Catalonia, five years later

The economic and social emergency situation that the whole of

has been going through since last March has synchronized the agenda of the main Western democracies in this new political course.

The

,

or fiscal rules are the subject of debate in our country as well as in neighboring countries and are the focus of the governments' concern.

At least, that's how it is on paper.

In

, for too many years the exorbitant influence of nationalism in public life, often discounted by numerous political actors, greatly harms our country's ability to offer state responses to whatever crisis or threat it faces.

Without going any further, these days we know, for example, that

.

We have known the abominable approach, demanded by the pro-ETA environment, of terrorists to

accelerated by the Ministry of the Interior so that nationalism controls and shapes the prison policy on

.

Without forgetting that, these days, in places like

, many families start the school year with the right to schooling in Spanish for their children violated by the separatist government in collusion with the Government of Sánchez.

Against the normalization of this type of anti-democratic anomaly, a political project was born in Catalonia in 2006 that today, as then, continues to raise its voice

every time rights are trampled on arbitrarily.

Since the 1980s and with the establishment of Spanish democracy, nationalism has been working towards social hegemony in the territories where it is represented, in a strategy that has relied on the laziness of bipartisanship.

Normally it does so by scratching small transfers, sometimes symbolic or linguistic, others with legal breaches that the big parties quickly go to downplay.

Thus, there are few occasions in which nationalism lets its true face be seen in full light.

Perhaps the time that more people have seen it so clearly was on September 6 and 7, 2017, which is five years old today.

For those of us who had the responsibility of facing those fateful days from the political front line, it is not difficult to remember them clearly

.

The climate that had been preceding those days for months had installed in Catalan politics the singling out of the constitutionalists, normalized the threat as a strategy and evidenced the social fracture that was intensifying that autumn until it became evident even among those who for many years denied it, accusing Citizens of alarmism.

.

But five years ago they openly showed their rejection of democracy and the rule of law.

The Parliament of Catalonia, so many times falsely claimed by nationalism, was then the ominous scene of the greatest attack that our democratic institutions have suffered since 23-F, and the political pluralism that the institution represents, the undisputed victim of the entire so-called

.

The deputies who represented the majority of citizens in the Chamber were silenced and any type of protection was stolen from us in the face of an outrage aimed at undermining the rights and freedoms of millions of citizens of a Member State of the European Union.

.

For a nationalism accustomed to stealthily gaining meters of legitimacy, those days in which they so blatantly manifested their true vocation ruined their false popular narrative and served to make many fall off their horse.

Others of us had been warning about it for years and suffering for it the harassment of some and the contempt of those who today are still determined to minimize, if not erase, that episode.

With all humility, it is safe to say that in order to defeat separatism then it was crucial that the first opposition party was Ciudadanos.

.

Our fight against the degradation of public life that our society has suffered in recent years under the rule of nationalism has not only proved us right, but has also favored Spain as a whole -and to a large extent in Europe- understand the risks

.

And it is verified to what extent our rights are not discounted or irreversible.

And we say it in the present.

.

We would again assume the personal cost derived from publicly signifying ourselves against an authoritarian and exclusive nationalism.

We would return to address the separatist leaders who ended up condemned with the same attitude and even the same words.

Others, unfortunately, all they can say is that they would be pardoned again today.

and today, instead of honoring our history, they have chosen to rewrite it.

The Sánchez government is determined to consider what happened in 2017 a punctual outburst and not the only possible corollary after decades of populist and Hispanophobic propaganda, simply because it needs to legitimize its partners at whatever cost.

, among which is even the pardon of the political leaders of the coup on the 6th and 7th. That is why we denounce that there was no worse transfer of powers to separatism than that of giving them the reason, because with it they are also given the history and the story of it, and to hand over the past to the nationalists is to leave the constitutionalists without the tools to fight them in the present.

The PSOE often speaks of turning the page, but their actions prove that what they want is to return to the first.

To show a button: 12 years ago, the PSC and the nationalists demonstrated hand in hand against the TC for the ruling of the Statute;

today they are allied to prevent the right of families to send their children to school in Spanish by circumventing the courts.

Restart the

and, along the way, water nationalism with privileges so that they have it easier when they return to their old ways.

Giving the nationalists the reason not only implies the abandonment of the constitutionalists

, but, above all, it compromises the future of our country, which will hardly always be able to resist the appeasement policy rehearsed for decades by bipartisanship and which today has its worst culmination with the drift of Sánchez.

.

Today, a submitted government conscientiously ignores these intentions and contributes to rearming nationalism with legitimacy and instruments, paving the way for the success of a new attack.

It goes without saying that the reasons for which Ciudadanos was born are still more valid than ever and are the only valid ones to defeat nationalism in the long term

.

Not only because the liberal and democratic principles that we defended in Parliament on September 6 and 7 continue to guide our steps in the face of the populist threat gripping Europe, but, above all, because the failure of the coup was made possible by the joint reaction of the civil society, the head of state and an opposition determined not to give up a millimeter of reason.

like the one led by Ciudadanos in 2017. Only then can we defeat them again.

Only then can we continue to commemorate the triumph of freedom.

Inés Arrimadas

is president of Ciudadanos and

is leader of Cs in Catalonia.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• citizens

• Europe

• PSOE

• PSC

• European Union

• CKD

• Pedro Sanchez