Banking on nationalism

Harry Eyres

Barcelona

Two months ago the centre-right, nationalist coalition Convergencia i Unio won an overwhelming victory (with nearly 47 per cent of the votes) in the Catalan autonomous elections, and on 30 May their leader Jordi Pujol was reelected President of the Generalitat. In between, however, a political bomb (so far only metaphorical) dropped on Catalonia: the presentation, exactly a week before Pujol's reelection, by the State Attorney- General of an accusation against 25 former directors of the Banca Catalana including Pujol charging them with embezzlement to the tune of £100 million, and falsification of documents. The explosion has done con- siderable, possibly lasting, damage to the ever frail relations between Barcelona and Madrid. Miguel Roca, leader of the Catalan minority in the Spanish parliament, eminence grise of Convergencia and much- touted potential leader of a new national centre party, accused Felipe Gonzalez of intervening in the Attorney-General's deci- sion and trying to get his revenge on Pujol after the Socialists' poor showing in the autonomous elections. As for Pujol, his reelection turned into a big nationalist demonstration, as tens of thousands of loyal Catalans, some ferried from outlying town in coaches supplied by Convergencia, accompanied their President from the Parliament to the Placa Sant Jaume. There from the balcony of the Generalitat Pujol treated the crowds to his usual brand of hazy rhetoric: 'The action of the Madrid government is an affront to Catalunya .. In future, we will talk about ethnics; they will not have the right ... You can be proud, you have done what you had to do in this historic moment for Catalunya.'

Such blatant stirring up of gut- nationalism could have dangerous conse- quences in the long term, and in the short term it will do little to clarify a horribly complicated legal and financial affair. But

attempts to depoliticise the caso Banca Catalana run into difficulties from the start. The bank, which went bust in 1982

leaving a 'black hole' variously estimated at between £.300 million and £1,300 million, was always, in the eyes at least of its co- founder Jordi Pujol, 'more than a bank'.

Started in the late 1950s in the time of Franco, never a friend of Catalonia, and economic expansion, it was the cornerstone

of Pujol's project to fer pals, fer Catalunya' — to build up a country which

had never had an adequate banking system of its own. If its management was some- what less, or more, than businesslike (lending money to firms more on the basis of Catalanism than viability), that was because it was a patriotic venture bravely undertaken in the teeth of centralist hostili- ty. Or so at least Pujol's supporters (and there are a lot of them — 1,350,000 voted for Convergencia i Unit') the elections) will argue, and no evidence put forward by the Bank of Spain and ratified by the Attorney- General (both centralist and implicitly anti- Catalan) will make them change their minds.

It is partly the timing of the accusation which has made the Pujolistas so indignant. Somehow the fact that it came just before Pujol's triumphant reelection proves to them that it is all a political plot. It could be argued, however, that if the Socialists had wanted to interfere with the matter for political purposes, they would have sprung the accusation before the elections. In fact, they officially decided not to make an elec- tion issue our of Pujol's involvement in the Banca Catalana. Officially, that is — as it turned out, the voluble Vice-President, Alfonso Guerra, could not restrain himself, and in one speech, which he is not being allowed to forget, he compared Pujol to the most notable Spanish financial delinquent of recent times, Jose Maria Ruiz Mateos. That seemed to most people to be going too far; though if you believe the Bank of Spain, Banca Catalana does seem to have had a certain amount in common with Rumasa, in particular, the existence of a Caja B — an underground system into which deposits were illegally channelled by means of fake documents so that they could be rerouted . .. into the directors' pockets, it appears. But comparing the Honorable Pujol (it is a title he seems strongly to iden- tify with) to a scroundrel like Ruiz Mateos is not the best way of assuaging the spirit of Catalan nationalism, always hypersensitive to insults.

If the accusation is politically controver- sial, it is also juridically problematic. The problem is deciding who, if anyone, has the right to try the President of the Generalitat.

Members of the Catalan parliament, unlike those of Madrid, do not enjoy full legal im- munity, but the responsibility for trying

them lies with a body, the Higher Court of Justice of Catalonia, which has not yet been

created. A Transitory Ruling of the Catalan parliament attempts to fill this legal lacuna in the case of members of parliament by temporarily empowering the Territorial Court to try them. As a result, the accusa- tion was initially put before the Territorial Court of Barcelona. By a majority verdict, however, the Barcelona magistrates have decided that they were not competent to make a judgment on the case, for the technical reason that the legal rights of the President of the Generalitat are laid down in a separate clause of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy from that which deals with members of parliament, not covered by the Transitory Ruling. Now the accusation will have to go before the Supreme Court for a decision on who is to take charge of the case, and it is reckoned that this process will take a minimum of six months.

It will not be a comfortable period either for Jordi Pujol or for Felipe Gonzalez. And what will happen when it is finally over and the case is admitted to trial or dismissed is not easy to predict. If Pujol is found guilty, he will face a term of six to twelve years' imprisonment. But even then, the Socialists do not stand to gain a political advantage. Pujol has been in prison before, from 1960-62, for singing the Catalan 'Song of the Flag' in the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona. It didn't exactly harm his reputation. Another prison term, and his status as one of the great Catalan martyrs would be confirmed.

Whatever happens, the historical precedents are not encouraging. Exactly 50 years ago relations between Barcelona and Madrid broke down when the Ley de con- tratos de cultivos passed by the Generalite under the presidency of Companys was an- nulled by the Cortes in Madrid. The result was the revolutionary crisis of October 1934, the bloody prelude to the civil war. 'Spain is the country' — writes Gerald Brenan — 'where history — and how monotonously — repeats itself.' To be fair, Marx did put in a rider: 'the first time as tragedy, the second as farce'.