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Rating: In presenting this work, I am embarking on a path that is evidently fraught with difficulties and could inevitably become a battleground in the ensuing discussion. We are talking, after all, about something that has to do with a current topic and has already sparked divisions not only in Spain but also in our country.
I am clearly referring to the events following the referendum in Catalonia on October first up to the recent chronicle of recent days.
The premise is obligatory: personally, I am opposed to the independentist drives and claims like that of Catalonia.
Besides considering some sort of anachronism in something like this, according to my political view, I consider myself what could be defined as an 'internationalist' and as such I am for uniting and not dividing. Secondly, with all its flaws, I continue to believe that the united Europe represents right now, for all its imperfections, the path to pursue more decisively. More decisively than currently and also to prevent absurd situations like those that are affecting Catalonia these days. A matter that certainly concerns Spain from within, but which concerns the entirety of the European Union and whose structures have found themselves unprepared in facing these events after having already experienced the de facto outcome of the United Kingdom's referendum results on June 23rd, which initiated the start of negotiations.
To what extent can the independentist drives of the inhabitants (or rather: a part of the inhabitants) of a region be considered legitimate to determine the creation of a State, and furthermore without this happening with the formal recognition, which we can consider a kind of democratic sharing, by the international community. And also by the very State of which it was and continues to be a part. How can we distinguish this from what can effectively be considered a coup? To what extent can a referendum be considered a truly democratic and decisive system on certain issues?
I recall that in this regard, for political reasons or because factually opposing changes on the current referendum regulation in our country, exactly one year ago the Renzi Government fell, proposing among a series of constitutional reforms also a revision of the referendum system.
It's worth remembering in detail that our regulatory discipline provides four types of referendum: 1. The abrogative one of laws and acts having force of law; 2. The one related to constitutional laws and constitutional revision; 3. The one concerning the merging of existing regions or the creation of new regions; 4. The one concerning the transition from one region to another of provinces or municipalities.
Of course, Spain, as much as it is a Mediterranean country and geographically very close to Italy, has a culture and history that are profoundly different from ours and probably constitute a unique reality in the Western world. Which perhaps has a sort of parallel only with Portugal, even though in the case of the Lusitanians one can talk about a greater univocity in what was the 'Carnation Revolution' of April 24, 1974: a reaction to the authoritarianism and the military dictatorship of Marcelo Caetano, which was configured as a military coup supported by the population and was in some way bloodless. In this case, the 'game' was very likely also on the international plane a consequence of what was the colonial game played by Portugal in previous years...
Spain’s history is different.
Francisco Franco was 'caudillo de España' from October 1, 1936, to November 20, 1975. He was primarily nationalist and anti-communist, and it was probably this that led to the birth and development of very strong opposition movements at the local level rather than on a national level.
It must be said that during the years of the dictatorship, probably in a manner also guided from above, to hinder the rise of a national resistance movement that as such would truly oppose Francoism (we are talking about the years of the Cold War when left-wing intellectuals and right-wing adventurers had already stopped taking an interest in the issue), movements at a local level strengthened throughout the country and continued to root within the population even after the end of the dictatorship, especially (coincidentally) in the two historically richest regions of the country: the Basque Country and Catalonia.
Upon the death of Francisco Franco, King Juan Carlos, having become head of state, had to de facto yield to these autonomist impulses granting them an internal organization based on autonomous communities.
Now the issue relating to the Basque Country has held ground for years due to the initiatives of ETA, the Basque independentist terrorist group which remained quite active practically until the start of the new millennium (just like the associated political party, Batasuna, which was de facto dissolved by a judicial measure). We can consider the reduction in activities also due to greater attention in general towards terrorism after the events of September 11, 2001, or even as a historical matter following the end of the IRA experience in Northern Ireland.
The history of Catalonia, on the other hand, has never been so bloody and politically considered. Ideally, in Italy, the Catalan independence movement is viewed as something dealing with socialism and freedom, but the truth is that it involves more than folklore (and I hate everything that is folklore and traditionalism) and mainly economic interests and a certain attitude towards the inhabitants of poorer regions like Andalusia, which can very well recall some statements and attitudes typical of historical members of the Lega Nord party.
The artwork in the photograph, in my opinion, is symbolically emblematic in describing the history of this country over the last thirty to forty years and what is culturally happening at this specific moment in Spain and more specifically in Catalonia.
Created by the artist Josep Viladomat, the bronze sculpture depicts a headless figure of the caudillo Francisco Franco on horseback.
In truth, the sculpture (dating back to 1963) initially had a head, but this appears to have been 'beheaded' just days before the exhibition and then the statue was nevertheless publicly displayed despite the incident...
The sculpture was exhibited last year in Barcelona in the square in front of the Born market, an ancient neighborhood market in the La Ribera district in the city center, where today lies an important archaeological site, and as part of a wider exhibition titled 'Franco, Victòoria, República. Impunitat i espai urbà.'
As much as the initiative was not at all a demonstration to celebrate Francoism and in fact wanted by a, let's say, leftist junta, Mayor Ada Colau was indeed elected with an electoral coalition including, among others, the Greens, United Left, and Podemos, this was vehemently opposed by the city's population.
The protest thus heated and let's say determined in its forms, up to the complete ruin of the artwork itself, if we may, is emblematic of a certain unease and turbulence within a city that otherwise on one hand professes itself as the city of freedoms and where everything is possible, where you can have everything you want at your fingertips: drugs, alcohol, entertainment, pussy; on the other hand, it is the same city where inhabitants take to the streets to demonstrate against the 'movida' and against the excessive influx of tourists. It must be said that these are mechanisms I am relatively familiar with irrespective of the fact I have been to Barcelona several times over the last years, but because they touch me up close as similarly in a parodic and equally rowdy or even worse manner similar incidents happen in the city where I live, namely Naples, which claims to resemble Barcelona, but in my opinion, it only has some dialectal expressions and the neighborhood where I live, a maze of uneven alleys and dilapidated buildings awkwardly built one on top of another in an architecture that actually seems to have been pulled out from a work of Pablo Picasso.
So, how do we judge the demolition of the statue in question? Is there a connection to the independence drive of Catalonia and its explosion in recent months?
I have tried to think about how we Italians would have reacted before an artwork publicly exhibited and representing Mussolini without a head or - even better - hung upside down. Yes, I know that these futurists are all a bit fascist but anyhow if you invite them to lopping off a head or hanging a dead person upside down I’m sure they'd be fine with it, so...
I nevertheless think that the public opinion would have reacted with general disinterest. Personally, I can say that I would have found it in any case distasteful given the subject represented, but I certainly don't think I would have been shocked or outraged. Probably the voice of some old young indignant fascist would have emerged at most. Yes indeed. But it would have been a minority, and at most it would have led to an exchange of - folkloric - barbs.
But in Spain, the memory of Franco is evidently much fresher and vivid in the imagining inhabitants; additionally, it seems the younger Spanish population is now going through that phase of rebellion which characterized the Western world between the sixties and seventies, and now however cannot and does not find any ideological outlet on the left except for a film by Sabina Guzzanti and can only turn to itself and therefore to phenomena of a localistic nature.
From this point of view, it is difficult for me to judge the lynching both media and properly 'physical' against the artwork represented. It is undeniable of course that this affair garnered more publicity and clamor otherwise and that if we consider that the artwork was in itself something provocative, then perhaps in this sense it achieved the reaction and purpose intended to achieve.
The rest is Spain and Catalonia today.
We are paradoxically discussing one of the States (Spain) which achieved its national unity much earlier in the modern age, yet has always been managed and governed in a probably little enlightened to say 'naive' manner. Going back through history, how can one forget the waste of economic resources under the Reign of Philip II, the largest realm that the world history recalls and which already inherited a deficit economic situation from Charles V and which degenerated during his reign to the extent of declaring bankruptcy three times due to the pressures of various regional authorities and colonial administrations.
All these issues remain evidently unresolved in a country that like everyone else is feeling the uncertainties from the top of the European Union and the nationalist pressures which here have translated into an explosion of the Catalonian independence movement more than any other way.
Currently in refuge in Belgium, a country where nationalist parties are particularly represented in parliament and at local levels, with four of his former ministers of the regional government, Carles Puigdemont, the President of Catalonia, and the main inspirer of the independence referendum, has against him charges of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of funds and a European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish authorities.
Moreover, a fundamental clarification is missing: in Spain, constitutionally voting in favor of regional independence is banned. Which automatically led to the cancellation of the referendum result and the consequent independentist procedure was suspended and consequently annulled by the Spanish constitutional court.
De facto the referendum of last October first, with 57% of voters having voted and 'Yes' winning with the Bulgarian percentage of 92%, is annulled. However, the game remains seemingly still open.
Carles Puigdemont has obtained supervised freedom and in ninety days the Court will decide on the European arrest warrant. In the meantime, he announces from Belgium his intention to run, in any case, in the regional elections in Catalonia on December 21st. His party has obviously proposed him as leader of the future list and in which all the political prisoners would feature. What better 'caudillo' indeed for a country that evidently struggles to detach from its past history.
The statue of the generalissimo today is displayed in the Museo de la Historia de Barcelona.
It continues to be headless and probably at this point, it’s just as well.
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