Catalonia and Scotland, siblings in terms of their nationalisms. This is the idea defended today by MEP Diana Riba, of the Catalan party ERC, during an event on independence movements in Europe. Riba drew links between the two countries' models of nationalism, far removed from those dynamics "of centuries ago", but also from many other current, more conservative and xenophobic secessionist movements. "We push for national emancipation going hand in hand with the struggle for social emancipation," she said. In this line, she positioned the Catalan and Scottish independence movements as "inclusive, democratic, feminist and ecological" projects, which also regard their territories as "multilingual and plural" spaces.
However, despite the open nature of these sovereignist movements, she pointed out with regret that the European Union had closed the door on them. She recalled that the European model has been based since its inception on incorporating states, such as the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. And now it is even studying the accession of Ukraine, in the face of the Russian invasion of the country. By contrast, as Riba criticized, the EU rejects the incorporation of "future new states which Catalonia or Scotland could be". “It’s incomprehensible,” she said, calling for work to get beyond this framework.
To do so, the ERC representative stressed the need to open spaces within the framework of the European Union in which to raise this debate regarding the countries that want to become new states within the European community. "We need to propose spaces to discuss what democratic tools we have for situations like Catalonia and Scotland," she said. Thus, while there are other debates that currently dominate the headlines, such as Covid and the war in Ukraine, this issue cannot be overlooked.
Regional nationalisms are not xenophobic
The MEP expressed this message during a speech entitled 'Self-determination Movements in Europe', organized by the Fundació Josep Irla and the Coppieters Foundation. The event was also attended by three researchers. Marc Sanjaume, political science professor at Barcelona's UPF, rejected the idea that all regional nationalisms are exclusive and xenophobic. "Empirical analysis disproves that and says it's false." In this regard, he also defended that the independence movement cannot be understood solely as an economic issue: "It's not just not wanting to pay taxes, but rather, it's much more complicated."
For his part, Jordi Mas, international policy professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), recalled that nationalisms exist not only at the regional level, but also at the state level, while xenophobia can be found at the level of a whole state or country, as well as in political parties that are country-wide. And Ivan Serrano, a political science professor from the UOC, described it as a "universalist fallacy of the progressive movement" to describe all sovereignist movements as exclusivist in nature. "It's an easy cliché," he said.