There has been no agreement between the territorial model that has been put on the table Ander Gilformer president of the Senate for the Socialist party (PSOE) and the one they have defended, each one has its nuances and degrees, Carme Forcadellformer president of Parliament of Catalonia by Republican Left (ERC); Oskar Matutedeputy of EH Bildu either Ana Pontonnational spokesperson for Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG). The debate took place at an event organized by the Public Space Foundation and Public at the Caixaforum headquarters in Madrid.
The models have collided, but no sparks have flown. Unlike the usual fight in parliamentary debates, the dialogue table – from which he was absent at the last minute Gerardo Pisarello (Comuns) for personal reasons – has given the four speakers the opportunity to confront each other in peace.
Virginia Perez Alonsodirector of Publichas opened the discussion by establishing a general framework. He has spoken of the difficulty of facing a constructive debate on the territorial model with the right front oppositionof the differences in social services in the different territories, of the impossibility of converting the Senate in a truly territorial Chamber or the expired financing model. She and the president of the Espacio Público Foundation, Ignacio Murohave agreed that the current territorial model “fails to cover the needs of the territories“.
And it is an extreme on which all the invited political figures have converged. Not so much, however, in the solutions. Ander Gil He began by saying that “the State of Autonomies has been worth it” and that it was not an easy task to create it. “A house was built with the inhabitants inside and that is very difficult.” In any case, the former president of the Senate makes a “positive evaluation” of the current model, although it recognizes that it needs some adjustments.
However, Gil considers that these adjustments must involve accentuating and improving the “co-governance“. No further. In addition, he stressed that a large-caliber change would have to be made “with the help of the People’s Party“. It is something that the rest of the speakers have not even remotely agreed with.
Ana Ponton He wanted to make it clear that this co-governance model has never been useful to Galicia. He has insisted that the Galician problems do not reach Madrid and that “the Spanish State has to recognize what its reality is: multicultural, plurilingual and plurinational“. Furthermore, he has emphasized that, first of all, “all political actors must recognize that there are nations [dentro del Estado] that they have the right to their sovereignty is accepted“. “The logical thing,” he said, “is that there is a recognition confederal” for a reality that is not “subordinated to a central power.”
In his turn, Oskar Matute has gone further. “We want a free and sovereign Basque confederal republic.” With it, the deputy continued abertzale“it will be easier to make transformative policies.” Their party – which they want to be understood as a “party-movement” – works to “generate the conditions in Euskal Herria for a new national transformation to take place” and aspire, first, to full sovereignty and then to independence. At this point, he has acknowledged that the difficulties are many – in light of the Catalan case – but he has decided that they are willing to follow the path. A path, he explained, that “cannot come from Congress, but has to come from the Basque people.”
Carme Forcadellwho began speaking in Catalan to show that the Spanish State has never valued the Catalan language, was very harsh in her intervention. “We have not been allowed to live with our Catalanness,” he stated. Afterwards, he recounted one by one the most decisive events in the relationship between Catalonia and Spain in recent years.
It began with the promise of a Statute “that respects the Parliament’s decision” – a desire that Forcadell considers buried first by the pact between Zapatero and Artur Mas and, later, by the cuts to the Constitutional Court – and it has ended with the victory of Salvador Illa in the last elections. He wanted to explain, thus, that the fit of Catalonia into Spain is not possible and he has pointed out the failure of the Statute as one of the sparks that ended up lighting the processes.
DANA and decentralization
In such dramatic moments as those the country is going through, with the DANA tragedy in full force, the speakers have discussed, in theoretical terms, what should have been andThe role of the State in this disaster. The one who has been clearest on this issue has been Matute. When asked whether the central government should have declared the state of alarm or have taken the reins of management in some other way, as parties have requested since United Left either Canuntil the PPthe deputy abertzale has positioned itself totally against it, since it would have been a symptom of recentralization. He also stressed that Mazón had and has the tools to maintain competencies and lead said management.
There has been a quorum, in any case, in which the problem is that both the system and the political leaders from the Valencian Country failed.
However, the debate State and sovereignties It has ended without an agreement, but with an exchange of ideas. Gil has defended winning in “co-governance” as a future objective, while the other three speakers will work to get more sovereignty. This is, there is no doubt about it, one of the structural discussions of the Spanish State. Ana Pontón has pointed out that the territorial question has been going through Spanish politics for some time. 200 years: “When a debate is so persistent it is because there is a reality behind it.”
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