There is a video that still turns up on Twitter from time to time featuring the then-deputy prime minister of Spain, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, during an electoral meeting held in Girona on December 16th, 2017, in the middle of the article 155 period of direct rule, having dismantled the Carles Puigdemont government - with half the executive already in exile and the other half in prison - and annulled Catalan autonomy. SSS, or La Virreina (viceroy), as she was known in Barcelona, with an air of arrogance and bravado, accompanied by her secretary of state Roberto Martínez de Castro, her delegate in Catalonia, Enric Millo, and Xavier García Albiol, summed up the situation as follows: "Who has closed the embassies? Mariano Rajoy and the Partido Popular. Do you know what Diplocat is called now? It's no longer called Diplocat, it's called Diplocat in liquidation." Today the former deputy PM has abandoned politics and it's too easy a joke to ask who is in liquidation.
Those words should be remembered on the day that the Catalan foreign minister, Victoria Alsina, announced the opening of six new delegations abroad to take place over the course of this year and bring Catalonia's institutional representation to Andorra, Brazil, West Africa (Dakar, in Senegal), Southern Africa (Pretoria, in South Africa), South Korea and Japan. With these six new offices, Catalonia will have 20 "embassies" to provide services to a total of 63 countries, which will undoubtedly allow the government to carry out its foreign action better, a goal that was set long ago and that has always tripped over obstacles, not so much in the current independence movement era, as in Catalonia's already-distant Autonomous Community period of the eighties and nineties under Jordi Pujol.
With the arrival of Alsina in the Catalan foreign ministry, the opening of new embassies has taken an important leap forward not only in number but also in economic investment and political approach. As mentioned, the total of offices is to rise from 14 to 20 and, with regard to budgetary investment, it increases from 18 to 28 million euros overall and the discourse also goes several steps upwards. "To those who want us at home and silent, I have some news: we will travel and talk about our country more than has ever been done before. In quality and in quantity." Or, "the best way to prepare ourselves to be a state is to start acting, as much as we can, as if we are one."
It is obvious that the opening of offices abroad by the Generalitat of Catalonia is very good news from all points of view, starting with the attention that Catalans will receive beyond our borders. Knowledge of what we are, what we do and the political objectives that we pursue can reach more people despite the corseted autonomous community map with limits and resultant difficulties for a nation without a state like Catalonia. The path of opening new "embassies" is the right one, although, surely, in the days ahead we will hear protests from the usual voices. It turns out that the direction being followed is appropriate. And that Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría's prediction has not been fulfilled.