Santi Vila: "The 'moderate' ERC was the one that pushed Puigdemont to the precipice on 1-O"

A "traitor" for independence and a "nationalist" for constitutionalism.

The former councilor Santi Vila drags the punishment of his moderate position, he says, others consider it dangerously ambiguous, during the days prior to 1-O, that he did not prevent him from being condemned by the Supreme Court.

Now away from politics, five years after the birth of the

a large part of the Barcelona elite encourages him to lead a Catalanist project that ends the pro-independence hegemony.

For now, he is dedicated to teaching at the university and preparing for the trial for the works of Sixena, which is held on October 5.

With the perspective that the passage of time gives, it is evident that, if it were at this moment, I would not summon him.

We unnecessarily exposed thousands of people to disproportionate violence on the part of the State to stop a vote that in the Government we knew would not have political or legal consequences.

We offered a very bad international image of Catalonia and Spain.

From 1-O everything went haywire, the irrational decisions of each other arrived.

The mistrust between Madrid and Barcelona that had been generated with the consultation of November 9, 2014 weighed heavily. From the perspective of the Government, political Catalanism was not to be trusted.

And therefore, there was a principle of mistrust that made any conversation marked by the presumption of evil.

This damaged everything.

I remember meetings in the summer of 2017 in which we all longed for an armistice, a solution to avoid clashing with the government and not harm each other.

But we were not able.

When the Government deactivates 1-O from a legal point of view, when the electoral union is brought down with a stroke of the pen and the Venice Commission tells us that nothing we do will have legal consequences, it was clear to us that the consultation was not would have transformative capacity.

Only a symbolic value that could help us accumulate political capital to negotiate in the future.

Nothing more.

This vision was shared by everyone in the Catalan Government except Clara Ponsatí.

Later, Puigdemont was overwhelmed by the circumstances, but he never had a coup intention.

Independence was never declared.

The Government did not publish it in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat.

It was all a misunderstanding of these millennial times and the agitation of social networks and some journalists who, perhaps paid, helped make believe that something was happening that was not happening.

The nonsense of the DUI, with the passage of time, is going to age very badly and it will be difficult for the independence movement to explain from the reason that happened that weekend, in which journalists compromised their own code of ethics and counselors went to his office of the Generalitat as if Catalonia were already an independent republic.

We were bluffing so that international diplomacy would force the Government of Spain to move.

But Rajoy did not move an inch to solve the Catalan problem.

That is making counterfactual history, but yes, it is evident that I should have left before.

If someone was left out in the open and punished by both sides, we were the moderates.

Those of us who did not want there to be an institutional clash.

Therefore, I should not even have been part of that Puigdemont government.

When insisting on Puigdemont's visceral hatred towards Junqueras, in defense of the former I must say that the most hurtful thing about that stage was ERC's double standards.

In private, they asked us to converge and find a solution, while in public, people like Gabriel Rufina and Marta Rovira squeezed us with speeches to be more radical.

I understand the pain of Puigdemont and others who were at that time and who saw how those who now call themselves moderates in 2017 pushed them to the brink.

The Socialist Party is being very intelligent and pragmatic.

He has applied the fire extinguisher policy and has deflated Catalan society without making any political concessions.

The Government has not reviewed the Statute, the Constitution, or the financing system, nor has it advanced towards the plurinational state, and even so it has deflated the

.

It is ERC in which he is in a more compromised position.

Five years later, how do you see Catalonia?

Disoriented and without a political project with majority support and that gathers sufficient consensus.

There is a sector that is committed to street independence, convinced that Spain will only move by force.

I believe that this option has no travel.

Then there is the independence movement of ERC, which has recovered the old aspiration to broaden the base by crediting good management.

It is a path that, after so many years igniting spirits, I do not know if it will have electoral support.

Then, there is a third way, at the moment absolutely disappeared, that everyone says does not exist but that I want to believe does: clear and distinct Catalanism but compatible with a multinational Spanish state.

A Catalanism that makes compatible an idea of ​​Spanishness, the "Great Spain" that Joan Maragall spoke of, with a resounding Catalanness.

It is the historically majority tradition.

Catalonia has normally been Catalan and Spanish.

Without there being a conflict of identities.

Look, if the Catalan elites demand something, it is not to be treated by the State as peripheral.

Have you renounced the independence of Catalonia? I have never been an independentista.

Having said that, there is no need to talk about resignations from anyone.

I do not share that project, I think that together we can do better.

I teach at the university to students who were born in 2003 and 2004, who above all have experienced a pandemic, with its restriction of freedoms.

What do they want?

Work, good health, a future.

In this social reality,

It is going to cost more and more for the independence movement to link these aspirations for a better future to an instrumental utopia.

The argument that life is better in a state of its own.

Or not.

Because if we are independent but governed by the CUP or by the left that force us to pay more taxes than in the rest of Spain, and being reluctant to economic activity, to luxury, to the joy of living, surely we will not do better things.

Feijóo talks about the PP championing constitutionalist Catalanism... I think he is talking about constitutional patriotism, in which Catalanism is loyal to the Constitution and that the State recognizes Catalonia as a nation, because the Magna Carta says so and for reasons historical: Adolfo Suárez reestablished the Generalitat and its institutions before the Constitution was voted.

Likewise,

Feijóo must learn that the PP cannot allow the Catalans to see him as a hostile party.

If Feijóo wants to be President of the Government, he must give guarantees to Catalonia that he will be a Catalanophile, because the Madrid-Barcelona axis is essential.

Unfortunately, as the starting point is still today mutual mistrust, it is very difficult to negotiate anything.

And what to do with the escaped Puigdemont? The Government of Spain managed to solve the problem of the ministers who submitted to justice and has a hot potato with those who eluded it.

I am always in favor of generosity and being magnanimous.

Only incomplete or unsure states of themselves are disproportionate in their reactions.

A solvent and strong country should not be afraid to order the nonsense of 2017. As of the next legislature,

PSOE and PP should face the review of the accommodation of the Catalans to Spain through a Constitutional reform, which recognizes Spain as a composite state and settle the powers in which we have collided.

The Generalitat has decided to disobey the TSJC and eliminate 25% of the classrooms to move towards a monolingual model.

Do you understand 25% of Spanish as a threat to Catalan? I don't like to get caught up in the discourse of quotas.

What matters is that the educational authority gives the order to the educators so that our young people turn 16 to express themselves perfectly in Catalan, Spanish and English because it puts half the planet at their feet. You are imputed for the trial of the works of Sijena , due to the initial dispute between the governments of Catalonia and Aragon during his time as Minister of Culture.

On October 5 I am going to trial and we defend that we tried to behave in accordance with the legal system and that not having done so would have prevaricated against heritage legislation, museums and the law that made me competent as a cultural advisor.

This is confirmed by the fact that the other parties, the government of Aragon itself and the government of Spain, consider that we did the right thing.

After this trial, do you plan to return to the political front line to lead that Catalanist space that you say you long for? In 1950 Ortega y Gasset wrote a beautiful article that said that in life we ​​are vocation, circumstances and luck.

I have the vocation and longing as a public servant intact.

I try to be lucid when analyzing the circumstances and I am aware that luck is dominated by the gods.

I still do not see that someone like me, moderate, with a liberal and progressive profile, who believes that Catalonia and Spain must understand each other, who believes that it is possible to be Catalanist and at the same time Spanish, who defends a project for Barcelona in itself, can have space in Catalan politics.

To be honest.

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