Catalonia Adamant for Secessionism
Photo source: Fortune
By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront
Since 2011,
Catalonia has turned their bank holiday of September 2011 into a day of a national
movement. For them, the September 11 holiday also memorialises
the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish War of Succession in 1714.
In the momentous
year of 2011, some twenty thousand, mainly young, middle-class Spaniards, occupied the
Puerta del Sol, in the heart of Madrid, angry at austerity among the politicians
and bankers. Organised through social media and calling themselves los indignados
(‘the indignant ones’), it was a new kind of protest movement, that would be
imitated elsewhere, notably the Wall Street and Occupy London. Enjoying broad
public support, the indignados shook Spain to the core. Within three
years, they helped to spawn two new national political parties, Podemos on the
Left, and Ciudadanos on the centre-right, further polarising and fragmenting
the vote share. That’s why, since the 2015, no four general elections have had
a clearer mandate.
The crises had
further flared up in October 2017. It was Spain’s biggest political crises, since
democracy was restored in 1975, after the death of military dictator General
Francisco Franco.
When Franco died, the region was granted
autonomy again under the 1978 constitution and prospered as part of the
new, democratic Spain. A 2006 statute granted even greater powers, boosting
Catalonia's financial clout and describing it as a ‘nation’, but Spain's
Constitutional Court reversed much of this in 2010. The 2008 financial crash and
Spanish public spending cuts also fuelled local resentment and separatism. There
is a widespread feeling that the central government takes much more in taxes
than it gives back.
Following a symbolic referendum in
November 2014, outlawed by Spain, separatists won the 2015 regional election. Catalonia's
pro-independence leaders then went ahead with a full referendum on 1 October
2017, which was also declared illegal by Spain's constitutional court. Organisers
said ninety percent of voters backed a split. But, turnout was only forty three
percent amidst a boycott by unionists. Although, there was police violence
recorded against voters.
In a febrile atmosphere the separatist
majority in the Catalan parliament had declared independence on 27 October 2017.
In suppressing this move, the Spanish government used Article 155 emergency
powers, by dissolving its parliament, sacking its leaders and called a snap
election for 21 December 2017. Separatists had won that election with a slim
majority, and eventually in May 2018, Catalonia’s parliament swore in Quim
Torra as their new president, after Madrid blocked several other candidates. Mr
Torra vowed to continue fighting for independence.
In 2017, the Economist
Intelligence Unit, which compiles an influential annual democracy ranking, had revealed
that Spain risked being downgraded from a ‘full democracy’ to a ‘flawed one’
over its handling of the situation.
The sight of Spanish national police
beating voters, and politicians being jailed, had actually revived disturbing
memories, for some, of the Franco dictatorship. In
retaliation, demonstrators had taken to the streets in fury, and repeatedly
clashed with police in some of the worst street violence to hit Spain in
decades. At this point in time, many regarded Catalonia's sacked President
Carles Puigdemont as the man who wanted to break up Spain. Regarded as charismatic,
friendly, with a wider appeal, he had realised that idea of social media
campaigns early helped the region in attaining international recognition.
But, for Spanish unionists, he is someone who burnt bridges. Puigdemont and a
number of his associates had fled to Belgium in October 2017, after they were
summoned to court over his involvement in the independence referendum.
In one of the interviews
with BBC, he had commented : ‘I think we've won the right to be heard, but what I
find harder to understand is this indifference - or absolute lack of interest -
in understanding what is happening here. They've never wanted to listen to us.
How can we explain to the world that Europe is a paradise of democracy if we
hit old women and people who've done nothing wrong? This is not acceptable. We
haven't seen such a disproportionate and brutal use of force since the death of
the dictator Franco.’
As secessionism brewed with
time, many more protests came ahead as a natural reaction. Around two hundred
thousand protestors had marched through Barcelona in February 2019 against the
trial of twelve jailed Catalan separatist leaders, calling them to be released
immediately. The charges on which they were indicted included sedition,
misappropriation of government funds, and civil disobedience. The
march was led by a line of protesters holding a long banner that read,
"Self-determination is not a crime." Other banners described the
Catalan leaders on trial as "political prisoners." About forty
five thousand people joined the rally in Colón square alone to vent their fury
at what they saw as the overly conciliatory stance adopted by the Prime Minister
Pedro Sánchez, and to demand a snap general election.
Protests continued in
2019, especially in June and October with attendance of upto three hundred
fifty thousand Catalans recorded. Mayors of eight hundred fourteen out of the
region's nine hundred forty-seven local authorities gathered at the regional
government's headquarters to meet Catalan President Quim Torra. In San Sebastián, in the Basque Country, around forty-two
thousand people gathered to demand a political solution to Spain’s territorial
question. A demonstration in Madrid calling for amnesty that drew four
thousand protesters had ended in violent clashes with riot police. The
newspaper Público reported that, once again, the police targeted journalists
trying to cover their actions. During the protests, rioters threw
paving stones and petrol bombs while police fired baton rounds and used
truncheons. Cars and other property were damaged as fires were lit in the
streets of Barcelona and other towns. In 2020, decentralised Diada were
proposed by Catalan National all across
Catalonia, as well as abroad, in an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Several peaceful protests also had happened to denounce the imprisonment of
Spanish rap artist Pablo Hasel in February 2021.
Several of the Catalan protestors
regarded the political trial of their leaders full of manipulations, by sentencing
them for something which was not a crime. Although, many Spaniards backed the
trial, due to their nationalist aspirations. That’s why Madrid even saw right
wing protests, against Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, of the Socialist Party,
over his negotiations with Catalan separatists. Sanchez had called for early
elections after Catalan parties whose
backing he needed to pass a budget withdrew their support. The regional parties
had demanded that Sanchez give them a way forward for a legally binding independence
referendum.
Meanwhile, many common Spaniards
and journalists have criticised the mainstream Spanish media coverage of the
protests. According to the journalist Miquel Ramos, the media has developed a
taste for “riot porn.” He also denounced the national media’s tendency to
downplay the role of radical-right Spanish nationalists in oppressing Catalans,
whose actions have been legitimised by the rise of the far right party Vox. For the right, which continues to
be haunted by corruption scandals, this escalation in Catalonia is a welcome
opportunity for them to shore up votes.
In the magazine Contexto, Joaquín
Urías, a professor of constitutional law, also pointed out that Spanish Supreme
Court had deliberately introduced a skewed definition for sedition, and it points to a
political motivation. The crushing of the separatist sentiment also goes back to
the widely condemned ley mordaza (gag law), a criminal law reform
made in 2015, that gives the government the
power to issue hefty fines, for everything from unauthorised protests to
photographing the police. Thus, the Spanish Supreme Court has broken
with international legal precedent, for example in Canada and the United Kingdom, where the courts have mostly seen questions of
regional sovereignty as a political rather than a legal matter.
In an article in The
Nation by Sebastiaan Faber and Becquer Seguin : ‘the ruling revives anxieties
over recent cases involving puppet shows, tweets, and song lyrics construed as
extolling terrorism, a remarkably fuzzy legal category that has given
prosecutors a green light to pursue heavy sentences.’
In this tumultuous time,
Prime Minister Sanchez’s strategy, according to his party leaders, has been to
seek moderation in the face of extreme demands by conservative parties that he
apply the National Security Law and invoke, as Rajoy did in 2017, Article 155
of the Spanish Constitution, which would place the government of Catalonia in
the hands of the government in Madrid.
The Catalan ‘threat’ to
unionists, according to journalist Guillem Martínez, is similar to that of ETA,
the armed Basque pro-independence group, whose presence helped justify
restrictions on constitutional rights for much of Spain’s democracy.
When it comes to EU, it
has treated the crisis as an internal matter for Spain, deaf to the
separatists' pleas for support, but there have been warnings that the issue is
damaging Spain's democratic credentials. In March 2021, the European parliament had voted to waive the immunity of former
Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, and two other Catalan separatist MEPs.
Mr Puigdemont had described it as "a clear case of political
persecution". Due to a seemingly increasing pressure, there were
calls by Spanish authorities in June 2021 to pardon the jailed Catalan leaders.
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