Last week, I mentioned the current political issue here in Catalonia as an example of how long it takes to work out nationalistic grievances and to put the pace of change in Africa into context. This issue will most likely dominate the local business landscape in 2014.
Geopolitics
The word Geopolitics dates back to 1899, was used by German political theorists and brought back into fashion by Henry Kissinger.
In the Geopolitics Reader, Tuathail, stresses the importance of Geopolitical Discourse which provides a “framework within which local events in one place can be related to a large global picture”.
Thus Geopolitics is about defining basic issues of national identity such as us and them and where do we fit in the scheme of things. For many people in Catalonia, the “we” is the Catalan nation which has 1,000 years of history and its own language and culture. In this narrative, Catalonia is a region of Europe and will logically be readmitted to the EU weeks or months after succeeding from Spain.
Last month, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, held a conference titled “Spain Versus Catalonia” which set out to document the negative relation between Spain (they) and Catalonia (us) over the last 300 years. One of its organizers, Salvador Cardús, talks about the role of Spain’s humiliation of the Catalan people in the current drive for independence.
On the other side, the Government of Spain is concerned with the territorial integrity of the Spanish state and is using its majority in the parliament to push through social reforms such as the new education law which puts into question the use of Catalan in primary and secondary schools in Catalonia.
The international community is trying to stay out of the whole thing and calling the question an internal issue for Spain just like it did in 1936.
As an American living in Barcelona, I try my best to stay out of the debate. The problem is, that as a student of history, I can not help but reflect on two historical precedents.
Historical precedents
The first precedent is the Spanish Civil War in which Barcelona’s unions managed to suppress a military uprising in 1936, had unionists fighting Republican troops in 1937 and finally fell to the Nationalists in 1939.
While most Spaniards and Catalans regard the Civil War as ancient history, a much more recent example is Sarajevo, which went from celebrating the Winter Olympics in 1984 to suffering a devastating war between 1991 and 1994.
Josip Broz, Tito, who founded Yugoslavia, died in 1980 and over the following ten years politicians in the six constituent republics of the country built their own story lines which led eventually to wars that were unimaginable during the Olympic Games.
As the war of words heats up, I only hope that local and national politicians have the good sense to tone down their geopolitical discourse and avoid the kind of gross miscalculation which could lead this fabulous city to ruin.
Ideas have power and those in power must use them in a responsible way.