of thinking of Spain as one country and it is about the needs of the people – in this case, the Catalans. Recently, there has been a lot of talk how Catalan pro-independence thinking – and therefore the catalanisme politic that you mention – is a representation of the interests of the bourgeoisie, of which Carles Puigdemont is supposed to be the embodiment. Why, then, is the bourgeoisie not mentioned when talking about Spanish nationalism? There are people and there is a bourgeoisie there too – and the upper class that rules Spain tends to be the Castilian elite.
During the so-called Procés, the elites of the Catalan bourgeoisie were clearly in the Popular Party, in what we may call Spanishism, even on the extreme right. You only had to walk through the upper bourgeois neighborhoods in Barcelona, the so-called upper zone, to see that there were no pro-independence flags there. On the contrary, there were Spanish flags and, in fact, when we saw aggressive acts by the extreme right, many of the squads of extreme right-wing youths came from that upper area of Barcelona.
So, what is political Catalanism for me? It is a broad, cross-cutting movement that is built from Catalan culture or from Catalan identity and through a very open perspective to transform society and achieve significant levels of equality.
As a militant of the CUP, you talk a lot about Catalanism in the context of the country’s independence. With a long tradition in Spanish politics, why not rather demand to turn Spain into a federation?
It is difficult to understand the question of independence today without understanding that this political Catalanism was very strongly committed to the federal option for over a century of. This federal option has never been realized within the framework of the Kingdom of Spain as it has been configured as a contemporary state.
There are many frustrated federalists in today’s pro-independence movement.
In fact, every time the left and Catalan nationalism have gained power, they have tried to implement a federal project. It was attempted during the Second Republic in the 1930s. It was also attempted under the current regime, starting with the struggles of the 1970s. What we have ended up with is a failed federal system where it is often said that the Spanish system is much more federal than, for example, the German one.
In practice, the legal and political culture of Spain is not federal, and the institutions act in a way that the central power ends up taking all the important decisions.
That is also why the political cycle that we have closed through amnesty begins with a ruling by the Constitutional Court on the Statute of Autonomy and we are hence facing a process of federalization… Here I am quite optimistic, if you wish, as the most likely outcome is that the federalization project will fail again, and we will be back to discussing the possible independence of the regions.
The Catalan left you belong to also talks about the independence of the Catalan countries – and the right to the independence of Catalonia. This is an interesting distinction you make.
The right always has a much more practical vision whereas the left has a more idealistic one. I believe that Països Catalans is a more complex project because it involves more actors. Clearly, there is a continuity and not only a cultural one, which is the substratum on which many things are built in the Catalan resistance. At present, I believe the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Country and Catalonia have in common an economy that is based above all on tourism and real estate speculation. This creates similar material conditions throughout the region, which translates into the precariousness and exploitation of its inhabitants.
How about the amnesty? Do you think it amounts to a fair reform, or has it been introduced just to please right-wing Catalan politicians?
Amnesty is always good to have because it means an end to the pain of repression. At the same time, it is an exceptional mechanism where politics wins over adjudication, where popular sovereignty returns to the political space and not to the space of the judges. As we have already explained in the book, there is hope that this disruption cannot go on any further if all the mechanisms that have led us to this institutional situation are modified.
A certain reparation has been made to the Catalans. But we have to know that the repression is going to continue. Amnesty is resolving a situation but not establishing mechanisms of non-repetition. That is why we say that an amnesty should acknowledge the violation of fundamental rights, establish mechanisms so that all of this cannot happen again, and help people understand that Spain has a problem, shall we say, of power management, of an authoritarian perspective and it needs to modify that perspective so that this cannot be repeated.Of course, none of this is not happening with the current amnesty.
What is happening instead is more a process of pacification and not the resolution of the political conflict.
That is why we say, well, if it is not resolved, then this conflict is going to re-emerge just as it re-emerged so many times in the past…
It is clear from the texts of many Catalan pro-independence activists that you are fighting against structures that are not so much legal as judicial. As a lawyer, do you also share this view?
We experience a judiciary every day that is not homogeneous; it is heterogeneous.
There are actors of all kinds on most of its levels, however, its top is consistently occupied by conservative and ultra-conservative ones. This is largely due to the aftermath of the Spanish transition, which has tried to forget decades of extreme right-wing dictatorship.
For example, an important institution such as the Supreme Court is producing reactionary legal discourse. It is a discourse that seeks to wear down the Sánchez government and to prevent Puigdemont’s amnesty. It is a judiciary that is very activist in certain areas and has a political agenda that coincides with the agenda of the extreme right. As long as this does not change, it is very difficult to argue that it is possible to do politics in Spain under normal conditions: every time there is a victory in some transformative or progressive direction, someone goes to the judiciary to defend the interests of the status quo.
You criticise the Spanish judicial system, however, the accusations against Catalan pro-independence supporters are very serious. The organization that blocked Barcelona airport in 2019 – Tsunami Democràtic – is accused of terrorism. The leader of the pro-independence right, Carles Puigdemont, is accused of contacts with Russia.
From a judicially relevant point of view, nothing has emerged on the Russian issue. Puigdemont appears in the proceedings where this issue is being discussed theoretically. No evidence has ever been offered against him.
Look at the name given to the judicial case, to the actions of the Guardia Civil, in terms of the “detection” of the case: it is called the Volhov case. The reference is to one of the Axis victories on the Eastern Front in which the Blue Division, a Nazi unit made up of Spanish volunteers, took part. It is horrifying.
Let me add something on the question of Puigdemont. I would say he transcends the right-left divide. He may be closer to conservatism, and you can have different opinions about him, but he is close to democratic values.
Concerning Tsunami Democràtic: I find it strange that terrorism is supposed to include protesting in the streets. After all, such protests are also one of the manifestations of democracy…
In your latest book En encesa espera, you write about one of the operations against the independentists: Garzón. How do you see its symbolic meaning?
The supposed fight against terrorism is often used – not in all cases, but often, especially in Latin America – to attack and criminalize political movements. This is what happened in the case of the Garzón operation, an operation in the summer of 1992 in which Catalan pro-independence activists were arrested and then persecuted by the judicial apparatus and the Guardia Civil. The case was then dealt with, among others, by the Strasbourg Court, which condemned these actions.
It is also a symbol that we have not been broken. I think that right now what the Catalan left needs to do is to renew its political program. It has to build a proposal that can bring together as many people as it did in 2017 and thereby put forward a proposal for a majority and not just one that we drag along. Such a majority would probably include people too who may not be avowedly pro-independence. In terms of international alliances, seeing that Europe is moving very rapidly towards the extreme right, the Catalan movement must also oppose this trend and defend its democratic and social values.
Benet Sallellas i Vilar (Girona, 1977) has a degree in Greek Philology and Law and has been a practising lawyer since 2003, mainly in the criminal field where he defends people repressed by the political and economic regime. He has collaborated with many social movements, from environmentalist to anti-racist, collectives for the right to housing or the fight against the impunity of institutional violence. With Mireia Vehí, he coordinated the publication of Antígona Emmordassada. Reflexions dels darrers 10 anys de repressió als Països Catalans (Tigre de Papel, 2017) and has published Jo acuso. La defensa en judicis polítics (Campesino, 2018). He was a member of the CUP party in the 11th legislature of the Parliament of Catalonia. He is the father of two children.
The conversation was conducted by Krzysztof Katkowski who is a publicist and sociologist. His writings have appeared in various places including Jacobin and OKO.press.
