Members of the Catalan National Assembly, distribute information through the streets of Barcelona asking for the vote in the referendum of independence of Catalonia on October 1. September 17, 2017. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.A
reader not familiar with the ins and outs of Spanish and Catalan politics over
the last ten years would be surprised at the unusual events happening these
days in Catalonia. There is talk of "attacking democracy" and of a
"serious breach of constitutional legality", political leaders are
being arrested for wanting to organize a referendum, while the police surrounds
political parties’ headquarters and searches printing houses and newspapers.
All this is happening in Spain, forty years after the recovery of democracy
following Franco’s forty-year-long dictatorship, in a country where citizens
enjoy by no means negligible levels of economic development and social welfare,
the economic and institutional structure of which is fully embedded in the
European and global fabric.
How
did we get here? Let us spare the details. At the risk of being too schematic, we
could say that there is a deficit in Spanish democracy regarding the
recognition of its national plurality, and also a widespread perception in
Catalan society that the Spanish political system has not been treating them with
adequate dignity.
The
political regime established in 1978, which has allowed a fully legal and
legitimate functioning of Spanish democracy for several decades, has been
losing steam. The stern refusal to reform it
– for fear of the economic and political elites represented by the two
major parties, the People’s Party (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) – has
ended up sounding its death knell.
In
the agreement that was reached back then, the existence of an internal national
plurality was accepted only in part, but in practice a standardized
decentralized system was set up, within the unitary and homogeneous framework
of Spain’s singular sovereignty.
There
has been some talk that the Spanish system of "Autonomous
Communities" is a very decentralized one if you examine the matters which
the autonomous governments can decide on. But in that decentralization there is
no symbolic, political recognition of the Catalans’, the Basques’ and the Galician’s’
diverse sense of belonging – of the places where language, culture and
historical tradition maintain a continuing belongingness.
When
three crises coincided in time – the economic one (2007), the political one (the
indignados, 2011) and the territorial
one (large mobilizations in Catalonia in 2012 after the Constitutional Court’s
ruling which overturned what the Catalans had decided in a referendum), the
contradictions, cross grievances, and demands for change in the distribution of
funding between Autonomous Communities sharpened – and thus provided a
favourable ground for the escalation the most salient and complicated stage of
which we are now witnessing.
Plurinationality
How
is one to explain the People’s Party position of sternly refusing to open up any
political dialogue? It is obvious that, faced with the Catalan question, it has
been in Mr Rajoy’s and the PP’s interest to position themselves as guarantors
of institutional stability, national unity and a constitutional legality which
does not admit any change whatsoever. On the basis of this position, Mr Rajoy
has managed to turn the PP and the government into the axis of the defence of
institutional legality, leaving little breathing space to other parties, namely
the Citizens’ and the Socialist Party. For Rajoy, the matter is not political
but simply legal.
Only Podemos
has positioned itself differently, accepting the plurinationality of the
Spanish state and proposing that a constituent process be opened to address the
serious problem that has been gestated.
From
the perspective of Catalan sovereignists, the repeated refusal to consider the
possibility of resolving the conflict through a referendum similar to those
held in Quebec or Scotland, led to a Catalan parliamentary election in 2014
that was presented as a plebiscite. Its outcome, however, did not help to
clarify the situation. Since then, the need to hold a referendum has been
repeated incessantly, but this has not found any echo in either Mr. Rajoy’s
government or the parliamentary majority in Spanish institutions. Mr. Rajoy has
insisted on the idea that there is no democracy outside legality, refusing to
accept the view that a democracy is stronger the more dissent it is able to
contain, and has offered no alternative to the Catalan sovereignists’ proposal
other than they should abide by the established order.
Democracy
At
present, there is nothing to suggest that the referendum on October 1 can be
held with a minimum of guarantees, since the constant interference of the
Spanish government, constitutional justice and subsequent police activity have
made it impossible. But this course of action of the Spanish government and
judiciary has placed the issue in a cognitive framework and in an axis of
conflict that is no longer that of "centralism versus pro-independence",
but rather "authoritarianism versus democracy". And this can lead to a
mobilization in Catalonia in favour of democracy far beyond the pro-independence
support base.
On
October 2, the problem will still be there. From the point of view of the
Catalan sovereignists, the achievement will be that the problem will now be inescapable,
that it will stay at the centre of the Spanish political scene and thus will necessarily
have to be addressed.
From
the point of view of Mr Rajoy, the PP and its allies, they will not be able to
continue to deny the problem and to respond to it only with legality and
repression.
This
is a scenario in which it will be necessary to look for a way out which will
not imply the total defeat of the other – a scenario in which it will be essential
to have the capacity to recognize Spain’s national diversity and to treat with
due dignity those who seek to deepen the democratic quality of the Spanish
political system.
