Edward’s Diary Entry 154: On “Potatoes” and Identification with the “Fatherland”

I have been busy studying and reviewing the situation in Catalonia, where “identification” with the concept of what we can call “an exclusive group of people” is running rampant. Many minds out of a population of 7.5 million in 4 provinces of northern Spain are “convinced” they are a special case in the world, and even compare their case to other groups of people around the world who get together and say they are somehow special, either because of language, race, roots, real or imagined history or whatever, viz. Quebec, Flanders, Slovenia or Scotland. This is usually called “nationalism”, “populism” or “national-populism”, although we are now witnessing a “nationalism” that is actually a kind of disputable “regionalism”. But whatever we call it, it is “identification with an exclusive identity”.

After 40 years of democratic, constitutional Spain (new constitution in 1978), in which the 17 regions were given varying degrees of political autonomy, with Catalonia actually being granted the highest degree of autonomous treatment from the central government, it looks like “differences and dissimilarities” have been stirred up to such an extent, and historical stories about break-ups, republics, separation and anti-monarchism have been fuelled to such a high degree that quite a few people in Catalonia now fervently feel they deserve the “right” to become an independent state, contravening Spain’s national constitution. This has even been fomented and supported by the autonomous region’s own television and radio channels, and its total control of devolved powers to provide education for this population, mainly in Catalan, as only a few minutes of watching or listening has proven – the slant and bias is definitely there, and this is part and parcel of a politicised indoctrination process.

You see, when small-scale identities are allowed to run riot in the mind (I am this, I am that, I am whatever), they take over intelligence and obfuscate the discriminatory process. When “identity” attacks, anything can be used as an argument to protect that identity, and clarity in the mind is ousted. One identity completely overrides all others and minds become constipated, dwelling on their own little Weltanschauung, or picture of the world.

This is how expectant young students, university professors, dyed-in-the-wool republicans, potato farmers and tractor drivers could break into tears over the “loss” of their “fatherland”, when the Catalan president saw himself forced to “suspend” a republic he had declared 10 seconds earlier in his 10th October speech from the rostrum of the Catalan Parliament. The regionalist mindset, flagshipping “freedom” (we’ve heard that one before, right?), had taken over from all strivings to become increasingly internationalised, if not globalised, in this 21st-century.

A few days later in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, where all regions and political parties are represented, in their job of representing the “people of Spain”, a Basque leader talked about Basque potatoes and Catalan potatoes. A Valencian deputy protested that there were also Valencian and Murcian potatoes. Not without his tongue in cheek, Spanish prime minister Rajoy, in his reply, couldn’t help pointing out that with all this talk about potatoes – some hotter, some colder – everyone had forgotten the “Spanish Potato”, which is the kind he and his government were trying to promote!

More next week….