PP: Been there, did that

If I were younger, more cynical, more adventuresome, I'd offer myself as an advisor to Moncloa [the Spanish 'White House'] and to the PP so that they might be more astute at dealing with what we here call "the process", which is nothing more than the logical, natural result of more than a hundred years of trying to convert the Spanish State into another place, into something which an optimistic Catalan might resume, at least when I was younger, with a pretty slogan: "There's another way of making Spain".

If I were younger and had fewer idiosyncrasies, I would call Madrid and sell them a course on "The art of traveling to Catalonia". They say this sort of service is in high demand, especially at moments of particular tribulations. My miracle cure would consist of recommending that they do everything exactly the opposite of how they're doing it now. And what are they doing now? Lightning tourism. Recently, Rajoy and vice president Santamaria came through Barcelona on a whirlwind trip that some might term as a "been there, did that": just a few short hours, just enough time to take a wedding-style picture. It's a bit like those organized tours that try to show you all of Europe in two weeks. "If today is Wednesday, this must be Barcelona." Well, in this case, it's always (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) Barcelona or the metropolitan area. And in the photos, you can always see Ms. Llanos de Luna [Delegate of the Spanish Govt in Catalonia] who clearly hasn't been keeping such a close watch on the municipal government flags lately. But what is the point of these very short visits?

It's not an easy question to sort out. And it's made more complicated if we keep in mind that —in general and with very few exceptions—the aforementioned personalities only meet and speak with natives who tend to say exactly what those figures want to hear. But let's not get further off track. The question is knowing the rhyme and reason behind these compact wanderings. If you want to know what's going on in Catalonia, they're not useful, and they're also not effective at generating sympathy. Mysterious.

There are those who categorize the visits as colonial. I don't agree. Serious colonialists (think of the British) have always studied the foreign territory carefully and have had a good deal of respect for reality. Here, it seems to me, we are faced with simple, bargain-basement tourism, an industry which ends up converting every destination into a non-place where people swoop in, take a picture (a selfie, perhaps) so that they can say they were there. Catalonia, for Rajoy and his ministers, is a non-place, a concept explained by the French anthropologist Marc Augé. That's why the Catalans are also a non-nation, non-people, and non-referendum. And that's why some detect social facture where there are simply people strolling and buying books and roses. One should point out that for Mr. Rubalcaba and the PSOE, Catalonia is also a non-place, with a Socialist non-party.

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There are those who categorize the visits as colonial. I don't agree. Serious colonialists (think of the British) have always studied the foreign territory carefully and have had a good deal of respect for reality.