The Pain of No Longer Being

In my youth I spent four years living in Brazil. My roommate at the time was a Catalan named Xavier Ruaix Duran — a redhead with manners so impeccable he became, to me, the very definition of respect, courtesy, and the ability to integrate into a culture utterly unlike one’s own. He would tell me stories of his childhood and adolescence in Mataró and his visits to a radiant Barcelona — tales that sounded to me like portals into another world, filling my imagination with images of serene, marvellous places.

Today, many years later, when I look at Catalonia, I see and feel that something profound has happened — something that has changed everything since those heady days. One need not dig deep into remote history; the most consequential shifts have occurred quite recently.

I am honoured by my friendship with Toni Puig, one of the architects of the most splendid Barcelona in recent history: the Barcelona of ’92. Toni, for whom I have deep mutual admiration, made enormous efforts and delivered impeccable work on behalf of the Catalans and Catalonia’s image in the world. He helped position the region geopolitically as an integral part of Spain, and he did so with exceptional quality. He was not alone, of course, but he is the one I know and appreciate. It was a collective effort by the Catalan people — and there lies the key.

Toni himself told me how overwhelming the number of volunteers was for the Olympic Games. They had more people than they knew what to do with. Thousands of young Catalans were willing to work united for their land, to do things right for their beloved Catalonia, devoid of political colours. In the end, Freddie Mercury’s final, great shout of glorysoared over Barcelona.

But then everything changed. They believed themselves superior, indestructible, impregnable — as if their uniqueness entitled them to exceptionality. And by voting poorly, again and again, they destroyed the Catalonia that was and that today is no longer.

The spectacle we now witness is desolate — not only in terms of political analysis but in the lived reality of ordinary citizens, those neither at the extremes nor adherents of radical methods, yet who still suffer the consequences. The tourism that once enriched the region — and that many Catalans now publicly decry — will soon disappear, not because of absurd anti-tourist campaigns but because insecurity has reached a point where walking down the street without fear of attack has become dangerous.

How did we go from that proud opening of the Olympic Games that filled not just Catalonia but all of Spain with pride to today’s grim reality?

Catalonia’s woes are not primarily the result of capital flight or corporate exodus, nor solely the uncontrolled rise in street crime fueled by illegal immigration manipulated by interests close to local authorities. They are not because Catalonia once sought its own military force or control of borders. They are not because of fiscal demands, labour discrimination against non-Catalan speakers, or corruption scandals. These factors describe the reality, but they do not explain it.

The true cause, Souto argues, is electoral: Catalans, experts in many things, simply made the wrong choices at the ballot box repeatedly over the past three decades. Such decisions, he warns, are not contained within Catalonia’s borders; they threaten to unleash a widespread crisis across all of Spain, with Barcelona at its epicentre — once one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

Einstein reminded us that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Catalonia has, in effect, embraced that insanity. Cicero noted, “Arrogance is a legitimate daughter of ignorance.” The arrogance of those who assumed themselves above Spain has been their undoing. And Orwell, chillingly, observed that “the quickest way to destroy a society is to allow it to destroy itself from within.”