A democracy is not only a system for electing rulers, but also a way of living together with people of different opinions.<\/p>\n
Experience shows us that democracy has so far been the most effective way to live together without killing each other<\/strong>. Of course, it is not a perfect system (perfect political systems do not exist, since the human beings who create them are prone to making mistakes) and it is subject to rules to prevent conflict<\/strong>. In most democratic countries, these rules are codified in the form of constitutions that outline the rights and freedoms of citizens, which limit the abuses of politicians.<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most frequent mistakes in a democracy is believing that a majority has the right to break those limits and impose its will on others<\/strong>. This belief often makes coexistence very difficult. It is a mistake that frequently occurs when an identity-based ideology tries to distort democracy to turn its dogmas into laws<\/strong>. In Spain, we are seeing this in various forms, such as gender ideology \u2014actively promoted by the left\u2014 and nationalism, an ideological current that has done enormous damage to our society<\/strong>, including the murders of 853 people\u2014among them 22 children and babies\u2014at the hands of ETA separatist terrorism.<\/p>\n For decades, nationalism has literally disrupted a part of Spanish society<\/strong>. I say this because the Royal Spanish Academy defines \"trastornar\"<\/a> (disrupt) as \"to invert the regular order of something.\" In this case, what has been inverted is the democratic order: nationalism is an ideology obsessed with imposing on us what language we should speak and how we should express our opinions<\/strong>, exhibiting a radical intolerance towards those of us who do not obey its demands.<\/p>\n Yesterday we saw a clear example of this disorder in the Congress of Deputies during the visit of Leo XIV. M\u00edriam Nogueras, a Catalan separatist deputy from Junts<\/strong>, grabbed the Pope for 15 seconds to ask him, in English, to speak in Catalan when he visits Catalonia<\/a>. Let's pause for a moment to review this complete absurdity: a member of parliament who speaks Spanish uses English to address a Pope who speaks Spanish<\/strong> (Robert Prevost spent many years in Peru and has dual US and Peruvian citizenship) to complain that he doesn't speak Spanish in<\/strong> a Spanish region where the majority of people speak Spanish<\/a> (46.5% of Catalans have Spanish as their habitual language compared to 32.6% who habitually speak Catalan, according to a survey by the regional government itself).<\/p>\n Catalan separatists have been in a frenzy for weeks over the Pope's visit because of the possibility that he might utter a word in Spanish.<\/strong> It's not that they're bothered by him making all his speeches in Spanish: they simply cannot tolerate him using that language in Catalonia, not even to say hello, and all because separatism dreams of a monolingual Catalonia where Spanish has been banished<\/strong>. It is an absurd claim that leads nationalism to confuse its desires with reality and that, in practice, has been used for decades to justify the violation of the linguistic rights of Spanish speakers in that region<\/strong>, with the imposition of Catalan in schools (leaving Spanish in a marginal role befitting a foreign language), linguistic fines for businesses that use Spanish signage, and attacks on businesses<\/a> for not speaking Catalan. A situation more characteristic of an authoritarian dystopia than a democratic country.<\/strong><\/p>\n
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