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Opinion

The Catalan crisis

The crisis mirrors Europe’s anti-democratic slide, Spanish government and EU are singing the same tune.

The Catalan independence referendum, last Sunday, is a watershed in Europe, just not in Spain. The repression ordered by right-wing Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, immediately summoned up memories of the brutality of the years of the Francisco Franco dictatorship, which ended following his death in 1975 and a transition to parliamentary democracy.

Designed to brutalise the core of the Catalan independence movement and to intimidate others from voting—whether yes or no—Rajoy's repression has transformed a contested question of regional secession into a deeper clash between authoritarianism and democracy. Some 2.3 million—or 42 per cent of the electorate—did manage to vote, and over 90 per cent of them said yes to the Catalan regional government declaring independence from Spain.
The response from Rajoy's minority government in Madrid was contemptuous. He dismissed the referendum, a remarkable organisational feat, as a "mere dramatisation" and praised the Guardia Civil national police for acting "serenely." President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, hinted at taking the referendum result to the regional parliament, with its pro-independence majority, to act upon this week. He also appealed for mediation with Madrid, through the European Union as interlocutors. But the European Commission, on Monday, threw its support wholly behind the Spanish government, saying: "Under the Spanish Constitution, yesterday's vote in Catalonia was not legal. For the European Commission, as President [Jean-Claude] Juncker has reiterated repeatedly, this is an internal matter for Spain that has to be dealt with in line with the constitutional order of Spain." It went on to declare for the "unity and stability" of the Spanish state and, rather than condemning the repression, voiced abstract pieties about violence in general. In Britain, the Foreign Office made no reference to violence and only affirmed that it sees the Rajoy government as a strong ally. This stance was in marked contrast to that of left-wing Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn and Scottish National Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, who both condemned the repression on Sunday.
On the other side of the Atlantic, US President, Donald Trump, appeared at a joint press conference with Rajoy on September 26, before the referendum, where he declared that the Catalan succession would be "foolish." Previously the United States' official position was non-committal, holding that it was an internal matter to be decided by Spain. But Trump staked out support for Rajoy and the central government, saying, "I'm for a united Spain," and claimed that if "accurate" polls were carried out, "you'd find out people of Catalonia love their country, they love Spain."
The contrasting political responses are a reflection of how the Catalan independence issue is now bound up with the much wider clash between popular democratic sentiment and increasing authoritarianism across Europe. It is precisely because the Rajoy government refused to allow a referendum legally under the Spanish law that the Catalan regional government was forced to organise its own. And it has been on account of the refusal of right-wing governments, and of the centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), in Madrid, to accommodate calls for greater autonomous powers for the Catalan administration that demands for independence have grown.
A 2006 law to extend those powers was partially struck down and then not implemented. On taking office in 2011, in the depths of the Eurozone crisis, Rajoy spurned any move to compromise with Catalan aspirations. Public opinion in Catalonia is divided on actually declaring independence. But there is overwhelming opposition to the repression and support for the right to self-determination, which means being allowed to vote on it. The hard line taken by Rajoy, leading to dramatic escalation, is deeply rooted.
It is less than democratic and made major concessions to the old Francoist right as a price for a transition to democracy that would leave their power and wealthy interests as little touched as possible. One feature was to grant some autonomy for minority nations in the Spanish state and to declare the inviolable unity of Spain making it impossible, in practice, to have a legal referendum on secession. Another was to keep the monarchy that Franco had re-established as a focus for continuity of reactionary, militarist, and monarchist forces that had run Spain since the end of the civil war in 1939.
The arrangement held for decades. The center-left PSOE provided an incorporating mechanism bringing the militant labour movement of the 1970s under control. The right-wing People's Party (PP) held together the descendants of Francoism with modern neoliberal business interests. The two parties dominated—with alliances, with regional parties—and entry into the EU and NATO was meant to copper-fasten a "normal" European twin-party system.
Then came the Great Recession of 2008, and with it, the eruption of movements against austerity. One casualty—as in Greece, which also underwent a similar transition to truncated democracy in the 1970s—was the apparently stable two-party system. Both the PP and PSOE lost huge support with the rise of the anti-system Podemos party, its imitation on the right, Ciudidanos, and radical regional parties, such as those powering the independence movement in Catalonia.
A second was the unravelling of the constitutional settlement of 1978. A massive corruption scandal surrounding the royal family, four years ago, peeled away the constitutional gilding to reveal something of the corrupt vested interests it protected. This is what lies behind the repressive line taken by Rajoy, with all its risks and escalation of the conflict.
It is symptomatic of processes across Europe. For two years, there has been rhetoric from Brussels about the anti-democratic outrages of the right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary. The implication was that this was an Eastern European problem. But France is still under a state of emergency. Emmanuel Macron will, this month, try to incorporate those authoritarian measures into ordinary French law. And legislation by presidential decree, not National Assembly vote, has become normalised in Paris. The turn to authoritarian methods is a response to popular democratic feeling for radical change from the failed neoliberal model across Europe.
There are people on the left in Spain, including Catalonia, who are for independence and others against. That is a matter of debate on the left. But what cannot be up for debate is defending democracy, the right to vote on self-determination, and the principle that a nation that oppresses another—as Spanish police have done in Barcelona—cannot itself be free.
(The writer is a leading activist in Britain and connected with "Morning Star." The views expressed are strictly personal.)

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