If former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont had truly sought independence for Catalonia, he might have been taken more seriously. But this belated turning against the EU tends to underline both his current irrelevance as well as his earlier failure to understand the basic European political realities.
Deposed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has branded the EU a ‘club of decadent countries’ and said a British-style ‘Catexit’ might be the solution. The pro-independence politician attacked the organisation as outdated in an interview for Israeli TV after his failed attempts to get European backing for his cause from his hideaway in Brussels.
He claimed the EU was a ‘club of decadent and obsolescent countries controlled by a small few and closely linked to increasingly debatable economic interests.’
Arguing Catalonia should turn the tables on EU chiefs who have warned there would be in place in Europe for the region if it breaks away from the rest of Spain, he added ‘They’re constantly telling us we’re going to be left out of the European Union but the ones who should take that decision are the citizens of Catalonia. Lets see what the people of Catalonia say. Perhaps there are not many people who want to form part of this EU…so insensitive to the abuse of human rights, of the democratic right of a part of its territory only because a post-Franco right wants it to be that way.’
The leftist Puigdemont made the same mistake that many in the American Fake Right do. You cannot be both pro-nationalist and pan-European. Europe is not a race, Europe is not a people, and Europe is not a nation. It is a continent.
Pan-Europeanism is, like American civic nationalism, a form of Globalism Lite. No true nationalist can support either. And pan-Europeanism will not succeed any more than the repeated attempts at pan-Arabism or pan-Africanism has.
As I have previously stated on many occasions, the fundamental political divide is now nationalism vs globalism. And the latter comes in many flavors, more than a few of which are cloaked in false forms of fake nationalism.