Divided Catalans strike up dialogue with help of ‘political Tinder’ app
IT WAS one of the most arresting images of the post-referendum crisis: thousands of white-clad protesters gathering in cities across Spain to demand political leaders put aside their acrimony and begin talking.
As supporters and opponents of Catalan independence exchanged Civil War-era insults of “fascists” and “traitors”, the success of the grassroots initiative Hablemos/parlem (“Let’s Talk” in Spanish and Catalan) revealed the depth of frustration with the politics of division that have led to an impasse.
Now, in the days leading up to Cata- lan elections, the group behind the initiative has launched an app to promote dialogue. Billed as Spain’s “political Tinder”, the Hablemos/parlem app matches up adversaries on independence for online chats; thousands of such conversations have been opened since its launch on Tuesday, the group said. Cristina, one of the representatives of the group, who did not wish to give her last name, said the citizens’ voices had been “appropriated” by political leaders who were “constantly fuelling the fire” without bringing about a solution.
“As citizens we have the right but also the responsibility to tell them to stop, to tell them, hey, listen, we are here in the middle,” she said. “You are on either side of the firing line … and no one seems to care that we are getting damaged.” After the election, she hoped, perhaps all sides would see the importance of “opening doors and talking”.
The app has won the public backing of Ada Colau, Barcelona’s mayor, whose small left-wing alliance En Comú Podem appears headed for the role of kingmaker following Thursday’s vote. With polls pointing to a hung parliament, Catalonia’s myriad parties will have no option but to talk if anyone is to form a government. Surveys show pro and anti-independence parties virtually tied, but with both likely to fall short of the 68 seats they need for a majority.
The secessionist bloc – the Esquerra Republicana (ERC); Carles Puigdemont’s Junts Per Catalunya and the hard-left CUP – were forecast to come in with between 63 and 66 seats. The socalled constitutionalist bloc – Ciudadanos; the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC); and the Popular Party – were predicted to take between 57 and 61 seats.
En Comú Podem, is predicted to win 10 or 11 seats, and they plan to chart a new path out of the Catalan crisis, on which they have straddled the middle ground. In favour of the right to decide, and critical of the policies of Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, the alliance is opposed to both to the unilateral declaration of independence and the implementation of direct rule by Madrid.