With only days to go before the scheduled date for Catalonia’s independence referendum, it remains unclear what will take place and how the Catalan and Spanish governments will react. Victor Lapuente writes that while he is unsure of what will happen to Catalonia, his real concern lies with the fate of ordinary Catalans, with the independence issue likely to drive a wedge between the two sides of an already highly polarised debate.
Credit: vx_lentz (CC BY-SA 2.0)
While attending college in Barcelona, I used to have friends on both sides of the independence debate. In a relaxed intellectual environment, Catalan secessionists and Spanish unionists teased each other, like FC Barcelona and Real Madrid fans after a Clásico. And, most of all, I had many friends in the middle, in the then highly populated no man’s land between supporters of an independent Catalonia and of remaining within Spain.
Now, the middle-ground position has few vocal defenders. The positions regarding the territorial debate have sharply polarised, and the jokes between political adversaries have given way to wrath. Angry zealots on each side have taken the leading voices in the discussion. The storm created by radicals on both sides eclipses any reasonable exchange of arguments.
The old spirit of tolerance toward dissenting opinions – one of the cornerstones of the commercial and cultural success of Catalonia and Barcelona across the centuries – seems to have vanished. When I engage in debates with colleagues, what emerges is no longer happiness, the joy of mental challenge, but bitterness, the frustration of intellectual isolation.
Still, data indicates that many Catalans are somewhere between the two extremes. While support for secession has increased in recent years, what unites most Catalans is not the willingness to create a new state, but dissatisfaction with the status quo: around 67 percent of Catalans demand further self-government for their region.
Likewise, an overwhelming majority of Catalans supported the 2006 Estatut. This Statute of Autonomy updated the relationship between Spanish and Catalan authorities, recognising, among other symbolic and substantive advances in the level of self-government, the existence of a “Catalan nation”.
It was political opposition to the enactment of this Statute of Autonomy at the Spanish Parliament – led by the conservative Popular Party (PP) now ruling Spain – that triggered a reaction in Catalan society. Within a few years, those in favour of a Catexit moved from around 15-20 percent of the Catalan population to 40-45 percent. Some surveys have recorded support levels above 50 percent.
A couple of exogenous factors help in explaining why the secessionist movement was able to gain ground in such a small space of time. First, the economic hardship of the Great Recession in Spain, with unemployment reaching 25 percent, fostered the dream that an independent Catalonia would become a small, highly-productive, open economy – the Denmark of the Mediterranean.
Second, the endless procession of corruption cases and the crisis of political representation which formed the basis of the Indignados movement transformed Spain from being one of the European societies with the highest levels of trust in their national and supranational institutions, into a country with one of the broadest gaps between citizens and political elites. A breach larger than in most Central and Eastern European countries.
Consequently, Spain’s national political landscape was shaken by the arrival of two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, which currently compete neck and neck with the old establishment parties – the PP and PSOE. And, similarly, the regional party system in Catalonia also mutated, allowing the emergence of new electoral platforms with an explicit secessionist agenda.
It is the case of the ruling coalition in Catalonia, Junts Pel Si, which, with the parliamentary support of the anti-capitalist CUP, are pushing for the independence referendum on 1 October. The referendum has been declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court. And it is unrealistic to believe the international community will recognise its outcome, irrespective of the turnout – to start with, because there is no way of validating it in the absence of an official electoral census, ballot boxes and other guarantees of a due electoral process. The members of the electoral commission allegedly in charge of supervising the referendum resigned last week, following a dictum by the Constitutional Court condemning them to fines of up to 12,000 euros per day.
Officially, the referendum will not take place. On 2 October, Catalonia will remain a region in Spain. Yet the Spanish government should not rest on its laurels, or expect the Catalan separatists to change course. The current level of support for independence – around 41 percent, although it fluctuates substantially – is still insufficient for the pro-independence Catalan institutions to break from Spain.
However, the separatist movement has shown nothing if not resilience. They are capable of mobilising thousands of committed activists with a long history of support for the cause. And those Catalans who have recently become separatists show the same resistant faith of those newly converted to a religion. Meanwhile, the camp in favour of remaining in Spain cannot provide the selective incentives that believers in independence enjoy: a channel to express their discontent with the status quo and their hope for a promised land. A sense of identity in times of global uncertainties. And flowers.
I do not know what will happen to Catalonia. What concerns me is what will happen, and is actually happening, to ordinary Catalans. The open-minded, pragmatist, funny, life-loving Catalans I encountered two decades ago, among the ranks of both separatist and unionist camps alike, have become a bit more close-minded, idealist, suspicious and bitter.
Now, not even Messi’s goals seem to bring them together.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics.
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Victor Lapuente – University of Gothenburg
Victor Lapuente is Associate Professor and Research Fellow in the Quality of Government Institute at the University of Gothenburg. His research deals with comparative politics and public administration, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. He is on Twitter @VictorLapuente
Someone can believe that if the independentistas was? Sen 41% the Spanish government would risk giving this totalitarian image to the world? A simple campaign by the would not have solved it, since 2011 they have been cheating on the election count, they know that the absolute majority of the Catalans want independence.
I was wondering if you could source the 41% number (in regards to support for independence). It’s been quoted by numerous media outlets but seems to refer to a single poll at least a few months old. If this is indeed the case, it would seem to be asking for a greater degree of scrutiny than it has been given as of yet. Two specific well known trends that have emerged in recent years would seem to reinforce this. As is popular knowledge, polling agencies have been quite simply wrong on occasion after occasion. On the eve of the recent UK election, for instance, every major polling agency with the exception of YouGov was predicting a significantly expanded Tory majority. Secondly, again contrary to received wisdom, it seems that voter movement during electoral campaigns has increased significantly. There is every reason to believe that at the onset Corbyn’s Labour were miles behind May and the Scottish and EU Referendums bygone conclusions (to say nothing of Trump). By their conclusion the story was very different.
This potential for movement has been backed up by my own anecdotal references in Barcelona. A number of previously ambivalent friends have moved decisively into the pro-independence camp in response to Rajoy’s repressive tactics in attempting to block the vote. It is entirely possible and logical, although clearly not certain, that this shift is widespread, especially among left-wing youth who, again anecdotally, have in my experience sat on both sides of the independence fence (and on it as well) but share antipathy for Rajoy, Spanish authoritarianism, and the Madrid establishment.
My reason for bringing this up relates to your line which suggests it a bygone conclusion that Catalan institutions do not have the support necessary to declare independence following October 1. I simply do not agree that this is the case and strongly suspect a independence declaration within the few subsequent days. Their ability to enact this, ironically and counter-intuitively, seems to lie in Rajoy’s attempts to stifle it. If he suspends the Catalan parliament, as he has openly suggested, and asserts direct rule form Madrid, the likelihood of an independent Catalonia in the mid-term increases dramatically.
Well, in my opinion the origin of the problem is in the weakness of the Spanish nation after the 1978 Constitution. Spain has historically been diverse in languages, traditions and local culture. None of the local languages has disappeared, compared to what’s happened in other countries like France. However few nationalist parties that had been born with deep identitary and xenophobic roots in the late 19th century reappeared after Franco died to obtain a privileged treatment for the Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia in the 1978 Spanish Constitution. This constitution was voted by a very high percentage of these regions’ electorate. This constitution, however, embraced the concept of interregional solidarity. It made sense to those who wrote the constitution that regions that had been traditionally richer, and indeed got richer during Franco’s dictatorship, would help the others converge.
This was fine at the beginning, but nationalist parties got hungrier and hungrier, and after conceding the control of the education system and through their regional TV, the idea that “Espanya ens roba” or “Spain steals from us” consolidated in many Catalans minds. For them, the fact that some communities like Andalusia or Extremadura had got richer because of interregional solidarity was unfair, even if Catalonia was at the top of Spanish indicators for quality of life, average income, and virtually there was little to complain about regarding public investment coming from the central government. For nationalist Catalans, the fact that many people from the South had immigrated from their home regions, to help revolutionise their economy during Franco’s times, was no reason to help now.
On top of this, because of the electoral law, several coalition governments have happened in Spain between a large party, the Socialists or the conservatives of PP and nationalist parties from the Basque Country and Catalonia. To support the coalition, they asked for investments and more and more competencies in return… the last big one was the one Dr Lapuente has mentioned as the trigger, the demand for a new Statue of Autonomy.
Coming back to the first point, it is in my view, the weakness of the Spanish governments that had to concede power to the nationalists in order to form a coalition what caused the problem. But what has turned so many people into pro-independence proselytes is the fact that many of the nationalist parties were as I mentioned earlier, deeply rooted in supremacist theories, therefore much of their political activism and cultural funding was invested in stressing the differences between Catalans (or Basque) and “Spanish” (there are ample examples of Sabino Arana, Pujol and more recently Oriol Junqueras expressing what they really think (e.g. http://www.eltriangle.eu/cat/notices/2015/07/oriol-junqueras-s-empatolla-amb-la-genetica-41263.php)).
No one knows what can happen next Sunday, but with such a polarised society, with so little trust in clearly imperfect Spanish institutions and so much propaganda and wishful thinking, we cannot expect an easy or happy outcome to the problem, and many years of bitterness and resentment for those living in Catalonia.
Lapuente raises some interesting questions about the illegal independence referendum process for 1.0cotber but without much background or critique to orient the reader; also he doesn’t develop his concern for ‘ordinary catalans’ since the term is too loose and vague. The Spanish government is also blamed for the 2008 recession in Spain, as if Catalunya were disconnected from the banking system and speculative bubbles in the property markets. Lapuente also belongs to the school of thought which gave us ‘España nos roba’ when this meme should really be pulled apart and investigated in more detail rather than accepted as an external culture of theft and corruption. Talking of which, Lapuente fails to mention any of the vast litany of Catalan political corruption scandals such as the notorious ‘caso Pujol’ (billions of euros hidden in foreign banks) and the more mundane family scam of the ITV (MOT) concessions for bungs; there is also the more recent embargo in 2015 of the 15 party HQs of CDC (Convergencia) in Barcelona, seized as a huge surety to support the ‘caso Palau’, concerned with seriously crooked party funding scams by Artur Mas. Found guilty, his sentence was a modest disqualification from office for 2 years. If Spanish politics are by nature fairly corrupt, Lapuente makes totally improbable claims for the purity and integrity of the Catalan government, which apparently displays the ‘highest levels of trust’. This is not supported by evidence, but has been visible in the blank refusal of the ‘govern’ to desist from engaging in an illegal referendum and of funding the process illegally from taxpayers money, to the tune of 6.6 million euros. In my estimation, the extreme left Catalan coalition government has done very well financially out of the PP since 2011, given Rajoy’s passivity and the failure to impose any rigorous oversight on the whole Catalan administration, which needed a clean out. Moreover, Puigdemont and Junqueras have ignored almost all relevant legislation emanating from Madrid for 5 years and have held the PP, the Spanish constitution, Spanish law and Spaniards themselves in total contempt. Meanwhile, the legal advisors of the ‘govern’ have been secretly remodelling the Catalan ‘estatut’ to legitimise the ‘golpe de estado’ which is now under way and will take place in some form or other. Finally, unlike Lapuente, who worries about ordinary Catalan speakers in light of the instability caused by the illegal referendum, my concerns are with non-catalan speakers, who are not linked politically or socially to the political infrastructure and cultural institutions because of their linguistic limitations. When will the Spanish government review the 2 ‘co-oficial’ languages’ policy and demand that Castilian Spanish to be taught in every school in Catalunya as a democratic right?
Well, if the referendum has not any sort of warranties, ask for a good referendum with census, ballots and all the other things you think it’s needed to make “the international community will recognise” it.
Easy.
I agree with you, this ‘circus’ is extremely unfair to those in the middle of the argument that have been somehow pushed to take part for one side or the other. I worry enormously about the repercussions a split would have on the people, there does not seem to be a realistic plan to follow, what will the currency be, do they have a central bank? What happens to Catalans living in other regions, would they become refugees? And viceversa, would Spanish citizens be deported or given new citizenship? Since Catalans already have a derogatory term to those of Spanish origin, ‘charnego’ which reminds me of the ‘mudblood’ term in the Harry Potter movies. Their attitude has always been of arrogance and superiority over the ‘others’ and this has been reinforced over the recent years.
The secessionist know the legal route to independence would require a massive effort, a long time and in the last instance an informed electorate would probably render their work useless hence they have taken a shortcut to try and win the race, a trick that only fanatics and the ignorant approve of.
And talking about fanatism… what is to be said about the systematic indoctrination that has taken over the educational system? What about those history books printed in Catalan that any serious historian would class as science fiction? What about 8 year olds coming back from school repeating that ‘Spain robs us’ like parrots? What about the violence and threats against anyone displaying a national flag? What about using the hated figure of Franco to feed the hate of anything Spanish? What about the contempt for the people from other regions, for the law and for their own citizens who do not comply?
I do not know what is coming next but for sure it will not be pleasant.
The blame for pestering disagreement and discord lies with the party that refuses to permit the citizens to vote and to decide.