Ever since political party Citizens (Cs) decided to turn the Catalan Parliament into a huge television set on which to campaign for popularity right across Spain and to aggravate the already-existing hatred of Catalan nationalism and the Catalan language in all areas of public life, it has become possible for minor incidents to end up having huge media consequences. The party's political proposals are virtually nonexistent - beyond the marketing they have exploited so well, which allowed them to concentrate much of the pro-Spain vote in their own basket at the last Catalan election, to finish as the largest party. Their ideological emptiness doesn't seem to matter to anyone. Nor does the climate of confrontation that they are provoking by taking actions that endorse a dangerous resurgence of the extreme right in Catalonia.
We have seen this in the last few weeks. Aggressions in public spaces against independence supporters which have taken place simply because the latter were wearing a yellow ribbon or erecting a symbolic protest of crosses on beaches. Nobody has called them out for this and even the Spanish government's official Catalonia representative only responded by sending a letter to local mayors in which he seemed to forget that one of the functions of public space is for making this type of protest, even if part of society does not like it. In Parliament on Friday we saw an unfortunate spectacle served up by the Cs spokesperson, Carlos Carrizosa, when he brusquely took hold of a large yellow ribbon and threw it out of the way. He even initially refused to give it back to the Catalan president,Quim Torra, when he asked for it.
It was not a coincidental action. It was a premeditated act to create a false confrontation which has not existed among the public at large but which Citizens have long been trying to fuel. This is their main objective: to create collisions across the broad and varied spectrum of Catalan society and, indirectly, to express their support for those who, with masks covering their faces, have caused incidents on Catalan beaches in recent days. The same as happened a few months ago outside the studios of Catalunya Ràdio in Barcelona's Avinguda Diagonal. When this type of action is supported by some members of parliament, it does promote concord or a democratic attitude. It is, in any case, the speaker of Parliament who has the job of deciding what is correct behaviour in the chamber and what is not, as the Cs deputy knows very well.
Although some are more comfortable working down in the mud, they will not be successful in converting Catalonia into what they most want it to be: just another Spanish region, without an anthem, without a language, without a culture and without a future.