What is happening in Catalonia is terrible, an attack on democracy without precedent in modern Europe. On the 20th September the Civil Guard (the Spanish military police) took Catalan institutions by surprise, arresting twenty senior civil servants of the Generalitat (the Catalan government), which in practice meant putting the territory and its people under a de facto state of emergency. The reason: to stop by force a democratic referendum on the independence of Catalonia. I write these lines without knowing what will happen in the next few days, which could be even worse. The question is: how have we ended up here? Allow me to go into a little bit of history.
Catalonia isn’t a region of Spain. It has never been one. In the tenth century we already had our own sovereignty and institutions. Until the eighteenth century what we now know as Spain was only a confederation of nations, whose only common denominator was the king, Catholicism, and little more. (There were no Catalans in the ‘conquest’ of America, or in the Flemish wars of the sixteenth century, for example, because these were Castillian possessions. To put it another way: as a state Germany came together by the free agreement of the diverse territories that made it up. In Spain unity was only achieved by military terrorism. On the 11th September 1714, after a long and devastating war, Barcelona fell to Castillian troops. The Catalans never accepted the new regime. As a Spanish general once said in the nineteenth century: ‘Barcelona should be bombarded every fifty years’ (which they have more or less done). In 1936 the soldiers who started the Civil War cited three reasons: defend Catholicism and fight communism and separatism. Today communism is in the history dustbin, and the Church has lost its old power. But Catalan distinctiveness is alive and well in spite of the attacks and repression.
Spain has always seen Catalanism as a cancer. In the 21st century, despite widespread popular support for them, all its demands have been directly rejected. If the Catalans have planned a referendum unilaterally, it is because they had no other choice. Pols point out that 80 per cent of Catalans are in favour of holding a democratic referendum in order to solve the conflict with Spain. Thus, since 2010 over a million Catalans have taken to the streets every 11th of September, demanding an independent republic. You’ve read that correctly. One million demonstrators, absolutely peacefully, year after year, out of a population of seven million. Could anyone believe that it is folklore that motivates this mass of people.
The Catalan ‘Process’ toward independence has shown up the profound deficits of Spanish democracy. One example. For the Germans, the Constitutional Court is an admirably neutral institution, which resolves political disputes with equanimity. In Catalonia there must be more people who think the moon is made of cheese than believe in the independence of the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal. In Spain there is no division of powers, at least for the Catalan question. It’s hard to believe, but the newspapers actually publish its judgments before it even meets. The state attorney general himself has no problem in accusing Catalan citizens of being ‘taken hostage by their government’! And in any case, do you imagine that the president of the German Constitutional Tribunal would be a card carrying member of the party of government?
The Spanish government tries to have world public opinion see the separatists as a gang of fanatical nationalists. The reality is almost the reverse: the most powerful symbol of Spanishness, the bullfight, is prohibited because it is seen as a cruel and backward. And it is here that we arrive at the key point of the matter:
In Catalonia today, everything is precisely the opposite of what the Spanish government claims. Madrid’s propaganda is based on an old, awful, motto. ‘If Hitler were alive today he’d accuse his enemies of being Nazis’. Thus, the ruling party accuses the promoters of a democratic referendum of being populist!, totalitarian !! and even fascist!!! And that from a party that was founded by ministers of the bloody dictator Francisco Franco! When the Spanish police interferes with the post, it claims to do so to protect ‘citizens’ rights’; when the Civil Guard assaults presses and confiscates voting papers, they are acting ‘to defend the democratic state’. When they threaten more than 700 Catalan mayors with jail (more than 700 from a total of 900!!!) for the ‘crime’ of being prepared to provide ballot boxes so that citizens can vote, that threat is for ‘defending democracy’. And finally: even if the holder of a referendum is a legitimate government, which has parliamentary support that ranges from the liberal right to the extreme left, the citizens must be prohibited from voting. With what argument? Well, that voting is antidemocratic, and the referendum a ‘putsch’. (I assure you this is not a joke!)
The break between Catalonia and Spain is irreversible. Spain is dead. But it is not the separatists but its own elite that has killed it, by its political arrogance and its moral, intellectual and emotional inflexibility. When a Madrid minister talks about the Catalan issue, we can hear echoes of the old hidalgos and conquistadores. For them the ‘sacrosanct unity of the homeland’ isn’t about living together amicably, a social pact that is renewed and modified every so often. No. For Madrid ‘national indivisibility’ is a species of pseudo religious dogma. It is said that the dictator Franco, on his deathbed, said to the future king, Juan Carlos: ‘I only ask that you preserve the sacred unity of Spain’. What Madrid didn’t understand was that the only way of keeping Catalonia, at least in a democracy, was respecting its history, its culture and its institutions. (And anyway Juan Carlos was too much of an imbecile to understand anything: all he did was chase whores and shoot elephants. )
Catalonia isn’t the problem. It’s the solution. Spain is using armed force to keep Catalonia. A state like that has already lost all legitimacy. Nobody loves those they fear. However, the obtuse use of force has polarized the conflict: today the Catalan flag, the Senyera, no longer represents a small nation against an backward state; today the old Senyera brings together every democrat who opposes authoritarianism and the massive curtailment of rights. Don’t be fooled; in Catalonia today that is precisely the battle that is being fought: democracy versus authoritarianism.
But let’s be optimistic. Europe faces an unusual opportunity. Madrid doesn’t negotiate because it simply cannot admit that Catalonia exists as a political actor. (Remember what I said about Castillian imperialist arrogance?). If Europe gets involved it will do democracy a favour, and as paradoxical as it might sound, it will do a favour for the very Spanish leaders who deep down are aware of the size, breadth and popularity of the separatist movement. With Europe as mediator, the Spanish government could tell its most ultranationalist supporters that a higher power simply obliges them to negotiate. That way, Europe would reaffirm its fundamental values and its aspiration to be the people’s home. To help Catalonia, therefore, is to help Spain and Europe too. Abandoning her, by contrast, would mean renouncing the most basic liberties. Help Catalonia. After all, what is this dreadful thing the Catalans are demanding? To vote.