BarcelonaEntrepreneur and former CDC director David Madey (Barcelona, 1971) has just published the book he deserves winning (Colomna), “a story for adults” about how Catalonia was born in 2017.
the address is he deserves winning. Was independence worth winning in 2017?
The result today is that we are not independent.
He says the process did not start in 2010. So when?
– The process is a generational decision, whose origin is the Freedom for Catalonia campaign at the 1992 Olympics, which developed and was introduced into Catalan politics. The starting point leading up to October 3, the boiling point of 2017, was 30 years ago.
He explains the struggle of this generation, within the CDC, with Jordi Pujol, who did not share his recipe for jumping to sovereignty. Was he right?
We must understand that Pujol and this generation swallowed 40 years of Francoism and dedicated themselves to building a blueprint for a culture of power coming from nothing. Now, from their point of view, achieving independence has become a gradual step that they have not been able to achieve over generations.
He cites the Rajoy government meeting in El Escorial, which he described as the embryo of the Catalonia process.
– This is what I call the Fatwa of El Escorial, which is a specific day, with a specific meeting, where it was decided to take place The implication is that this time we will break them and we will break them.
But at that time Convergència was making an agreement with the People’s Party in Parliament.
– This is after the Statute, where Artur Maas proposes, ephemerally, with the Statute already discontinued, the Fiscal Charter as a final cartouche.
Would Operation Catalonia have been successful if the CDC hadn’t had dead people in its closet?
The uncomfortable truth of Spanish democracy is that it is built on a bag of illegal financing from all sides, which includes transitional parties, the monarchy, banks, construction companies, etc. The Convergence Party bears the original sin of all these parties, but the mission of this process is not to purify corruption. The goal is to destroy what they believe is their most important political enemy, the party that represents Catalonia’s middle classes.
In the book, he tiptoes over the decision to close Convergència. Was it a mistake?
– Convergence is played as a tool and a decision is made to change ship. But the convergent political space exists because it is intrinsically linked to the political particularities of Catalonia. In the Catalan elections, it was a race between the PSC, Junts and ERC to see who had the closest accent.
In the Catalan elections there was a race to see who had the most similar accent.
Artur Mas’s conference after the 2014 consultations is defined as one of the most important contributions to political Catalanism.
— Artur Maas The conference is a call to say, listen, if we have a very ambitious goal, we must be able to pause partisan disagreements. This is revolutionary in light of the historically divisive Catalan political culture.
Did the fact that Esquerra was forced to join Junts pel Sí affect the relationship between Junqueras and Puigdemont?
— Since JxSí had to be done with tweezers, it definitely left a mark. Junqueras has a strategy, which is dominance. The socialist diaspora and President Pujol’s legacy make the ERC believe it can achieve this.
He explains the meeting, Key 1-O, in which the General Staff of the operation was established and where Puigdemont and Junqueras learned that the question of the ballot boxes had already been resolved.
There is a moment when the government collides with the legal restrictions for holding the referendum and everything is on the verge of faltering. The motive is to buy ballot boxes. Then, a group of people who were not part of the government had this meeting and everything went wrong. I explain a very visual scene: Junqueras puts on the table the decree for the purchase of ballot boxes by the state and signs it there in front of everyone, but there is someone who tells him not to worry about it, this matter will already be resolved.
The first is coming.
– It is organized on October 1st, is placed under the state’s radar, and an unexpected scenario occurs, which is that a vote is held and the state decides to attack.
What is the unexpected scenario? What is voted on or does the country decide to attack?
– both of us. The logic was to believe that the article would interfere and that the vote would be prevented. But when the state sees that there is a security failure, it decides to attack schools. It’s their big mistake: a 1-O win almost earned them this decision. Many sovereign leaders believe this will eventually lead to a negotiated position for an agreed referendum.
Attacking schools is the state’s big mistake: a 1-O victory, which they almost caused with this decision.”
Given what he demonstrates, do you think it is legitimate for part of Independence to say that the leaders of the operation deceived voters?
– Look, I think that disappointment and ignorance of inexplicable things generates a lot of frustration and a lot of nonsense. It is absolutely wrong that nothing was ready. Another thing is the strategic decisions that are made. I don’t take a cynical view of what happened.
There is a meeting on October 4, in which he explains that there is a dilemma between going to revolution or calling elections, and says that Puigdemont and Junqueras are quickly ruling out the former.
They rejected both matters and agreed on one of them, which was mediation, which was compatible with what they wanted, which was bilateral negotiations leading to an agreed-upon referendum.
Puigdemont and Junqueras wanted bilateral negotiations in order to hold an agreed referendum.
At that meeting, he explained, they were told something similar: “You can’t win a war without generals.”
The Spanish state and nation have historically been built on the basis of wars and major internal crises that were usually resolved by military means and force. If you oppose it naively and in good faith, you almost always lose.
Were Puigdemont and Junqueras naive?
– At that time they chose mediation, and it lasted from October 4 to 27. And you can see what happened.
In this revolution scenario, one of the reasons given by both leaders for not going there was that they did not want to suffer losses.
The basic argument is that the revolution carries the risk of violence, and the limit they put on the table is that our path can only be peaceful and that there will be no violence.
Do you think a pro-independence leader should be willing to accept losses?
-I don’t do political fiction.
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