Last Sunday’s elections in Catalonia offer at least two interpretations. The first is the easiest, the political axis from left to right: the socialists clearly win. Indeed, to be more precise, “Sanchez wins”. In reality, it is the second level of interpretation that is decidedly more interesting, the institutional axis of independence: crushing defeat of the parties for the independence of Catalonia. From the graphs reported in El Pais, the set of independentist parties (Junts, Esquerra Republicana de Cataluna, CUP, AC) loses the absolute majority: in the Catalan Parliament it collapses from 74 seats to 61, while the opposite trend is recorded for the set of parties (Catalan Socialist Party, Popular Party, Vox, Comuns) supporters of national unity (attention: not centralism).
The result achieved on the institutional axis was by no means a given. On the contrary. After the political and judicial persecution and the exile of the main protagonists of the 2017 referendum, a reaction in the name of Catalan pride, in support of the heroes of the attempted independence, would have been physiological. Instead, the electoral outcome gave the opposite message.
The reasons to explain the victory of the national parties (in particular, the Popular Party wins 12 more seats compared to the 2021 figure, although half “inherited” from the disappearance of Ciudadanos) are different. Of course, an important reason is the political intelligence and courage of the Spanish socialist leader who brought the Catalan separatist affair back to the appropriate terrain: political, not judicial, to which his predecessor of the People’s Party Mariano Rajoy had instead confined it. In the coming weeks, the Cortes will approve an amnesty measure for those responsible for the institutional breaches that occurred 7 years ago.
However, such a marked retreat of the independence forces must be explained first of all with the passage of a historical phase: the end, even for “the strongest”, of the illusion of “regional” do-it-yourself, both in the case of regions that aimed to become , even formally, “sovereign” states (like Catalonia), both in the case of regions committed to “differentiating”, that is, to taking exclusive legislative powers from the “centre” on so many matters that they separate on a substantial, although not formal, level ( such as Veneto, Lombardy and, to varying degrees, Emilia-Romagna).
That illusion held in the season of the “end of History” and the marginality of Politics in the name of the market as a primary, general and universal regulating principle. In this ideological and political panorama, competitive regionalism was promoted by the European institutions: the ‘regions’ competing on the endless prairies of the European single market where the movements of capital, services, goods and people were finally freed from the social purposes imposed by Constitutions such as our. The “Europe of the Regions” limited the task of the national state to the removal of obstacles, the famous snares and snares, to competition. It mattered little then and, to a large extent, is still little imposed today, if the competition took place between economic subjects active in contexts that were profoundly unequal in terms of taxation levels, welfare conditions, wages, both within the borders of the EU and beyond those. borders. The differences in levels were covered with the fig leaf of cohesion policies, financed every year with a fraction of 1% of the Union’s GDP. In this context, the necessary public intervention was reduced to a minimum and was carried out, at the supranational government level, by “technicians”. In that phase, the national state was considered an interference that was formally unavoidable, but essentially useless on a policy level.
The season of the world has changed radically. The social unsustainability of the neo-liberal system of global markets and our single market has been made clear by Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the increasingly widespread affirmation of “sovereignist” movements on our continent. Then came the pandemic. Lastly, wars, now understood by our most “responsible” ruling classes as ordinary tools for resolving international disputes. In short, the function of the national state returns to the foreground. For reasons of space, I would like to refer here to an upcoming pamphlet of mine (“Is differentiated autonomy also bad for the North?”, Castelvecchi).
We are at a key stage in evaluating the intervention on the powers of regional autonomies and on the most useful solutions to promote territorial interest. The Catalans have understood this, thanks also to the orientation expressed by their left-wing and right-wing ruling class. Instead, our ruling class at the forefront of differentiated autonomy moves forward, convinced or blackmailed, regardless of the change of season. Thus, Italy returns to “geographical expression”.
