It is the same Spain where each autonomy manages the pandemic according to its procedure but then the consequences are shared. It is of little use to the Valencian Community to have the lowest incidence of infections in Europe because then most countries make decisions about Spain as a whole. It is the inheritance (I was going to say ballast, but reality does not weigh, it is what it is and must be faced) of the Europe of nation states. The Europe of the regions remains impressive in the speeches, but it is ornament and little else. Not even the Committee of the Regions is a binding body. Their reports are of little value to the Commission or the Council. It counts the Europe of the states. It is the unspoken message that the ambassador of Great Britain came to transmit this week to the Valencian president, Ximo Puig. That the Valencian data is very good, but that the United Kingdom does not make territorial distinctions. This position currently harms areas such as Valencia, since Boris Johnson keeps Spain in purgatory, which implies obstacles for travel: ten days of isolation and two PCR tests on return paid by travelers. A deterrent tool that shows that what is done in Madrid or the Basque Country influences the C. Valenciana or Andalusia and that it reflects the clash of an autonomous reality with the Europe of nations.
And a third fact, which may seem frivolous, but something says: the Spain of football intends to appear at the European Championship without Real Madrid representatives in an unprecedented decision and with a Manchester team as the main supplier of football raw material. It is an everyday gesture, no more, but it says something about the increasingly European and ultra-Spanish reality.
The historian Álvarez Junco affirmed a few days ago (El País) that the Spanish left needs a discourse clearly anchored in parliamentary democracy and the free market to represent the idea of progress without fear today. And he said that he also needs a federal advance to neutralize tensions. This is the case, but a twist to the decorative Europe of the regions is also necessary, because, as the reconstruction funds show, the party is played less in the nation states, although they exercise a mediating role that, if it does not evolve, it will not take long to be seen as an obstacle to economic progress. Despite the fears that Catalonia may represent. An idea of Spain and Europe in the plural is a more intelligent solution than the repression of populist and unilateralist impulses.
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