Puigdemont out Rajoys Rajoy!

So the big DUI was kind of a dud. Perhaps never in history has a declaration of independence for a new nation been proclaimed with less enthusiasm. Was it even a declaration? In fact, no. President Puigdemont said that he "accepted the people's desire that Catalonia become an independent country in the form of a republic." So, he accepted that desire, but he didn't actually declare its existence. Then it gets really strange, even "Rajoyian": he immediately goes on to propose that Parliament suspend for a few weeks a declaration that he hasn't actually made so that there can be time for dialogue with the Madrid government. That's quite a feat! Chaos theory! Ever stranger: what about that proposal? A vote? No. An institutional declaration from Parliament regarding that? No. Nothing. What we did get, after the speeches were done and out of the glare of the tv cameras, was a true declaration of independence in written form, made in the name of the "Representatives of Catalonia", but signed, of course, only by members of the governing coalition. It's a strange document and unlikely to be treated kindly by history. After a somewhat lengthy introduction, the document proclaims the creation of an independent and sovereign Catalan Republic. It will be a Republic of laws, democratic, and "social". Not sure what "social" means. The process of creating the new republic will be citizen based and "transversal". Again, not sure exactly what they mean by "transversal". Well, I get the idea, but not sure how adjectives like "social" and "transversal" contribute anything meaningful to the text.
This morning all the reactions seem to give much greater importance to Puigdemont's speech than to the actual declaration of independence. Again, strange. Perhaps that's because everyone heard the speech, but most weren't even aware of the written declaration until this morning. Clearly, Puigdemont was hoping to diffuse tensions, to take a small step back from the edge of the cliff. He may have been somewhat successful, at least in terms of keeping calm in the streets. Now the ball is in Rajoy's court. If we could just lock Rajoy and Puigdemont in a room for, oh... say ten years, they no doubt would become great friends.

DUI

(No, not Parliament. The Catalan National Art Museum. A real gem!)

No, I didn't get a DUI, but I might get one today. We all might get one. I'm referring, of course, to a "Declaración Unilateral de Independencia" in Catalonia. President Carles Puigdemont is scheduled to address the Catalan parliament this afternoon and the suspense could not be greater. Will he make the declaration? I hope not, because if he does it will turn a bad situation really catastrophic. He will declare independence and announce the creation of the Republic of Catalonia, or something like that. But I doubt it will be "unilateral". My suspicion is he will couch the declaration in all kinds of invitations to the central government to negotiate. There will also likely be many invitations to the international community to collaborate, to help Spain and Catalonia come to an understanding. (The Catalan nationalists have been working hard to internationalize the conflict for many, many years.) How did it come to this? Well, that's a long, long story. Here are just a couple of minimal observations to give you a little bit of context: Catalonia has historically enjoyed a large degree of self-governance, but it has never been a truly independent nation. That may change, but it won't be today, regardless of what Puigdemont ultimately declares. The current system began in 1979 with the approval in referendum of a "estatuto de autonomía". That statute was reformed in 2006 to provide for even greater autonomy. It was approved by both the Catalan parliament, the national parliament in Madrid and by voters in Catalonia (albeit with low participation) in a referendum. And this is where the current mess really gets rolling: the right wing Partido Popular, led by Mariano Rajoy, now Spain's president, brought the new statute to Spain's Constitutional Court, which ultimately declared several articles unconstitutional. Consequently, ever more Catalans lost confidence in their relationship to the central government. Support for independence grew. Identity politics more suffocating. When Rajoy came to power in 2011 he showed no interest in negotiating a new agreement with the Catalan government. All of this political tension between Madrid and Barcelona came to a head on October 1st with the celebration of the referendum on independence. Under Spanish law, the referendum was clearly illegal, but the Catalan government had just passed its own laws to make it legal, laws which were, in turn, immediately declared unconstitutional by Spanish courts.
In my opinion, the core problem right now is that the current pro-independence Catalan government is made up of a coalition of parties that won 47% of the popular vote in last year's Catalan elections. That's hardly a mandate for a unilateral declaration of independence! Based on the numbers, this government does not represent a majority of Catalans. So, "the will of the people" is really not a solid argument. But, the referendum! Here a large majority voted "Yes" to independence. But everyone knows the referendum was plagued with all kinds of problems, even setting aside it's legality. Turn out was very low. Not a great idea to start a new nation based on a referendum that had very low participation (around 42%) and no guarantees of fairness. And this is the legitimacy the Catalan government must rely on, but even they know it's a weak argument. Thus, it seems the dominant argument one hears is simply "we're done here", a sentiment that comes from general disgust with the Spanish government. The sentiment is quite understandable: Rajoy has bungled things horribly and the Catalans' legitimate demand for a real vote on independence is also quite reasonable. But, frustration with the current situation is a weak basis for a declaration of independence, especially when the popular mandate for such a move is tenuous at best.
The problem is, of course, that a unilateral declaration of independence will not bring real independence. At least, not in the short term. Catalonia is simply not prepared or able to make that happen. It will trigger major intervention from Madrid, huge street protests, ever more "social fracture", the acceleration of an already alarming flight of capital, and who knows were it will ultimately lead. I feel sad, very sad, for Cataluña, and especially for Barcelona, wonderful Barcelona.

The Booze and Me

I had an interesting experience yesterday morning. I was putting a couple of clean glasses back in their cupboard and as I turned back towards the other part of the kitchen my attention was caught briefly by a corner cupboard I am normally barely aware of, a glass enclosed space whose contents are generally invisible to me. "The bar", a cupboard with a pretty good collection of liquors: whisky, gin, vodka, rum, etc. Lonely bottles that haven't been touched in all the fifteen months we've lived in this apartment. For whatever reason, those bottles got my attention. Their absurd stature as ignored objects, their complete lack of seductive power, their petty ordinariness.  (Well, I strongly suspect the reason for this sudden awareness is that the night prior I had been watching tv and there was an alcoholic character whose early experiences in recovery made me chuckle. And wince.) In any case, it was a brief diversion, a few seconds. But it got me thinking. After I stopped drinking (14 years ago, time flies!), and even though sobriety produced all kinds of wonderful effects for my general well being, my mind was shadowed by the notion that abusive drinking was just part of my nature, that I was hard wired for it. I accepted that notion, even embraced it, and lived happily with the knowledge that, regardless of my hard wiring, in sobriety I had been granted freedom over the tyranny of the bottle. It was wonderful to have gained the knowledge, a knowledge only attainable through experience, that "nature is not fate". Until many years into sobriety and given the right conditions, the image of a bottle could still produce in me something akin to cold sweats. Not often at all, to be sure, but it could happen. But when I noticed those bottles yesterday it occurred to me that the wiring in my brain is perhaps not so hard after all. It's not just that I have absolutely no desire to drink (that went away long, long ago), but that yesterday's experience seemed to produce a new insight: even those parts of our brain that seem most immutable and most determinative of our identity can be subject to revision. But it's quite a paradox, for at the same time the surprising change seems to bring me to something even "truer" about myself, something that really does ease my mind and spirit. It reminds me of an article I read a few years ago by a philosopher whose name escapes me at the moment, but it was a defense of a non-narrative, non-lineal orientation towards selfhood. It made sense at the time. (Richard Rorty argued along those lines in his chapter on the contingency of selfhood in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, but this was someone else I was reading.) So, I raise my glass of sparkling water and proclaim that today everything is contingent. Long live the nanometer motors inside our brain cells! Surely if the socratic injunction to know thyself is to be taken on, well oiled nanometer motors will drive the journey. Embrace the moment.