Catalonia is a colony of Spain
Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó
Affirm that Catalonia is one Colony of Spain seems, even for the most committed nationalists, a dialectical exaggeration. It is a concept that independentism has not assumed in a regular way, as has been shown in the election programs of September 27. The comparative historical analysis of the features that characterized colonialism from the sixteenth to the twentieth century allows the typology of contemporary Catalan reality to be unequivocally colonial. What are these features? For starters, the armies of the metropolis occupy without a right a country that until then was sovereign. Catalonia was occupied by the armies of Castile between 1705 and 1714. The Principality was then an independent state integrated into a confederation, the Crown of Aragon. Let us remember the occupation of America, Africa or Asia in the centuries of colonialism. We note the existence of the Spanish flag on the facade of Capitania, irrefutable testimony of the current presence of the Spanish army in Catalonia. Second, the invasive power destroys the institutions of the occupied country and imposes military control over it. From the Bourbon decree of the New Floor of 1716 is what has happened to Catalonia. The autonomous periods have been nothing more than a lenitarian force of military occupation. Third, the occupying power organizes the economic downturn of the colony. Let us remember the drainage of American gold to Castile after the conquest. This is what has happened with Catalonia. From the Bourbon Tax to the Cadastre in the XVIII century to the Sixteen billion annual fiscal deficits in recent times, Catalonia has been, for three hundred years, a country spoiled by Spain. Fourthly, the colonizing power has found and promoted, within the colony, political, social or economic organizations favorable to the metropolis and, therefore, opposed to the liberation of that one. These sectors have acted as the fifth column to support the power occupying and curbing the aforementioned release movements. In Catalonia, this fifth column has fought against the forces of the metropolis, independentism. In the past 27-S elections, this fifth branch column has personal names and political organizations that are in the minds of everyone. Fifthly, the Settlers have attempted to disrupt the language and culture of the conquered countries. The imposition has also affected, with repressive or inquisitorial actions of great hardness, the religious beliefs of the occupied countries. The attempt to make Catalan language and culture disappear as an identifying element of the first order of the Catalan state has been constant. The repression of Catalan has been manifested permanently since the first Bourbon arrangements after 1714, up to the Wert law. The decrees, laws, regulations and provisions of the Madrid court against Catalan occupy hundreds of pages and have been unalterable throughout the centuries South American countries know what language repression meant for the maintenance of their own languages. When the metropolis has not managed to make these languages disappear, it is wrong to turn them into second category languages. A last factor. The metropolis never allowed the colony to freely decide on its destination through a referendum on self-determination that allowed decolonization. This is the case of Catalonia. History teaches that colonizing processes have only been defeated when the countries victims of the destructive action of the metropolis have achieved independence. Catalonia is one of the few countries on the planet that has not yet been liberated from colonizing oppression, and if we look only for Europe, we will see that Catalonia continues to be, based on the features I have mentioned, the only colony that still exists in the Old Continent From this there is a broad collective consciousness, that which must allow the liberation National of Catalonia that is already seen on a horizon that is closer to each day.
