Albert Boadella: I am ashamed to be Catalan and it has never happened to me

They have called him “Botifler”, traitor, fascist, etc. “Normality is the price of dissent,” he says. He does not recognize his land because he “lives on a deception.”

There is very good light here, answers Albert Boadella by phone when we ask him how the session went. He refers to his Empordà estate. The last time we spoke, the topic was still about the three cypress trees that had been cut down from his orchard. Tired of the story, he solved it: he placed a camera in the garden and the bug bit again, he says. The author was a very close neighbor.

“He simply sent a letter with a copy to the City Council in which he warned him that he would be primarily responsible for what happened to me or the cypresses.” The guy did not enter the property again. The theater director has always spoken with crystal clarity. Catalonia focuses the conversation and he responds calmly.

From time to time he laughs mischievously. Other times, he gets serious. Boadella always.

-The situation in Catalonia is not a product of now but rather comes from afar. From these dusts, these sludges, how far away?

-The structure has been set up since the time of Jordi Pujol, and very well set up in all aspects. In the educational and media sphere, above all, but also in the sense of getting many volunteers with public money for the cause. He has tried to create a certain paranoia in the population against the common enemy that is Spain. Around 1984-1985 is when it began, right with the beginning of pujolism. And so he has been infected with that hatred towards his fellow scoundrel. It has been achieved that a part of the population lives on a fiction.

-Isn’t it hard for you to believe that a politician like Carles Puigdemont has put so many thousands of people in his pocket?

-I would ask you the following: How is it possible that a clown like Mussolini, who had a certain clown’s grace, was capable of cajoling a people as civilized and cultured as the Italians? And millions of people followed. Well, the same thing happened with Puigdemont. He would lead us to analyze some pretty unpleasant things about the masses.

– And what is the mass? It seems like a formless entity that can be scary…

-If there is a slogan that really terrifies me, it is “The united people will never be defeated.” When I hear it, I run away, I hide. It is clear that many of the herd impulses and feelings cause some panic.

-When you have heard about “political prisoners” these days, has it reminded you of past and good times?

-These expressions are part of the great lie that has been organized and orchestrated. A total world of fiction has been created on past and contemporary history, especially around what happens every day in Spain. It is a very well-made lie because, like any good falsehood, it must have some aspect of reality. There are prisoners, without a doubt. They are partly due to politics, although they are where they are, let us not forget, for transgressing the laws of the State. Nationalists are fond of using these twists to change the overall vision and find a population addicted to being deceived because it has been that way for years. And they find the field paid. When 155 was applied, the army of Catalonia, which is the world of media and education, was left intact. The strength is there and it is in those two legs.

-If TV3 had been temporarily closed, would anything have been resolved?

-Undoubtedly. And not only to TV3, but also to other channels. If people can’t overwhelmingly listen to what they hear every day, they could have had the option of switching to other stations and would have found themselves with more plural discourse. The daily food of my people in 90% of the cases is the media of the Generalitat and without them the thought can begin to have doubts. They are fanatics to the extreme, like a religious faith from before.

-Talk about education. The soil of a speech heard for years in schools has permeated a generation of Catalans.

-It’s like that. In education it has been long. In Catalonia, at the end of the Franco regime, the so-called Summer Schools for teachers and professors were opened. They also taught there. That was already a focus of nationalism, although the political context did not allow them to go as far as they wanted. A high percentage of the core of teachers is the one who has radiated the idea of ​​black, Goyesque, intolerant, dominant Spain and very few have spoken to them about the truth, about the Spain of freedoms.

-That is to say, that the “black legend” of Spain in the education of Catalonia is a fact.

-It is a much more complicated issue than the media because not all teachers can retire at the same time. We just think that external reality can change your desire to indoctrinate teachers. Today, two months after the 1-0, the rest of the Spaniards have relaxed. And I smile ironically. Okay, then relax a little, but don’t let your guard down, this is alive and very alive, be careful. It is about remaking a web of affections in citizens, in families – which for many has been a brutal blow – and transforming the minds of citizens by telling them that there are laws that are above and are national, those of the Spanish state. And that they are subject to them and that they protect their freedoms. It is a brutal fracture in every rule.

-What can you do then?

– It occurs to me to maliciously think that if Catalonia had a significant decline from an economic point of view, which would also be negative for the rest of Spain, it could make them react. That the economy suffers and the citizen feels it in his pocket is a tough course of course but it can work. I know it’s pretty bad to think like that, but I’m pretty pessimistic.

-When you leave Spain, do you still say that you are from Murcia?

-I am ashamed to be Catalan and it has never happened to me . What you see from the outside is a depressing and creepy sight. And I’m not just talking about politicians, but about those who go to Brussels to see a nationalist idiot who thinks he’s William of Orange. And that does concern me, that they believe in possession of the truth, that they do not break that security.

-What can happen after 21-D?

-What can change, perhaps, is that it is more difficult for secessionists to say those of “all Catalans”, because not all of them are no longer there because of the separation. Constitutionalists see it as difficult for him to win, not in votes, but in seats. The others form a highly mobilized mass. They can win in votes; in seats, I think not. Let’s also consider a very important thing: that the strongest ancestors of this area are in the rural world. They are no longer apolitical, but that is where the most important core of xenophobia lives. Catalanism already has a xenophobic induction.

– Do you see Ines Arrimadas as president of the Generalitat?

-I’d be glad.

– Will you vote on December 21?

-Yes, I have always done it, and I will vote for Ciudadanos. There have been things that I have not liked, such as considering the Popular Party the biggest enemy, a big mistake that has cost them dearly. Or you don’t want to confuse it with the right, when in Spain there is no right because the PP is a social democratic party.

Ciudadanos rectified its attitude and, without a doubt, is the best today in Catalonia. The PP has not given one in Catalonia since Vidal Cuadras, a man who had a relevant political sense. Then he went from bad to worse.

– Have you lacked the ability to seduce?

-There has not been any idea of ​​renewal that could seduce those who could vote. The PP has wanted to make a policy of looking good with the nationalists and it has meant the worst.

– What do you think of the campaign of Manuel Valls and Vargas Llosa for the citizens?

-It seems to me to be something quite coherent on the part of both of them. Valls is a man with knowledge of the subject, coherence and knows what he says, and Vargas Llosa, what can we say about his liberal disposition.

-Do you fear sovereignty or equidistance more?

-I’m afraid of the “small tip.” Plus, I hate them. When I see lceta play the way she is doing, it truly disgusts me. Those who are in the middle of all this make the speech that you have to be good, that reconciliation is necessary… yes, of course, but what is really necessary is to be clear about where the truth is and where the lies are. May we never forget that. Of course, a reconciliation swallowing lies, no, never. I know what foot Junqueras and Puigdemont are on, I know their game. They have cheated for years, but now they have taken off the masks. The others don’t know where they are going to put it. In his words you always have to read between the lines.

-Let’s imagine for a moment that Puigdemont was elected president but that he did not return to Spain so as not to end up in jail. Would it be more of a farce than a tragedy?

-I honestly don’t think it’s enough for one or the other. For both you have to have a strong charisma, and in your case there is none. I’m afraid he would go to Roussillon and make a strange representation of the time of the dictatorship, when Tarradellas was in exile. Although between Tarradellas and Puigdemont there are millions of homosapiens evolutions.

– How would you go to Catalonia with another “menage a trois” on the left?

– The tripartite has been a very bad experience. A part of what we suffer today comes from the tripartite of Maragall, Esquerra and then Montilla. The tripartites mounted on the left seem very dangerous to me. If only we collaborate on a constitutional version, it could be better than what we have seen so far, but only under that principle of collaboration.

-Do you think that a large part of the Catalan people who were in a state of lethargy have woken up?

-Un pequeño sÃí. Han visto que su libertad estaba en riesgo y que los acontecimientos tomaron un cariz un poco venezolano. De vez en cuando hay que darles un pequeño electroshock. El ataque más importante del separatismo es la libertad. La gente olvida con demasiada facilidad que lo que se supone lejos, incluso fí­sicamente, acaba tocándote.

-Nunca como antes, y no para un partido de fútbol de la Selección Española, se han desplegado tantas banderas.

– Me recordó a tiempos muy lejanos al franquismo. Cuando Franco estaba de visita, se desplegaban en los balcones, se colgaban de los farolillos, los niños saludaban. Y lo más parecido a Franco es el nacionalismo.

-Lo de resucitar a Franco es cíclico, ¿no crees?

-La izquierda tiene todo el interés del mundo en ese “revival” de Franco. Ha jugado tortuosamente con eso y con el tema de la memoria histórica cuando el impulso natural de los españoles era precisamente el contrario, alejarse de ella. Zapatero estaba casi conseguido y venía con el tema de la memoria histórica, que es un gran comodí­n y que, además, a los cuales les parece doblemente fantástico porque piensan que no tienen nada que ver con Franco, ya que los malos son del Ebro. abajo. Uno de los juegos del nacionalismo es decir que en Cataluña no hubo franquistas. Cambó, por ejemplo, pagó la rebelión de los rebeldes; Mateu, el Castillo de Peralada, puso dinero para la revuelta franquista . Es un engaño de manipulación insostenible.

-Las flatulencias de Josep Rull, ¿son un atentado a los derechos humanos o una metáfora del proceso?

-Es una demagogia aceptable la de quien juega con eso, quien define las prisiones españolas como terribles y terroríficas. Se esperaba tal declaración y tenemos que estar vacunados contra eso. Los nacionalistas no dicen una verdad ni por ningún medio.

-¿La Constitución es para cumplirla o para cambiarla?

-En principio, para que cumplamos. Veo malas intenciones en la izquierda intentando encajar Cataluña y el Paí­s Vasco porque es hacer concesiones.

¿Ha habido un golpe de Estado y luego se hacen concesiones? Es una vergúenza para los demás. Tenemos que repensar el control sobre ciertas ideologí­as montadas exclusivamente para cargar la Constitución Española y el propio territorio. Y luego está la historia de los “hechos diferenciales” que esgrimen, que es una tomadura de pelo más y que da pavor a los que destrozan. A veces España parece un poco masoquista.

– ¿El mundo de la empresa ha tardado demasiado en reaccionar ante el secesionismo?

– The flight of companies has been a general scare for the separatists because they did not imagine it. It has been positive, although I am surprised that the large financial institutions have waited so long. He would have fired his advisors. Didn’t you see it four or five years ago? They have reacted at the last moment.

-And has the world of culture gone down the same path?

-He spoke late and in the minority. 90% are for nationalism and in my union, in general, one hundred percent. It is logical, because they depend on subsidies, public aid and bread mobilizes them . The world of culture is nationalist. I welcome Serrat to the dissidents’ club, he had not heard him talk about this before. In 2006, when they boycotted Els Joglars, not a single voice was raised.

– More disenchanted than worried?

-In 2006 I stopped speaking in the Catalan media and I also stopped representing my works in Catalonia. I radically cut off from Catalan society. With everything. My schedule there was reduced to five or six people. The thing is that I worry as a Spaniard; As a Catalan I have stopped having that feeling. The best of Catalonia, I say, is my wife, the best I could drink. I have very few adhesions on this earth. Whatever happens on 21-D we will see it objectively.

– What if one day Catalonia becomes independent?

– If it happens, and it is not science fiction, I already said it, it means that I would never return, among other things, for my personal safety.