Emotions hide a story, which art knows how to condense in a few strokes. In the museum of the University of Navarra there is an emblematic painting by Tàpies, "L'esperit català" (1971), a work that invites us to approach the complexity of Catalan history and identity. The yellow canvas, crossed from top to bottom by four irregular stripes of red paint, which has splashed bloodied huellals the surface, evokes the flag in gold and gules, and is marked by words that many people could or would like to make their own: truth, culture, freedom, spirit of association, cordiality, natural law, democracy, spirituality, sovereignty ... but also a brutal word that hits the viewer: right to fratricide.

What did Tàpies mean? Fratricide is not an exclusive feature of Catalonia but the principle of the Catalan people. Hannah Arendt, recalling Romulus and Remus, recognizes it since ancient times in the constitution of every political community. It was an instrument at the service of Visigothic palatine politics. It also sealed the first steps of the county of Barcelona: Ramon Berenguer II was assassinated (1082) at the instigation of his brother, Berenguer Ramon II, since then nicknamed the Fratricide. Around the same time, the kingdom of Pamplona witnessed a similar crime, that of Sancho IV, after the conspiracy of his brother Ramon, for which the Navarrese throne passed to Sancho Ramirez, then king of Aragon (1076). The Trastámara dynasty was imposed in Castile by this means in 1369, after the war between Peter I the Cruel and his bastard brother Henry IV, the Catalans turned to constitute him Count of Barcelona and King (1462), so as not to suffer John II of Aragon, after the death of his son Charles, Prince of Viana, allegedly instigated by his stepmother Joanna.

No: fratricide is not, far from it, the privilege of the Catalan people: neither is civil strife. The Catalan civil war, unleashed after the death of Charles, has not been the prerogative of that people either. Navarre and Castile had theirs. As always, an unfortunate mixture of Economics precarious and personal ambitions, in a convulsive international framework , which favors strange alliances. The war of Spanish succession (1701-1713), at the death of Charles II, was not an exception. But the victory of Philip of Anjou meant that the towns that had supported Archduke Charles, including Catalonia, lost their privileges. Only Navarre, which had supported the Bourbon, kept theirs. We should not be surprised that the Navarrese guard them as a treasure; nor that their loss has left a wound in other cases, reopened during the Carlist wars.

For many historians, Bourbon centralism was not only the end of the principality of Catalonia but also the beginning of the deterioration of political legitimacy in the American territories. Philip II had designated himself king of Spain and the Indies, plural. Governed under the Habsburgs according to the form of viceroyalty, inherited from the crown of Aragon, and despite the growing authoritarianism of modern monarchs, these peoples had experienced a government that respected their diversity while sustaining their unity, in the case of the peninsular peoples, forged through wars and marriages that for centuries mixed the blood of the dead and the living.

Catalonia also knows about these alliances. When Alfonso the Battler died (1134), king of Aragon and Pamplona without descendants - his marriage to Urraca of Castile, which would have led to the early alliance of the peninsular Christian kingdoms, was a disaster -, annoyed by his will, which bequeathed the kingdom to the military orders, the Aragonese and Navarrese nobles recognized his brother Ramiro as king, forcing him to marry. He had a daughter, Petronila. By his marriage to her, Ramón Berenguer IV (113-1162), Count of Barcelona, came to exercise royal power in Aragon, although Rairo, retired to a monastery, retained him degree scroll to transmit it to his grandson Alfonso II. It is to this one that we owe the inclusion of the ligne in the coat of arms of Aragon and that the kings of Aragon first, and of Spain later were called counts of Barcelona.

The degree scroll goes back to Wilfred the Hairy (840-897): according to a beautiful legend, which evokes loyalty and bravery, after a battle with the Normans Wilfred asked the Frankish king he served to give him arms for his shield; staining his fingers in Wilfred's blood, the king replied: "These are your arms"; a degree scroll, then, that speaks for a people and condenses a singular history. It is no coincidence that in his speech proclamation before the congress, Felipe VI emphasized, in the purest Hapsburg style, despite being a Bourbon: "Spain is diverse, ladies and gentlemen". Not to take this diversity into account is to expose oneself to hopeless fractures.