Originally published as La catalanitat de las pasteres

The advocates of extreme multiculturalism have helped propagate the mistaken idea that, under conditions of large scale immigration, the defence of cultural heterogeneity is incompatible with the defense of the identity of the community of arrival. This mistake is all the more serious when, as in the case of Catalonia, the nationality receiving the newcomers is itself a minority within a state which does not want to accept the plurality of nations contained within it. As a result, there is an overlapping of identity projects which impedes the assimilation of difference within the sense of solidarity unifying the collective. It is important, therefore, to come to an agreement on what it is we mean by national identity.

I remain unconvinced by theoretical models that posit abstract citizenship, post-national societies or multicultural identities. These pseudo-solutions are normally premature, detached from reality (both past and present) and based in an ethnocentric and elitist intellectualism that makes the a priori assumption of a universal absolute. They set up their own impossible myth of analytical neutrality without, in fact, offering any real solution as regards the assimilation of immigrants within the community of arrival. On the contrary, the rationalistic demagogy of this so-called constitutional theory hides a hierarchy of collective identities which impedes the integration of individuals and communities within a unitary society and single people. In other words it blocks the shift from plurality to unity.

The constitutional theory blocks this shift because it denies the existence of national identities, and especially those that have not transformed themselves into a state. As a result of this initial assumption it then denies that the adoption, by the immigrant, of the norms and identity of the country of arrival is the best way of ensuring the social and material progress - which is what they have come to look for in the first place. What is more, this adoption of norms and identity guarantees them equality of opportunity and the universalisation of democracy and human rights. Nevertheless, the celebration of extreme multiculturalism has led these "vanguards of progress" to adopt as positive the ethnic model which is the general rule in the Anglo-Saxon world and most of the countries of Central Europe. It is, however, quite clear that this is the model for the most unjust and divisive of all possible societies.

To date the Catalans have been faced with two, more or less simultaneous, and potentially lethal, threats to their identity. On the one hand, the Catalan national movement has had to remain permanently alert and active in order to counter the destructive effects of a centralising and homogenising [Spanish] state. On the other hand, economic modernisation and the influx of people with different cultural and linguistic traditions has required a reconstruction of Catalan national identity as a bridge between immigrants and the autochtonous population. Contemporary Catalonia is a is a multi-ethnic synthesis which expresses itself in the maxim 'a Catalan is someone who lives and works in Catalonia and wants to be Catalan.' This approach has led many Spanish speakers to incorporate elements of Catalan symbolism, culture and language into their own existential baggage.

However, for some time now, and especially during the years of the Franco dictatorship, it has been quite clear that the [Spanish] state has attempted to to use immigration as a means of suffocating Catalan identity. That particular attempt failed because the opposition to the regime, and the communists of the PSUC in particular, adopted Catalan identity as a symbol of anti-Francoist democracy and, above all, integration. We have an autonomous government because the majority of immigrants realised that Catalonia is a society with a distinct personality and integrated, making this cause their own, without having to give up anything. The resulting phenomenon has continued to work up until the present and has been summed up by Termes as follows: 'The mere fact of speaking Catalan converts an immigrant into a Catalan regardless of their origin and, I would dare to say, regardless of the colour of their skin. It seems to me that a black person who speaks Catalan is a black Catalan and that the Milans del Bosch come from a Catalan family and were once Catalans but are not any longer.' In sum, assimilation versus desertion.

The big question now facing us is whether the new wave of immigration will incorporate itself within the Catalan identity as did the 'other Catalans', to use Francesc Candel's expression (Els altres catalans, Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1964). And whether or not the Catalans will accept them with the same attitude as before. There are intellectuals and politicians who, now faced with a (religious and culturally) different type of immigration, have abandoned the Catalan civic model and adopted the North American ethnic model. This is worrying because, as I have argued, the effect is to create a society divided by racial cultural and social inequality and segregated into ghettos. In order to create a shared identity the secular nature of our socio-political organisation must be maintained, injustice has to be eliminated, contact has to be stimulated between different social groups and also the learning and use of Catalan must be encouraged.