CATALONIA -- PP: Been there, did that - Opinió contundent - VilaWeb

PP: Been there, did that - Opinió contundent - VilaWeb:

PP: Been there, did that

 

If I were younger, more cynical, more adventuresome, I'd offer myself
as an advisor to Moncloa [the Spanish 'White House'] and to the PP so
that they might be more astute at dealing with what we here call "the
process", which is nothing more than the logical, natural result of more
than a hundred years of trying to convert the Spanish State into
another place, into something which an optimistic Catalan might resume,
at least when I was younger, with a pretty slogan: "There's another way
of making Spain".

If I were younger and had fewer idiosyncrasies, I would call
Madrid and sell them a course on "The art of traveling to Catalonia".
They say this sort of service is in high demand, especially at moments
of particular tribulations. My miracle cure would consist of
recommending that they do everything exactly the opposite of how they're
doing it now. And what are they doing now? Lightning tourism. Recently,
Rajoy and vice president Santamaria came through Barcelona on a
whirlwind trip that some might term as a "been there, did that": just a
few short hours, just enough time to take a wedding-style picture. It's a
bit like those organized tours that try to show you all of Europe in
two weeks. "If today is Wednesday, this must be Barcelona." Well, in
this case, it's always (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) Barcelona or the
metropolitan area. And in the photos, you can always see Ms. Llanos de
Luna [Delegate of the Spanish Govt in Catalonia] who clearly hasn't been
keeping such a close watch on the municipal government flags lately.
But what is the point of these very short visits?

It's not an easy question to sort out. And it's made more
complicated if we keep in mind that —in general and with very few
exceptions—the aforementioned personalities only meet and speak with
natives who tend to say exactly what those figures want to hear. But
let's not get further off track. The question is knowing the rhyme and
reason behind these compact wanderings. If you want to know what's going
on in Catalonia, they're not useful, and they're also not effective at
generating sympathy. Mysterious.

There are those who categorize the visits as colonial. I don't
agree. Serious colonialists (think of the British) have always studied
the foreign territory carefully and have had a good deal of respect for
reality. Here, it seems to me, we are faced with simple,
bargain-basement tourism, an industry which ends up converting every
destination into a non-place where people swoop in, take a picture (a
selfie, perhaps) so that they can say they were there. Catalonia, for
Rajoy and his ministers, is a non-place, a concept explained by the
French anthropologist

Marc Augé.
That's why the Catalans are also a non-nation, non-people, and
non-referendum. And that's why some detect social facture where there
are simply people strolling and buying books and roses. One should point
out that for Mr. Rubalcaba and the PSOE, Catalonia is also a non-place,
with a Socialist non-party.