Hi! This is Weekly Review #41,
and there's a small but very important detail that changed... about me. Guess what!
Ok. Opening theme!
I'll start with the situation in Catalonia.
I'm not going to tell you that this is a simple issue when,
within a state composed of large autonomous communities,
an autonomous government decides to initiate a referendum on independence.
This procedure is not easy to accept because of the rules of the game,
and the rules of the game do not make the organization of this of kind referendum possible.
As a consequence, I am not about to approve of or condemn the decisions of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
But we the French are directly concerned about what is happening at our border.
And when Spain is concerned,
the French know that not worrying about what's happening there can be a real problem for them.
No, we cannot consider that what is going on beyond the Pyrenees is not of our business.
For instance, our refusal to intervene in favor of the republican government of Spain
during General Franco's coup cost us dearly afterwards.
The Popular Front government made a major historical mistake.
We should have helped the republican government.
Of course, the current situation is completely different,
I want to stress that fact because otherwise, I will be the subject of endlesstrials about my use of history.
History provides us with material for thinking.
And...
It helps us to avoid repeating mistakes.
There's one mistake we should not make: we should not believe that this is not of our business!
So we should get involved!
But how should we do it? That is the question.
Because Spain is our neighbor although we are not the same country.
That's a fact.
Mariano Rajoy's government—a right-wing government—
that only exists because of the abstention of the PSOE, their Socialist Party...
This is the only reason why Rajoy's goverment exists!
This governments is overwhelmed with corruption affairs, with cans of worms of all sorts...
And it let the situation in Catalonia develop so much that it is now irreversible,
and it ended up using harsh and violent methods that shocked everyone.
We can say that he made things worse with these kinds of method.
And so... We are facing this situation.
This government is incapable of facing a situation that —I must admit—can be considered to be very serious
when a part of the nation organizes a referendum on independence. It's not just any vote!
So, Spain is a monarchy,
and the monarchy's raison d'être is to be able to predominate over, as it were,
the variety of the peoples that make Spain, and to federate them.
And so, when I asked a question to Edouard Philippe, the Prime Minister, the other day in the National Assembly,
I said that this situation was a total political stalemate,
because the Spanish government was unable to deal with it.
We can't call this dealing with a situation: the situation is such that no one can see a way out.
And I added that the monarchy had failed in the unifying mission it inherited from Francoism.
I believe that everyone on the benches of this Assembly is shocked by this political stalemate.
The monarchy seems incapable of taking responsibility for the unifying function it inherited from Francoism.
And as usual, that's the way it always happens,
instead of answering my question —I suggested that France offer mediation—
he gave us a moving speech,
in which he explained to us that he was ten when the King, the former King, Juan Carlos,
intervened to stop Lieutenant Colonel Tejero's coup,
when he took the Assembly hostage.
Mister President Mélenchon, in 1981, I was ten,
in the month of February,
when the Spanish nation was the victim of an attempted coup.
I was a little boy.
I perfectly remember, and I think you remember too,
the monarchy's exemplary attitude concerning the return to the democratic order,
concerning the guarantee of a return to that democratic order,
And I think that all of us republicans remember that in 1981,
we remember well Juan Carlos's exemplary attitude.
Since he was ten, we are supposed to consider this a moving speech,
and since the King intervened, we are supposed to approve of the monarchy.
Curious isn't it?
Because we're French: in theory, we're not really into the Bourbons, but anyway,
Edouard Philippe is, and he felt the need to give me this answer, "King Juan Carlos did...".
That's not the issue! The issue is the current situation.
But too bad for him, Felipe Bourbon made an announcement on the evening of the same day
and instead of unfying the nation, he approved of Rajoy's government,
and criticized the Catalans for their unacceptable disloyalty, as he said.
Instead of giving a speech that enabled the country to overcome the deadlock,
he gave a speech that worsened the institutional stalemate.
As a consequence, I really liked the way my young comrade Alberto Garzón,
who is the secretary of the Spanish Communist Party,
answered him, calling him Felipe Bourbon
and ending his speech saying "long live the Republic!".
I guess this is not a surprise for you, but I have always been a supporter of the Republic in Spain,
I said it in a speech on a square in Toulouse in 2012,
and you can see that I'm wearing a flag of the Spanish Republic,
because I did not forget that we the republicans were only defeated because of a coup. OK?
The Spaniards did not bring a Bourbon to power, nor did the republicans,
General Franco did!
Now how could we deal with this situation?
First, we get involved.
We can and we must, in my opinion, offer mediation, since apparently no one is capable of doing it.
Neither the Prime Minister, who solves problems with police bats,
nor the Bourbon of Spain could do it,
he who immediately took a stand in favor of the repression and the deadlock in Spain.
I agree with what my friend Pablo Iglesias from Podemos said and did.
He organized meetings,
and he said they should open a constituent path.
I think that...
the only positive political way out for Spain is a constituent process.
I strongly believe that.
I mean, first of all, we must refuse using violence.
And, as hard as it might be,
there must be discussions about the organization of the Spanish state.
The history that led to this situation is a long one,
and the French have a responsibility in this history.
Many other countries in Europe completed their process of national integration,
it took a long time for countries like Italy, in 1860,
or like Germany, who went to war with us in 1870.
Spain never managed to complete a harmonious process of national integration,
To me, France has a responsibility in this situation,
because, when countries were builiding their national consciousness,
they were doing it in the period that surrounds the French Revolution
and the intervention of the French armies pretty much everywhere on the continent,
since we invaded pretty much everyone!
But the invasion of Spain had very serious political consequences
because the intervention of France, who imposed a King on Spain,
Joseph Bonaparte, Napoléon Bonaparte's brother,
turned everything upside down and blocked everything,
meaning that all the progressive currents, and nationalisms at the time were progressive,
since nationalisms at the time were always built in opposition to the King,
well they were all stopped and paralyzed.
And so, the Spanish nation then groped its way to find a method to make populations coexist,
populations that describe themselves as peoples with distinct languages, histories and interests.
This can be shocking to us the French, because we see the nation as a united state,
but we must start from reality.
We must remember that, to take examples from the Hispanic world,
as all the countries of Latin America built their independence from Spain,
their watchwords were those of the great French Revolution,
i.e. the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the nation as it was defined by our revolution.
But all these nations are federal states, all of them!
And they became federal states after heated debates.
Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina are federal states.
Brazil is also a federal state.
In short, the biggest states of the continent are federal states,
and they maintained their unity, I'm not calling the unity of the states I just mentioned into question.
This is why we should look with favor on Podemos's proposition of a constituent path,
and we should see it as a pacific and positive way out.
I don't really know why they used such an expression...
but let us use it as such.
We the French must admit that we could face the issue of a constituent process.
We supported this idea at La France Insoumise
in order to put an end to the presidential monarchy of the Fifth Republic.
Honestly, I feel like most of our citizens do not realize the situation we're in.
French Polynesia's current status is closer to that of an associated state
than to the status of a department or of a regular oversea territory.
Similarly,
the government of New Caledonia, that is about to organize a referendum on independence,
has a special and peculiar status.
Moreover, in the future, if New Caledonia chose independence,
it could become an associated state to the French Republic, or a federated state.
I'm telling you about this because we'll have to make a choice about these situations.
Everyone knows my Jacobinic feelings,
but I never thought the nation was a straitjacket.
By definition, the nation is a free act of belonging.
The problem is the same in Corsica, we cannot shun this situation.
3 out of the 4 deputies of Corsica are separatists.
So?
We cannot address such a situation by telling ourselves "Let's wait, they'll change their mind!",
because they won't!
As a consequence, we must think.
Before we close this subject,
I'd like to show you that it's worth listening to the propositions of La France Insoumise.
During the presidential campaign,
I mentioned the possibility of a security conference about borders in Europe.
I even suggested a framework that already exists,
the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
And some people said "You want to change borders, but they're intangible!"
All the narrow-minded people that were available at the time barked "Borders are intangible!" in unison.
Yes of course, the intangibility of borders is the basis of the international order.
It's obvious!
But borders never stopped moving in Europe.
Not so long ago, the border between East and West Germany disappeared.
Not so long ago, a border was created between the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Not so long ago, new borders have divided a federal state, Yugoslavia, into 7 different countries.
And today, the Scots would like to abolish the border with Europe that has been restored after Brexit,
and they think about their independence.
Similarly, the border between the North and the South of Ireland
had disappeared when they both joined the European Union, but Brexit restored it.
Other borders are or could be at stake in a more or less distant future.
Everyone knows that Flemish separatism is breaking up Belgium, another kingdom.
We clearly see how the Flemish want to undermine the Belgian state.
Once again, it is happening at our border, and we must have an opinion about it.
I want to repeat it,
we had better have a framework and a place to discuss the issue of borders pacifically rather than by force.
Now if the issue of borders arises in Catalonia,
and obviously it does with the issue of the autonomy of the Generalitat de Catalunya, in Barcelona...
If this issue arises, we will not settle it by force,
because other people already tried to do that. Francoism did.
Maybe he thought he had solved the problem, but as you can see, it reappeared.
Consequently, we had better have a place where we can discuss the issue of borders
in order to settle disputes pacifically when they come out.
This was all I had to say on the subject.
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