Catalonia: now what?

Last Friday, October 27, in a matter of hours, Catalonia went from witnessing
independence and the constitution of a Catalan Republic being proclaimed by a wafer-thin
majority of its Parlament, to seeing how
the government of Mariano Rajoy intervened in its system of self-rule, dismissed
its elected government, and dissolved its Parliament. At the same time, Rajoy
directly called Catalan elections, to be held on December 21.

I am writing this text four days later. The Spanish flag is still flying
at the Palau de la Generalitat, the seat
of the Catalan government in Barcelona. No foreign country has recognized the
new republic. The up to now President of the Generalitat and a part of his
government have fled to Brussels, where they "continue to exercise their
functions" and avoid a possible incarceration.

The leaders of the main civil organizations which have supported the
independence process for years are still in jail and have been there for the
last few weeks. And despite all this, all the Catalan political parties, from left
to right, from the most independent-minded to the ones which are less so, have
said that they will participate in the aforementioned elections, which have
been convened in a hierarchical manner, using a never-used-before article (Article
155) of the Spanish Constitution.

How did we get to this? What alternative options are there and how can
things develop in the coming weeks? What are the political key points which go
beyond the Catalan case?

As it is well known, the problem of the recognition of Catalonia as a
political subject is a long-term problem in Spain. The conflict, in its current
phase, began in 2010 when the constituent will of the Catalan people, expressed
in a referendum on reform of its Statute of Autonomy, was overruled by the
Spanish Constitutional Court.

In the ensuing seven years, a substantial part of Catalan citizens have
mobilized on different fronts. The political crisis has coincided with an economic
crisis and a territorial crisis. These last seven years have witnessed mass
demonstrations, three general elections, two Catalan elections and two
(frustrated) attempts to hold consultations, or referenda, on independence in
Catalonia. This has been a period of strong politicization and strong
polarization. In Spain, these years have been endured as a stress test for
democracy and its capacity to admit dissent.

Most people have seen the images of violence by the State security
forces against citizens who peacefully wanted to express their will by voting
in an attempted referendum on independence which, considering its very
exceptional context, lacked all the required democratic guarantees. The results
of this attempted referendum (which could hardly be considered binding, both
because of the above developments during the day and the boycott of the parties
opposed to independence) were nevertheless assumed by the independence
coalition in Parliament as the green light they needed to unilaterally declare independence
and the constitution of a Catalan Republic. As we have already mentioned, the
leaders of the two civil associations which gave support to the referendum were
accused of sedition, arrested and imprisoned. And so, after many hesitations
and without any direct negotiation between the two governments, we arrived at
the situation mentioned at the beginning of this text.

What can happen now?

The four conditions which, according to the Catalan government, would
have made a declaration of independence viable were: holding a referendum with
guarantees, supervised internationally, after an explicit campaign for the
"yes" and "no"; getting enough social support; ensuring explicit
international recognition by a significant number of countries; counting on state
structures in place, as a basis for the launching of the new state after
independence was declared. None of these conditions was met.

The referendum on October 1 lacked sufficient guarantees; its result
showed, once again, that no more than two million people (out of a total of 5.7
million entitled to vote) are willing to support independence; not a single
country has recognized the new Catalan Republic; and, as we have seen in the last
few days, Catalonia was not in a position to face the institutional requirements
which independence entails.

Social support for the so-called “right to decide”, however, runs very high.
As do popular mobilizations. But the events in recent months have also
mobilized the social sectors which had remained silent all this time and which now,
seeing that the threat of independence was closing in, have decided to go out
into the streets, with the support of the central government and the parties which
are opposed to independence, showing that Catalan society is much more divided
than everybody reckoned.

On the other hand, the left-right divide, which for many years had been
key in complementing the traditional catalanist/non catalanist one, has been overshadowed
these last seven years by the independence-unionism cleavage, generating very
unusual alliances between political positions which are far apart from each
other on social and political issues.

Besides, it is quite obvious that in today's Europe, considering the existing
level of interdependence, with the interweaving economic, cultural and social
interests, it is very difficult to keep on talking about independence and
completely autonomous nation-states. The difficulties in implementing Brexit are proof of this. And all the more so in the case of Spain and Catalonia, where
many economic problems have been reported in a matter of days (changes in
company headquarters, divestments), thus frightening a good part of the
population. On the other hand, social coexistence has grown increasingly complicated
as the issue of independence has generated tensions between friends,
acquaintances and relatives. People have provided their bodies, risking physical
harm on this issue, while the elites of the pro-independence parties have been
drawing a rosy, all smiles and no conflict process. And things have not been
like this.

In spite of it all, the fact is that on December 22, the day after the forthcoming
elections, the problem will remain. And that some mechanism to recognize the
national diversity of Catalonia will be needed. The Spanish right and the
Socialist Party continue to equate equality with homogeneity, and do
not understand that 21st century democracy requires incorporating, as a value, the
recognition of diversity. The opposite of equality is inequality and the
opposite of diversity is homogeneity. You can pursue equality without
renouncing a recognition of diversity, as Nancy Fraser and many others have shown.

As we have witnessed, the lack of social protection capacity on the part
of the European Union, which focuses only on the unity of the market and on
prioritizing deficit reduction and debt payment, has turned the states into the
only apparent candidates for offering that protection (as Polanyi has said). But, in
many cases, this statist logic comes with the nationalist dynamics of exclusion.

In Catalonia, this xenophobic dimension has not been present at all, but
it has cut off possible alliances with popular sectors in the rest of Spain,
where only Podemos and the peripheral nationalist forces have defended the need
to recognize the Catalans’ right to decide. We are bound to continue to hear
about the Catalan problem for quite some time yet.

Editor’s note

At the time of publication, some new developments have taken place which
can seriously affect future events. On November 2, the National Court in
Madrid sentenced to jail without bail the Vice President and nine members of
the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia, all of them already dismissed from their posts under Article 155 of the Constitution. This is a
decision which has been widely perceived as disproportionate by both Spanish
and international public opinion, the political impact of which is likely to be
very negative on getting the situation in Catalonia back on track, a hope enouraged by which
the "soft" landing of Article 155. Adding
gasoline to the flames is not the best way to put out fires, especially in a
country that is currently in position 58 (at the level of Botswana and
behind Kenya) in the world rankings for judicial independence.