A deep debate almost forgotten
Jordi Pujol
Editorial / June 23, 2005
In Spain, and also in Europe, there is a deep debate almost forgotten, or with little public, but with very important projection. A debate firstly intellectual and doctrinal, but finally very political, very practical. It is a debate that as has not evolved rightly for Catalonia. Is the debate about individual and collective rights.
As if in the article 29 of the Universal Statement of the Rights of the
Man it was not said “only inside the community is possible to evolve a
free and full personality”. And a few days ago in the discussion of
the project of Estatut of Catalonia, the socialist representative said
well clearly, in answer to an allusion to the collective rights of
other speakers, that to there is not collective rights, that only there
are the individual. It makes justice to say that there is a fat trap
in this argument. The people that says it –they proclaim themselves
of right or of left- they have for sure their collective identity. And
they do not renounce at all.
We cannot discuss only in political terms. It is necessary to do it also in the doctrine way, that in fact influences sooner or later the political decisions. For example: by some the refusal of the collective rights serves to deny the publication of the fiscal scales. They say: “there is not a fiscal scale of the Catalonian community. Because there is not a subject of right –neither in the fiscal aspect –Catalonian, that is to say, of Catalonia-. There is only a subject of right, also fiscal, individual, of each citizen individually”. And the second part of the argument is “and all the citizens are exactly equal in their individual dimension, and this is only what really has to be taken in consideration.” The development of the territory, the performance of a cultural, social or economic collective objective, the cultivation of the own identity, all this –that is common- does not count or counts very little.
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