What does it mean to be Catalan today?

The BBC program “The Travel Show” is this week-end devoted to Catalonia. The main message is that behind the touristic façade, there is a strong cultural identity.

The narrative of the program is simple: four features symbolize the Catalan identity today, the football club FC Barcelona (Barça), the human towers (castells), a food tradition (calçots), and a political desire for Independence.

Reality is more complex and richer than that. I don’t have much to say about castells and calçots except that they are great.

About Barça, I recommend that anyone interested reads the book “Barça” by Simon Kuper, especially the chapter connecting the complex political reality of Catalonia with the history of the club. It is true that there is a connection between Barça and the resistance to Francoism, although some Barça officials (as many members of the Catalan bourgeoisie and upper classes) supported General Franco’s dictatorship.

Not all football fans in Catalonia are Barça fans (I am). And not all Barça fans have the same political preferences. Barça also has many fans in the rest of Spain (and increasingly in the rest of the world).

On the desire for Independence, things are much more complex than the simplistic narrative of the program suggests. Unfortunately, the only local expert and politician to talk in The Travel Show is Rafael Ribó, a controversial politician that as regional ombudsman, failed to prevent or criticize the erosion of institutions that characterized the Independence drive between 2014 and 2017 (the years of the Scottish referendum, the Brexit referendum and the first Trump victory).

Catalonia is much more diverse than suggested in the program. The regional official statistical office (Idescat) has an excellent document called “Catalonia in figures.” It explains that our community has gained 2 million inhabitants in the last 25 years. Its today more than 8 million inhabitants include 18% of foreign people, many children of foreign people, and many people that descend from families born in other Spainsh regions. The most mentioned as “first language” is Spanish, although 80% of the population are at least bilingual (Catalan and Spanish, with an increasing proportion of people knowing English and many people speaking other languages, such as Arabic).

Another official body, the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, in charge of sociological studies, in its last barometer, says that 38% of the population are in favor of Independence, and 54% against. If several options are offered in addition to Independence (such as federalism, or centralism), support for Independence drops to 28%.

It’s not true, as the presenter says in the progam, that on 2017 a majority of Catalans voted in favour of Independence. There was an illegal referendum (organized by the pro-independence parties), where those against Independence largely refused to participate. This kind of referendums are illegal in all developed countries with a written Constitution. Although there was no neutral official body in charge of counting the votes, everybody accepts that participation was less than 50%.

Catalonia is a plural, diverse society. In addition to castells and calçots (and beaches, the Ramblas, Gaudí, Dalí, and many famous authors writing in Spanish such as Cercas, Mendoza or Vila-Matas), we have an open community that shares many of the problems of a developed region or country today.

I believe that a great majority are in favour of a tolerant society that wants to preserve its language (shared with other regions) in the context of an increasingly multilingual, multi-ethnic, and well connected and interdependent community. The most famous Barça players of yesterday and today (Messi, Lamine Yamal) are immigrants or children of immigrants that reflect better the complexity of our society than travel shows on TV.

The program says that Independence today has taken a back seat. This is true.

So, what does it mean to be Catalan today? As the democratically elected current President of the Catalan government, the socialist and federalist Salvador Illa said, a Catalan is anyone that lives here and wants to improve Catalonia.

Business-friendly but economy-unfriendly?

It is true that movements like MAGA or the pro-Brexit have received the support of large parts of the working class population. But they have also been financed and led by very wealthy people who thought that their interests would be protected by these movements that happen to distract majorities from their material concerns.

It is not the first time in history that business interests support movements that disrupt democratic institutions in dangerous ways. In fact, there have been worse cases, as it happened in Nazi Germany. As we know, it didn’t end up well for their societies, not even for their businesses I guess.

The Centre for European Policy Research (CEPR) has published a (freely available) book with 40 chapters analyzing the economic consequences of the second one hundred days of Donald Trump in the White House. Although of course there is a lot of uncertainty, and it is early days, the editors summarize the book by saying that the outlook is deeply concerning for social welfare, economic growth or inflation.

Tariffs are one big source of concern, but also are attacks on science or health policy, or erosion of basic provision of public goods. Still, the Republican Party and their business donors keep pushing for the Big Beautiful Bill, which is (pathetically) the true name of a legislative package that drammatically lowers taxes to the rich and most economists expect that will increase public deficit and debt, despite the harm done to many public programs.

These can be considered short-run economic concerns. In the long-run, the erosion of democratic norms and the rule of law can have an ever more costly impact on the economy and social welfare. The historical international study of movements that share similarities with MAGA all over the world in the last century shows that their cost in terms of reduced economic growth and increased inequality is large and significant.

And if something is so bad for the economy, it is difficult to understand how it could be good for business in the long run, because the larger slice of a smaller pie may be smaller than the smaller slice of a bigger pie.

 

Dystopian times and places are not that far away

I have been reading Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid's Tale” and watching the TV series based on it (the picture below is from Season 3). For those who have not read or watched it, it is about the democratic US becoming Gilead, a theocratic state that subjects women to slavery, including sexual slavery for a large fraction of them. In militarized Gilead, mobility is restricted, as it is access to knowledge (it is forbidden for women to read). Children born in pre-Gilead times of rebel couples are kidnapped and given to pro-regime olygarchic families. Those that escape, flee to Canada, a free country which however is tempted to appease the totalitarian neighbour. It is one of the best stories of the dystopian genre, together with George Orwell’s 1984, although it is painful to read and watch.

Margaret Atwood has a final message in my edition of her book, in which she says that “the details in The Handmaid’s Tale don’t come from far away and long ago: they are possibilities within every society, including ours.” She mentions women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran and totalitarianism in Comunist countries, but she also says that “the West did not have to look very far back in its own past to find a state of affairs in which most women were barred from higher education, property ownership, and the right to their own children.” We could give examples from the not so distant past in Argentina or Spain. Or current examples of restrictions to mobility in Palestine. The last democratic country were women obtained the right to vote was civilized Switzerland in the 1970s.

While Trump deploys the National Guard and perhaps the Marines in California, and his European allies become stronger, the attack on knowledge and other public goods in the US, the technosurveillance, the massive corruption, the attack on immigrants and international students, the violation of regulatory independence, division of powers, and human rights… All these attacks on the rule of law, the racism, the break on climate change policies, the adoption of incompetent economic policies… These are all ingredients of a dystopian novel, except that this time, it is really happening (in the mot powerful country in the world).

In the picture (from the fictitious TV series), the statue of Lincoln in Washignton DC has been destroyed. The real statue remains in place as far as I know, but the Capitol next to it was assaulted 4 years ago by a mob that wanted to hang the Vicepresident of the country, with the blessing of a President that is today sitting again in the Oval Office.

As Rachel Bitecofer has just written in the social media reacting to violence in the streets of Los Angeles, “for those of us who’ve spend the last 6 months discussing how the Trump would use deportations to create chaos is the Blue states and then use that chaos as an excuse to declare a national emergency and seize total power, things are right on schedule”

Flick, Luis Enrique and the economic literature on managers

A recent academic article summarizing the economic literature on managers distinguishes between people managers and project managers. People managers are those adapted to a technology where individual workers can be monitored and their task and outcomes can be separately measured. Then a people’s manager main tasks are the selection of individuals and setting appropriate incentives. A project manager manages teams, where it is impossible to separate the contributions of individuals. It would be counterproductive to base incentives on individual measures.

Football (soccer) managers or coaches are clearly project managers. Their main tasks are to coordinate and motivate a team of players. Their task vector also includes player selection. The main mechanism for coordination is tactical choice. Good football coaches are rare. In general, player talent contributes much more to success than managerial talent.

But, as Peeters and Van Ours explain in a contribution to an IEB Report, those very few managers that do make a difference can be decisive, especially in contexts of great equality, usually at the top of tournaments. In the economy in general, as argued by Van Reenen and others, good managerial practices contribute a lot to explaining productivity differences among firms. 

An example that coaches usually do not make a difference is that, on average, it is imposible to distinguish the change in performance of a team that sacks the manager after a bad streak (Koeman, in the example of Peeters and Van Ours), from the performance of a team that sticks to the same manager (Valverde).

It is hard to predict who will be a good football coach for a given team. A good coach in one team may be bad in another one (ask David Moyes). In a firm, a good sales worker may not be a good plant manager. A good player may not be a good coach (ask Lampard, Rooney) as a good horse does not make a good jokey, but sometimes it could (Guardiola, Zidane). Even when statistical evidence or case studies identify clear success stories, it is difficult to explain exacty why a given manager has been successful, given the multiplicity of contributing factors and the multidimensionality of managerial tasks.

Hansi Flick in FC Barcelona and Luis Enrique Martínez in PSG are recent cases of clear contributions to team success. They inherited teams with individual players of the same quality or worse than the teams of their failing predecessors, and they improved the results significantly.

Both have several features in common, like their attacking style, the pressure of their teams on the other side of the pitch, and their long, learning careers. Flick was many years number two of the managerial staff at the German national team, before winning the Champions League as the head coach of Bayern Munich, to fail later as number one of the national team. Luis Enrique started at the second team of FC Barcelona, then failed in AS Roma, went to Celta de Vigo, coached the first team of FC Barcelona to win a Champions League (with Neymar, Messi and Suarez in their best years), and had a mixture of successes and failures with the Spainsh national team.

Both have managed to coordinate and motivate a multi-national, multi-ethnic, pluri-lingual coalition of players, including some of amazingly young age. They have put the collective before the individual stars. Both have used old ideas in new forms: systematic off-side trap, free positions (individual freedom in a collective design: what is the position of Hakimi, Démbélé or Doué?),… There are also differences: they have notably different styles in front of the media.

The future will tell if they can sustain this level of excellence for several years, or will see new examples of failing to use golden years to prepare for a sustainable era of success.

The true USA and Europe

People in Africa, Latin America and Asia may look at the moral side of the discussion between Trump and his opponents in the USA and Europe with some skepticism.

Many of us feel comfortable believing that this is a battle of Trump against democracy, and that democracy is synonymous with Europe and even with the true American values, which Trump is betraying. The American Revolution was the first political application of the European-born Illustration and its protagonists were descendants of Europeans.

But the betrayal of the supposed American values of freedom and democracy took place much before the arrival of Trump. Racial discrimination, support of human rights violations, political corruption, are phenomena that did not have to wait for Trump.

What is true is that what is happening now is a serious step back in time in all fronts, and a very serious threat to democracy and public goods in general, from the quality of public servants to the promotion of science. But I think that the argument that Trump is betraying American values will not find many sympathizers beyond the USA and even among some sectors in the USA, such as the black or native American population.

Something similar could be said about “European values.” I am tempted to say that we score better on democracy and human rights, at least since the creation of the European Union and its predecessor institutions. But the economic development of Western Europe was built at least in part from colonialism and slavery. Even these days, the behavior of our leaders on issues such as immigration and refugees, or the genocide in Gaza and apartheid in the West Bank, is in contradiction with any positive moral values.

If we have to oppose the Trump administration on moral grounds, and we have to, we must be aware of our imperfections.

Where are the enlightened capitalists?

We are seeing the richest democracy in the world being subject to an attempt to transform it into an autocracy. How this will end is not clear and will depend on the opposition, the economy and the checks and balances. It is an attempt surrounded by corruption and incompetence. Although events and decisions have a random component, Trump has reached power for the second time with the support of powerful interests.

The conservative columnist of the New York Times David Brooks argued that “It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement.’ (I miss churches in that list). But will business leaders participate in a massive uprising?

Political scientist Steve Levitsky said: “If we’re going to mobilize, it’s going to be the most prominent, the most well-endowed, the most privileged and protected of us in civil society who have to take the lead.” Levitsky believes that the biggest threat to aspiring despots may come from other elites rather than from mass protest below.

Stuat Kirk in the Financial Times says that “The silence of CEOs in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff chaos is one of the biggest failures of leadership in corporate history. Where are they when we need them? In the corner shuffling their shoes.”

But it is not only the tariffs. In the recent decades, enlightened capitalists in the US organized themselves (for example, around the Bussiness Roundtable)  to promote the idea of a responsible market economy were companies would have a social purpose, fighting extreme inequality, corruption and climate change. Trump 2.0 is built under the assumption that all this is a concession to wokism. 

Some business leaders have politely complained about tariffs, but not much about the demolition of public goods, the violation of human rights or the destruction of democratic international alliances. What is their broader view of capitalism then?

Capitalism has been compatible with very different political regimes over history. Most of Europe and America are capitalist and democratic today, but Spain under Franco or Chile under Pinochet were also capitalist. Are business leaders indifferent between these options? It is important for the other democracy participants to know, because we may wait for them or not.

Some business leaders could argue that what is happening is not their responsibility, except that it is, because many of them made it possible with their lobbying and their donations.

The worst ignorant against the best universities

One thing that truly makes America great is its universities, both public and private.

Trump threatening Harvard University to cut its financing unless it accepts to lose its independence, and Harvard saying no to authoritarianism, shows that when the current President says “Make America Great Again,” he in fact has in mind a very narrow and sectarian view of his country.

The Trump administration will freeze over $2 billion in federal funds because Harvard refused to comply with a list of demands that threatened its independence. Harvard leaders believed saying no was worth the risk. The University’s President has said it clearly: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

In Europe, we have always felt envious of the American universities –and tried to benefit from them, sending there our best future scientists and academics. And we watch amazed this act of national self-harm. Italian journalist Michele Serra has said in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on April 17th that

"The social rancor of the ignorant who detest culture does not allow a shadow of doubt about the theory and practice of Trumpism. Culture is something that money cannot buy, not even the billions of Trump and his friends, and this makes it particularly unbearable to people who consider any human being for sale. Learning is more difficult than commanding. Destroy everything you cannot have, everything you cannot be: this is Trump."

Her colleague on the same page, Concita de Gregorio, adds: “Dictatorships write textbooks, burn books, dismiss academics.”

Although Harvard and other universities may win in Court, the Trump administration will push further for cuts in their funding. In the long run, only the electoral defeat of Trump and Maga will ensure the survival of this global public good, the US university system.

This is part of Trump’s campaign against science. The smell of Macarthism cannot be hidden behind the obsession with wokism and the hypocritical accusations of anti-semitism (mostly code for students criticizing another neo-fascist government, Netanyahu’s). In the fight against trumpism, the resistance of universities will be an important building block.