Mireia Boya: ‘I will take the Occitan view to the Parliament’

Mireia Boya has a reconciling tone and transmits tranquillity, maybe it is because she is a teacher, she says, or maybe it is because she has breathed the mountain air all of her life.  She is an Occitanist Aran and has just entered the Parliament of Catalonia where she is exercising as president of the CUP group. Mireia Boya had already worked with the CUP in the past legislature and had also been president of the ANC in Aran.

—Have you talked to Puigdemont? What does he seem to you as a new president?
—We haven’t coincided and I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him.  It is true that he has not come from the first line of government, but rather from municipalism, and for the CUP municipalism is very important, it is the essence, because the CUP has come out of the councils.  Therefore the fact that the president understands the importance of municipalism in the constituting process of the new Republic of Catalonia and Aran is not something bad, quite the contrary.  From here we have to wait and see how he works.  I am giving him a vote of confidence, now he has the opportunity to show how he works and where he is going, because this government has just started.

—The President of the Government of Catalonia is from Amer, the president of the CUP from Aran… Is this a symptom of decentralisation?
—First of all, importance must be taken away from a fact of presiding the CUP Parliamentary group.  I got the job because the distribution of work turned out that way and because we considered that it had to be a woman, above all after the attacks and comments the women of the CUP have had to put up with in these months.  Aside from this, we also thought it would be positive for it to be someone from the territory in order to move away from the centralism of Barcelona, that is true.  If that means that we can give a different territorial view to the way politics is done in the Parliament, we will see.  In any case, I will give it an Occitan viewpoint.

—You talked about the ‘Republic of Catalonia and Aran’. Does this have to be the name of the new Republic?
—I think so, that the new Republic has to be called the ‘Republic of Catalonia and Aran’. And I think this for a very simple reason. Now the territory of Catalonia is formed by two pieces of two nations which as yet are stateless. Catalonia is a part of the ‘Països Catalans’, or Catalan Countries, and Aran is a little part of the Occitan nation. As Catalonia is formed by parts of different nations, when carrying out the constituting process and giving content to the new constitution that we want, it will be the time to decide what kind of relationship we want the Catalans to have with the Aranese and the Aranese with the Catalans.  My view is that they should be two peoples that can share a constitution and a new republic.  The name must include them both.

—As an Occitanist who aspires to the sovereignty of the Occitan nation, is the independence of Catalonia a preliminary and necessary step to achieving this?

—I want the freedom of all peoples.  It is true that I come from the Occitan people and therefore I defend the freedom of the Occitan nation.  And it is also true that the Occitans are not at the same point as the Catalans and that the national awareness of the Occitan people is much smaller than that which we find in Catalonia.  The long-term view, the Utopia, would be the freedom of the Occitans and the freedom of all the peoples of the world.

—Is Aran prepared to understand the independence of Catalonia as a benefit first, and then to lead the process of the sovereignty of the Occitan nation afterwards?
—I think so.  If they have the best possible offer from the Catalan republic, the Aranese will want this.  We cannot repeat the relationship that Catalonia has with Spain between Aran and Catalonia.  In this sense, Catalonia must be exemplary and must make the best possible offer for the Aranese people to stay where they are.  Once this has been decided, we will see.  It is true that since I have been in the Parliament I have been contacted by many Occitan associations on the French side that see a certain resurgence of Occitanism in it all, or at least a more public sign. If I can, I will go to visit them all because I understand that it is important to give visibility to a national feeling that is still strongly hidden.  Many people have it, but don’t know.  And it is necessary too that Aran should be able to understand all of these Occitan brothers and sisters who still do not have a very good idea of what the Occitan nation is. They know there is something, they know they have a different identity from the French, but they do not know exactly what because very few have been taught it.

—As Marçal Girbau recalled in an article in VilaWeb, the law of Aran includes the right to decide of the Aranese people and it has not been challenged, which is something that has not happened in the Catalan case.  How do you explain that?

—The truth is that it is difficult to explain.  In processing the law of Aran, all of the political forces of the Vall d’Aran, all of them, even the most Hispanist, recognised the importance of the Aranese language and culture.  This is not disputed in Aran. There is nothing and no one who casts doubt on the right to be Aranese.  This has been the meeting point of all of the forces and this is why the law has not been challenged in the Constitutional Court.  Therefore, we have a law which recognises the right of the Vall d’Aran to self-determination in a state which impedes the right to self-determination of other peoples.  It is certainly a contradiction.

—How has an Occitanist Aran managed to become president of the CUP Parliamentary group?
—Everything went very fast! In fact I had already worked with the CUP Parliamentary group in the last legislature, and precisely on the processing of the law of Aran and on questions of territory and environment.  There was already a contact.  When last summer it was suggested that I might go on the list of the CUP it is not that they were deceiving me, but the plan was that a single member would enter the Parliament for the demarcation of Lerida.  And I thought it was worth making the effort to go on the list because it is also important for there to be this nationalistic left-wing discourse that wants to go towards the creation of a republic in Aran. And it seemed right to me to do this job of two weeks’ campaign.  The surprise came when the number 1, Ramon Usai, left his seat.  And the second surprise was when with a last-minute agreement on the Sunday of the investiture meeting, I had to decide whether or not I was going to join.  I had to decide in very few hours, also aware that it is a very important time and that is good that there should be an Aran taking part in the construction of the bases of the new republic.  If not, who would defend the Aranese people and the Occitan language? At least like this there is one going to the Parliament because the opportunity has arisen.  In this sense it is a great responsibility.

—Will you speak in the Parliament in Occitan?

—Yes, I will speak Occitan in the Parliament, but I’m not the first to do it and I do not want to be the last, because if I am the last it means that there are no more Aranese members of the Parliament or that the language has disappeared. Since the nineteen eighties, there have been members who have spoken it: Pilar Busquet, Paco Boya, Àlex Moga, José Luis Boya… All Aranese members who in the Parliament have at some time used our language. It is something that is absolutely natural, and it is also the official language of the whole of Catalonia and I have the right to use it.

—You are most surely the first Aranese and Occitanist member to work in the front line in the process of the independence of Catalonia…

—I feel really great in this role and I believe in the freedom of all peoples.  For the moment, administratively I live in Catalonia, it is my reference community and I recognise all the work it has done for the Aranese and for Aran: recovery of institutions, standardisation of the language, making the language official throughout Catalonia.  There are a series of things which, if instead of being here, had been in the Spanish or French state, we would surely not have hem and my language would have been lost.  Therefore I feel thanks for all of the work that has been done all of these years since the recovery of democracy in the Parliament of Catalonia. I am also here thanks to this.