Dos Cataluñas

This is a well made and crafted documentary on the recent political upheaval in Catalonia. The makers strive at all times to be fair and impartial and largely succeed. The most interesting feature is the huge range of interviews, mostly conducted in Spanish/Catalan with good English substitles. They speak with the key players on all sides and include comments and observations from an even greater range of informed journalists and observers. The makers use these contributions to examine several factors underpinning the rise in support for independence over the past decade.

The chronological narrative of the documentary is a little confusing as they jump around the timeline a bit, starting with the most recent Catalonian election before jumping back, almost without notice, to the earlier contested referendum on Catalan independence (I was in Barcelona at that time). But you quickly readjust - in my case I did a quick rewind to make sure that I had not misinterpreted any of it. Good production, good archive material and well conducted interviews. On balance, a well produced and impartial presentation of the situation. Would strongly recommend.

The documentary only gives you a hint, mentioning "Nationalism is not the problem but the symptom. The problem is Spain and the European Commission." It would be a great start for those who not so familiar with the independence topics. However, if you are Spanish or European citizens, you may probably not be satisfied with it so much.

Pros:

• Shed fresh light on disputes not only between the Spanish central government vs. the local Catalonian, but also pro- vs. anti-independence groups within Catalonia, and Pan-European vs. autonomy.
• Unbiased intensive interviews from both sides: pro and anti-independence groups.
• Throw questions about the ultimate definition of nationalism.
• Closely shadow key Catalonian political leaders (including the ousted President of Catalonia, Mr. Puigdemont now in Brussels) and successfully draw honest voices and mixed feelings from them.
• Quick visual overview of the bloody turmoil between Catalonian ordinary citizens and the Spanish armed police on the referendum day.

Cons:

• No analysis from an economic perspective, which is one of the most critical agendas to determine constituents' minds.
• No significant comments on the true reason(s) why some Catalonian are against the independence.
• Most of comments from experts are hyper conceptual (e.g. nationalism, democracy, populism, separation of power, nation state, and republic vs. constitutional monarchy)
• Very limited comments from the European Committee, which is reluctant to intervene in the Catalonian independence matters.
• Shallow comparison between Catalonia and other cases such as Brexit, Scotland and Canadian Quebec.
• Kick off the documentary with twenty-minute clips of Catalonian politicians without proper introduction, so I was very confused how to map their names, faces and political positioning.

Interviews conducted by this documentary include leaders of political parties, journalists, political science and law scholars, social activists, and President Rajoy's chief of staff. You will see at the end that all of them are, no matter what their political position is, partially right and partially wrong. It is like an ancient Indian anecdote "blind men and an elephant."

Thanks to the relatively wide scope of interviews, you will at least able to find out what you do NOT know yet and how you can further research for yourself. In short, this documentary is for an agenda-setting purpose, not for comprehensive understanding.

Most of the time, the document focuses on the "right" of the people from Catalonia to vote for self determination. Actually, as per the Spanish Constitution, such thing does not exist. So the democratic approach should begin with modifying the Constitution which, by the way, is feasible. What is no acceptable is to skip over the law. This detail is not well refected in the reel.

This is a serious documentary that features many interviews and behind-the-door conversations, but seriously suffers from false equivalency and does little to illuminate the societal dynamics. The title "Two Catalonias" is a major unimaginative cop out. All we get is political points uttered from both "sides", without never getting any idea what the Catalan population is actually thinking. I came out more confused than enlightened. The filmmakers refuse to give the ethnic dimension in the struggle any attention or legitimacy: it's all about economics and political populism (whether in Barcelona or Madrid) with the public depicted as agent-less masses just going along with whoever manages to rouse them or push them. I simply can't buy it. It would have helped the viewers if the filmmakers had somehow indicated who speaks Spanish and who Catalan; are there some distinction between Castilian- and Catalan-speakers? What role does Spanish chauvinism play in the process and Catalan history under dictatorship? I understand that the Catalan pro-independence politicians try to promote themselves as tolerant progressive Europeans and pose themselves against the more backward Castilian chauvinism, but the filmmakers could have penetrated these public images and analyzed the societal dynamics more deeply. The few foreign reporters commenting on the affairs don't add anything illuminating and just offer the regular boring "balanced" analysis. I'm sure the filmmakers could have found more interesting observers. Though the film has some interesting features, in the end, it offers too little information for the viewer to decide which "side" of the story is more convincing and what are ordinary Catalans actually thinking.

The documentary can be a good start for anyone who tries to understand Catalan politics. It is a crafted work, with dozens of interviews to politicians, journalists, etc. It shows in a very summarized way what the conflict between Catalonia and Spain has been through during the last months. It does a pretty good job comparing the politicians statements with the facts, and makes a good selection of the most important dates of the conflict. We need to bear in mind that this is not an easy job because of the excess of so-called "historic" days during the process.

It also has some flaws. In my opinion, despite trying to be impartial, it's easy to see in some aspects that it is a documentary directed from a Spanish perspective. For example, its title (two Catalonias) suggests a division in the Catalan society, which is something that Madrid media has been repeating all along, but somehow difficult to believe for someone who lives in Catalonia. There is obviously a great diversity of opinions, but all polls show that the suppport towards a Catalan referendum is somewhere between 70-80% of the people living in Catalonia. The conflict arises not because of the diversity of opinions, but for the impossibility of doing a binding referendum. But being in favour or against independence does not bring more social fracture than being in favour or against an inheritance tax, for example.

The documentary interviews about 70 people, at least 40 of them are against independence and 23 of them are pro-independence. Also some of the data offered is not 100% accurate. For example they say that only 42% of people participated in the referendum, but they do not clarify that such percentage does not include the thousands of votes seized by police.

Also, when they talk about the Comuns party they only say that is "a party against independence". Anyone who has followed Catalan politics for some time would agree that despite this being true, this is a really poor way of describing such party's approach towards independence. It is a party that has always been in favor of a referendum, with many independentists in their electoral rolls. They have insisted many times not to be counted neither in the independentist bloc, nor in the unionist one. Most media from different countries have respected that, but newspapers and TVs from Madrid have always included them in the unionist bloc.

To sum up, it is a quite entertaining piece of work that ends up showing what many Madrid citizens would consider an impartial description of what has happened in Catalonia during the last year.