Last Wednesday, the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, participated in a colloquium organized at the University of Groningen (Holland), with a pro-independence approach, in which he was treated as "president" (as if he were active), all the rugged issues were avoided and full-color images were projected about the independence movement and in black and white images about the harshest reactions of the Spanish government.
Throughout his speech the former secessionist leader left some of his usual incongruous phrases such as "I was one of the protagonists of a rebellion we did not commit", and stated that "the court refuses to call me as a witness when I would answer all the questions" , obviating that the court has accepted to call him, but to the bench of the defendants, that's the role that corresponds to him.
However, one of the most relevant and significant phrases of the night was the one that the former president ruled when he stated that "No one would end up in jail for organizing a referendum for the independence of Barcelona, or Tarragona, in the framework of a Independent Catalonia. Each society has that right. Nothing is forever and each generation will do what they want."
Surely that phrase will have raised blisters among its own party, since the Catalan nationalist movement is naturally armored in its territorial cohesion and expansionist in its aspirations (they have always denied the aspirations of the Aran Valley to leave Catalonia and refuse to accept Tabarnia (the union of Barcelona and Tarragona) as a reality that may exist outside of Catalonia, while claiming to annex Valencia, the Balearic Islands, part of Aragon and the south of France to its "Catalan Countries".
The funny thing is that the claims from Tabarnia and the Aran Valley don't seek to create new borders, but simply to stay in Spain and Europe, and only separate from Catalonia in case that secessionism expel them from Spain and Europe, for what they want to to become new, different Spanish regions, but at any time they have used concepts such as "self-determination" or "own state". And the most interesting thing is that their aspirations are framed in the Spanish constitution and could be carried out.
However, this phrase of Puigdemont has already revealed one of the greatest contradictions of all nationalisms. Within each territory susceptible to ask for a state of its own, there are also other territories capable of finding their own differences and also request the lifting of new frontiers.
