Puigdemont plans to go ahead with a new referendum on independence by September despite a ruling by Spain's Constitutional Court banning the vote. Manu Fernandez /Press Association. All rights reserved. It can sometimes be sensible to revisit oneself. Especially in this ever-changing and ever-deceiving world of ours. Just to remind ourselves, and our readers, that we are all fallible and, at times, carried away by hopes or fears.
This was the case when, ten years ago, I wrote a piece on Ukraine's first free elections after the Orange revolution which overthrew the pro-Moscow oligarchy (see “Ukraine's inspiring boredom”, openDemocracy April 3, 2006). There was then so much hope in Ukraine, and elsewhere, that a newly peaceful and democratic world was within reach, a hope too soon betrayed by the bickering ambitions of mediocre politicians. Their movement collapsed soon enough into a new authoritarianism, followed by another “Revolution”, a new but also corrupt batch of mediocre politicians and ongoing attempts by Putin's Russia to dismember its neighbor who was less than vigorously defended by European and American friends alike.
It might be the same with the parallel I drew two years ago between the surge of Scottish and Catalan independence movements – the term ‘independence’ preferred by many Catalans who avoid using ‘nationalism’ with its, too often negative, if not polemical, connotation -, (see “Catalonia vs. Spain, a clash of two nationalisms”, openDemocracy August 14, 2014). If the future of Scotland finds itself partly tethered to the confused Brexit process – many people are watching this situation far closer than I – the fate of Catalonia and its relations with the rest of Spain have descended into much more confusion than it looked then, when optimism and passion were ferrying hundreds of thousands if not millions of enthusiastic citizens to the streets.
