Even if just for a day, the house of parliament of Catalonia became the house of Catalan farmers this Tuesday. At least, the place where they could give voice to their complaints and also to their misfortunes. Likewise, to their solitary state. To their abandonment. To the lack of communication between the city and the countryside, with different dynamics and different speeds. Farmers know only how to bet on the future. They need to see a horizon in their activity. A reason for optimism in the midst of a world that is getting away from them and that, moreover, does not seem to rely on them. I understand that all this is very difficult to understand in the city, where people have fewer and fewer trades and are content with just having jobs. Which is no small thing. But the farmer who only wants to see the land, the land and the land cannot participate in this superficiality of the city.
As could be expected, the hosts did not particularly like the critiques made by the farmers, who in a more than reasonable tone turned upside down what has been done in their field over recent decades. Because here and everywhere else, things always arrive late when it comes to this primary sector of the country's productive activity. Let's say it clearly: the policies of the different governments have not been designed for the people on the land. There aren't that many of them anyway, goes the thinking in the party electoral offices, I suppose. If we look at the latest data, from 2020, which by now will be even worse, the active agricultural population amounted to just over 70,000 people, which is a few decimals more than 2% of the total active workforce of Catalonia.
Fewer people than used to fit into the old Camp Nou, as some well-known, well-paid expert might think when setting the electoral thermometer. With the sector drifting in the current of invisibility, it even lost its name on a Catalan government ministry, and instead was integrated into a label with more of a message, which is now called: the ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda. Who is not in favour of the fight against climate change that fills newspaper columns and countless reflections on the future of the planet? Now they are to bring back the old one from the ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock, which was the title on the business card of the veterinarian Agustí Carol, back in the first Catalan government of Jordi Pujol in 1980.
Here and everywhere else, things always arrive late when it comes to this primary sector of the country's productive activity.
Considering the few single-issue debates that have taken place in Parliament on the rural sector - with the previous one having been in 2014 under the presidency of Artur Mas, and another in 2010 when José Montilla was president - I fear that the farmers will be finished off soon enough, or the number of people dedicated to the rural sector will be irretrievably reduced. I already know that this country has many emergencies and priorities and that politics is always about choosing, prioritizing. Choosing what is urgent or what is important. A choice that assures electoral success or one that generates progress in Catalonia. One that gives a country a base for a better future or one that opts for innovative policies in new areas appropriate for rich countries when we are a poor and poorly financed country.
For many reasons, I feel a very close empathy with the farmers' demands. I know their suffering and that they are not joking. Because they are enormously capable, they know that the spotlight they have this Tuesday is ephemeral and very soon they will disappear again, and their claims will once again be invisible. But they will not be the only ones sacrificed. We will all end up suffering.