26 EWN
OPINION & COMMENT
5 -11 September 2013
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Mallorca
Call for independence Wikipedia_Martorell45
THE Diada on September 11 commemorates the defeat of Catalan troops during the War of Succession in 1714. Cataluña backed the Hapsburg claimant to the Spanish throne instead of the Borbon Felipe V and it was a long time before the region regained the autonomy lost then. The date is engraved on Catalan hearts and resentment is not entirely diluted. Artur Mas, president of Cataluña’s regional government, supports but is not participating in this Cassandra Nash year’s human chain calling for independence on September 11. and not entirely impartial reaction – Repeating last year’s Diada it to the Spanish political scene will stretch 400 kilometres north to south through Cataluña, and hundreds of thousands have already ARTUR MAS: Failing to get message. signed up to join in. They will make a good showing and Spaniards second. regional president Artur Mas can point to It’s a long way from ingrained this as support for his independence nationalism to full-blown, frontier-raising plans. secession. Mas painted himself into a There were 7,565,603 people in corner by calling an early election last Cataluña at last count. Even those who year, confident of a mandate for an stay at home instead of becoming links independence referendum. Instead he in a human chain on September 11 see lost votes and his overall majority. themselves as Catalans first and The Catalans are telling Mas
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something in an audible voice but he is failing to get the message.
Sitting tight THE PSOE opposition accuses Rajoy of deliberately absenting himself on international visits to avoid parliamentary explanations. True, there is much that the population would like to hear and much for Rajoy to avoid saying. But there is no point in his addressing the parliament again because he has said all he’s going to say about Barcenas and he will not reveal anything new. What he does have to say will be obliquely expressed by a Cabinet reshuffle.
Salutary experience MANY decades after the demise of fascist governments in Spain, Italy and Germany, the Roman salute is still not a pleasant sight. Images of Xesco Saez and Daniel Terrades giving the nazi salute could be dismissed as laddish horseplay.
Saez is president of the PP’s Nuevas Generaciones (NNGG) – think Young Cons – in Jativa (Valencia). Terrades is NNGG secretary general in neighbouring Gandia. Others, like a young PP councillor from nearby Canals, Carmen Melissa Ferrer, have posed with the pre-Constitution flag bearing the Franco-era shield. Probably they have ultra-conservative political leanings but little first hand knowledge of what they are acclaiming. They should ask their grandparents and great-grandparents who knew what it was all about, regardless of ideology. Then there would be fewer nazi salutes.
Kingdom comedown SPAIN is now officially Spain and not the Kingdom of Spain. Nevertheless, the latter will be retained “in international treaties requiring a greater solemnity,” said Foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo. So the modification is likely to go unnoticed except by treaty-writers, typesetters, typists and Juan Carlos I.