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<\/p>\nWhen we talk about Catalonia\/Spain there are always a series of codes that have been learnt rather than shared. And symbols that are no longer codes. Symbols: one of the reasons that everything has come to a standstill, with no future. For politics in Spain and Catalonia is \u201cexercised\u201d at a symbolic level. With Jordi Pujol climbing a mountain and calling elections, from the summit. Empty electoral slogans and the PP winning the elections, without even presenting an electoral program. By moving on a symbolic level there is no option for it to correspond with the practical. And the symbolic stems from the definition of the national identity of Catalonia, as much as of Spain. The creation of an identity in which art (in both cases) played a limited role, if we compare it with other European countries that made similar moves at the same time. France reinvents itself through culture, art having at this time a primordial position, in content as much as in its containers. The English are more interested in history, managing to make \u201ctheir\u201d culture go from Shakespeare to technology. Germany creates its own monster with thought and Finland gave a few artists carte blanche to invent an identity and grant them an image.<\/p>\n
The current Catalan identity is \u201ccreated\u201d through poetry. The recovery of Verdaguer, as the one who lays the foundations, with Carles Riba precision and the longing for a historic past, J.V. Foix links into the modern, with the recognition of place and Josep Carner with the accepted everyday. And here we have it: a country that desires an ordered history, wanting modernity, buses and people. If you need a bit of \u201crauxa” (rage, drive, visceral, enthusiasm,) you will also find it, be it amidst the interstices of the aforementioned poets or in others who serve to introduce touches of sensuality, albeit without ever going too far. Joan Salvat-Papasseit is also a useful card in all games, Gabriel Ferrater in some. If the definition of Catalan identity is to be found in poetry \u2013something that on the other hand is really quite nice\u2013 it is logical that we are on a symbolic level, where nothing is at seems and everything is interpretable. But that\u2019s poetry for you.<\/p>\n
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In Catalonia, a look at history, -in terms of identity- stems as much from the noucentisme (the recuperation of classicism) as from modernisme (and its very German Wagnerism), always more as a desire than as a plan, always bordering on the mythical. The planning of an institutional past and future is left to secondary hands. Joaquim Folch i Torres, for example, constructing the future MNAC (Museu Nacional d\u2019Art Catalunya) but endeavouring that nobody found out about the process. Figures who aren\u2019t recuperated, as there\u2019s no interest in the ins and outs of management seeing the light of day, when in other places they would be revered authors and would serve to explain the actual history.<\/p>\n
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Betwixt the symbolic definition of identity and the use of history, art was little more than artists as individuals. Not a sequence, nor a continuum, or even a cartography. If there are little groups it\u2019s so they can be separated from each other. Catalonia doesn\u2019t want to write a history of its art, and even less a history of contemporary art, as it doesn\u2019t know what \u201cCatalan art\u201d is, nor does it want to. Better to have a series of individual names that can be moved around, every now and again, but without weaving a journey, a genealogy or a debate. The question of ancestry considerably limits the writing of a history that refuses to be written. The example of Picasso is an interesting one: he can be or not, at one and the same time, an artist of Catalan art. But he isn\u2019t Catalan. Though he could be, as his presence in the city was important and his connections with the Catalan and Catalan nationalist cultural scene wide ranging. But there\u2019s something not quite right about placing Picasso within a history of contemporary, Catalan art, so it\u2019s better just to turn the page and not write that chapter. Or that history. He wasn\u2019t really one of us. Mir\u00f3 yes, Torres Garc\u00eda yes, even though he didn\u2019t want to be, Dal\u00ed yes, but it\u2019s better not to touch on Dal\u00ed… \u00bfhow does one construct a genealogy when so much time has been dedicated to separating them into as distant points as possible, taking artists to the most remote layer of social reality and converting them into trading cards with which it\u2019s easy to play? The same with T\u00e0pies.<\/p>\n
The texts, and the ideas, of these artists didn\u2019t circulate they had no impact. It\u2019s not that they didn\u2019t write (some of them did very well) so much as over time there\u2019s been no interest in a dialogue. Teachers don\u2019t touch them, leaving them on their altar, celebrating them in their death, manhandling their cadavers. And, in parallel, the capacity, to weave an institutional fabric to establish whatever they wanted to establish, is forgotten. The Museu d\u2019Hist\u00f2ria de Catalunya is an example of a late museum that no one believes in, not even its very founders. A museum thought up, in 1996, long after the construction of the Catalan identity, with the objective “to conserve, exhibit and raise awareness of the history of Catalonia as our joint heritage and to strengthen citizens\u2019 sense of identification with the nation\u2019s history\u201d (Decree 47\/1996, 6 February). Identification isn\u2019t sought in art, history is nothing more than the previous generation (with a bit of luck) so best to leave the national history be, as we\u2019re not going to get stuck in that quagmire.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s think for a moment about Euskadi (the Basque country), this mirror. The genealogy, though in permanent discussion, is something that is accepted. A few referent artists, a generation that follows and afterwards another who respond to the second and the constant ideological recuperation of the first. With no reservations. With Basque artists in the 90s enjoying New York, thanks to an institutional belief that it made sense to be there, working with the international, and, what a surprise, with the symbolic. Without needing to reinvent themselves each generation, with embarrassment, so much as assuming what there is and working with it.<\/p>\n
If the creation of the modern Catalan identity implies maintaining the status quo on a symbolic level, the Spanish identity is somewhat more chaotic. To start with, there is always the eternal doubt between unity and plurality. Right from the beginning and still today. With the army right in the middle (the Spanish flag was defined in 1785 as a naval tool), with the direct contact betwixt a costumbrista literature and a conservative idea of Spain, any attempts at modernity were totally suffocated with violence, with the use and abuse of El Quijote, with a colonial past that has glorified the crown, until now in post-colonialism the subject is hidden however possible, with constant \u2013and contradictory- revisions of history, in school textbooks as much as those of universities, with alternative concepts such as “el Estado integral”, “Una, grande y libre”, “Caf\u00e9 para todos”, “la furia”, “la Roja”1 and all the other linguistic endeavours aimed at avoiding a problem that resists knowing what it is. Without forgetting the power of names like Vel\u00e1zquez, Goya or Zurbar\u00e1n, that are used to maintain the idea of highbrow culture as something to be nationally proud of. And, paradoxically, amidst these chaotic comings and goings, a series of state institutions are defined that still remain. The academies, the Museo del Prado, as well as the centrality of the capital -Madrid- that becomes a place where major ventures are undertaken, be it liberal positions of the left or totally fascist ones. The State, as an apparatus, becomes Madrid and Barcelona becomes Catalonia.<\/p>\n
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The Catalan institutions are born without Spanish might (the Institut d\u2019Estudis Catalans, to give just one example, could be the equivalent of the academies, but its visibility and capacity for action is far more limited) and in Barcelona the construction of stable structures is left in the hands of the industrialists. Literature will be the publishers, drama in the theatres. And art? Art, without an industry, won\u2019t have a museum in conditions and the opportunity to be another Paris will be lost. Even though the times have always been convulsive: the inauguration of the Museu d\u2019Art de Catalunya was foreseen for the 7 October 1934. It couldn\u2019t develop in the way it was hoped: the day before, Lluis Companys proclaimed the independence of Catalonia and the Spanish army occupied the institutions so the museum was opened under guard. A veritable party.<\/p>\n
The Franco dictatorship annihilated all possibility of realizing an institutional labour for the future of Catalonia, and under Franco, the endeavour was to hide all the artistic material possible so that, at least, it wouldn\u2019t be lost. However, something was destroyed, something like the belief and confidence in an institutional fabric, like the capacity for planned action. The creation of a symbolic identity passed to become the almost religious and secret maintenance of it. The codes ended up being hidden, silences places to be shared. The body riddled with fear.<\/p>\n
Distrust and fear are the point of departure for everything that has happened in the peninsula from 1934 until now. The symbolic will leap to occupy meaning in the popular and identity will be emphasised -in Catalonia- through Bar\u00e7a, Els Pastorets and, later on, the appearance of TV3 and Catalunya R\u00e0dio. In Spain the new identitarian populism will constantly remember, ad infinitum, the role of the king in 23F, the members of Real Madrid will wave Spanish flags as if they were their own, there will be a constant focus on external enemies and the \u201cCatalan problem\u201d will be debated passionately.<\/p>\n
Adding to the symbolic discussion, the never-ending process of defining and establishing museums and artistic institutions in Catalonia will end up tiring and separating the artistic and cultural fabric of the institutions themselves, which, once open to the public, have a hard time becoming referents. But in the process of the opening up and institutional definition of the territory something happened: the associative tradition of Catalonia (a method of maintaining a sector “in contra”) amiably allowed a weak structure to arise, wanting to believe that everything now functioned, though nobody abandoned the symbolic terminology: museums open so that they form part of the symbol, not just to be. Afterwards, the politics and ideology of identity will be occupied by neo-liberal positions, with which the dismantling will be served. If Malraux constructed an institutional network in France, the Conseller de Cultura of the Generalitat, Ferran Mascarell will pass into history as someone who closes Catalonia, though it\u2019s not all his responsibility. History and its simplifications.<\/p>\n
The current crisis, on the other hand, is leading the control of capital into fewer hands. Hands that, in the case of art, clearly wager on a market that is in Madrid, not Barcelona. A market, that is not of the first order but when all\u2019s said and done is a market. If we add the potential of the state tools, that continue to be in Madrid and not in Barcelona, it\u2019s understood that the dismantling of a public cultural structure in Catalonia (of the Generalitat and other Catalan organs) involves leaping from an oasis to the desert.<\/p>\n
Possibilities always exist. Options, capacity for action. If during the avant-garde there are great moments in Catalonia, if anarchism had been something that at some point someone had known how to take advantage of rather than being this irritation that is hidden away. If under something as terrible as the dictatorship it didn\u2019t disappear, if the art institutions (as well as the self-organisation of the scene) have been models for the State \u2013and beyond- in a few specific moments, if there are endless names of artists who could serve to compose a credible genealogy and if globalization makes it possible to recognise ways of doing things that are applicable for local improvement, then it seems even logical to overcome the mental depression that an economic and ideological crisis like the current one supposes. Without forgetting that the \u201clittle people\u2019s\u201d capacity for action is, sometimes, much more effective than that of the bigwigs. One example (recuperating a sideways glance at the Basque country): the Institut Ramon Llull could be a much more effective entity for internationalization than the institutional injustice generated by the Spanish state which nobody really knows how it functions. But, once again, the tradition of maintaining objectives (however confused they might be) and state structures in Madrid counters the contemporary institutional fragility of Barcelona. There can be changes in Madrid, but in Barcelona the changes have already arrived and there\u2019s been no time to negotiate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we talk about Catalonia\/Spain there are always a series of codes that have been learnt rather than shared. And symbols that are no longer codes. Symbols: one of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1238,"featured_media":22746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5919],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6375],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n