Raymond Carr on the Basque problem

Trevor @ Wednesday May 25th 2005 13:26

An excerpt from the Q&A session yesterday at the presentation of Raymond Carr’s new monster, El rostro cambiante de Clío:

- Is Spain feasible without the Basque Country and Catalonia?

- In theory yes, in practice no. I don’t understand why the radical nationalists want to be independent members of the European Union. An independent Basque Country would probably be as important in Europe as Luxembourg. The case of Catalonia is somewhat different because the region has a more solid economic base, although it is an error to think that it would be more important as an independent nation. All this is conceivable but, I believe, impossible in practice.

Carr also said that he “shared the fears of the PP” and rejected negotiations with ETA without their first having abandoned violence, something which seems most unlikely at the moment. For all the horse-trading between the IRA and ETA, the analogy customarily drawn between Northern Ireland and the Basque Country by nationalists and the left is false. This is partly because, unlike the IRA, ETA never even got as far as lying about committing itself to constitutional politics. With the Good Friday agreement dead and buried, there’s no reason to expect anything good to come out of whatever Zapatero is up to–unless, of course, you want the PP to win the next elections.

Original
-¿Es posible España sin el País Vasco y sin Cataluña?

-En teoría sí, en la práctica no. No entiendo por qué los nacionalistas radicales quieran ser miembros independientes de la Unión Europea. Un País Vasco independiente seguramente va a tener en Europa el mismo peso de Luxemburgo. El caso de Cataluña es algo diferente, porque la región tiene una base económica más sólida, aunque es un error pensar que vaya a tener más peso como nación independiente. Todo esto es posible de imaginar pero creo que es imposible en la práctica-, insistió.

Raymond Carr dijo que compartía «los temores del PP» sobre la negociación con ETA que ha impulsado José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ya que «para negociar hay que dejar primero las armas», pues en estos casos las palabras no son suficientes, aunque, eso sí, le desea suerte al presidente del Gobierno en «esa pequeña ventana abierta para solucionar uno de los mayores problemas de las últimas décadas en España».


Categories: Les bourgeois

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