Xavier Vilà
Independence protestors, Barcelona, October 2017.
Voting in Catalonia may be dangerous for your health.
On October 1, almost 900 people were injured by Spanish riot police while trying to cast a referendum vote on independence—a vote that the Spanish judiciary had deemed illegal.
The Spanish military police, dressed in gear and sporting Darth Vader-like helmets, stormed polling stations firing rubber bullets, swinging truncheons, and taking away ballot boxes while hitting, kicking, and pulling unarmed citizens by their hair on their way out.
When they were done, they retreated to the cruise ship that housed them, docked in the Barcelona harbor by order of the Spanish government. They shared photos on social media showing pride on their accomplishment.
They had beaten the elderly and women, among others. They had scared Catalan citizens away from the polls.
Nonetheless, those citizens who voted despite the police repression did so overwhelmingly for independence. According to the Catalan government, around 700 thousand people were denied their right to vote because the Spanish police sealed around 400 polling stations. Reports say that 90 percent of 2.26 million votes cast in the referendum were in support of separation from Spain.
The commotion in Barcelona, the Catalan capital, sent shock waves and drew condemnation from around the world.
“I urge the Spanish authorities to ensure thorough, independent and impartial investigations into all acts of violence,” wrote the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “I call on Spain to accept without delay the requests by relevant U.N. human rights experts to visit.”
But the Spanish government considers the police intervention “proportionate” to the situation it faced. Spain claims the Catalan government has violated the law in seeking to advance towards an independent republic, since the Spanish constitution, in its article 2, states that the country is “indivisible.”
The Catalan government claims it has a popular mandate, going back to the last regional elections in 2015, when a rainbow of political forces, from the center right to the far left, agreed to run under the same banner in pursuit of independence. The coalition won, snaring 72 out of 135 MP’s in the Catalan Parliament.
Since then, the Catalan legislative body has prepared Catalonia for independence, writing and sanctioning the referendum and transitory law, while asking the Spanish government for a political negotiation.
Madrid refused to talk, and here we are.
The Catalan people governed themselves for centuries, generating pride in their culture and language. The Catalan Parliament was first assembled in 1283, and the current Catalan president is the 130th person to hold that office. In 1714, Catalonia lost its sovereignty during the War of Spanish Succession.
During the 20th century, Catalonia endured two military dictatorships along with the rest of Spain. And as the last center of Republican control during the Spanish Civil War, Catalans paid a heavy price after 1939 when Franco’s fascist government took control. Franco banned the Catalan language, pushing it to the brink of extermination.
When Franco died, conditions were so grim that Catalonia voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Spanish Constitution. It was 1978 and Catalonia was granted a flawed self-governing authority that never truly acknowledged its historic roots.
Nonetheless, during these last 40 years, Catalonia has been instrumental in Spanish governance, establishing coalitions with both the major Spanish center right and center left political parties. The region is a net contributor both to Spain and the European Union—with Catalonia generating some 20 percent of Spain’s output, some $18.7 billion per year.
In 2003, the Spanish Socialist party committed itself to supporting any new law concerning self-government coming from Catalonia. By writing a piece a legislation that avoided mention of the word “nation” to identify Catalonia, the Catalans created a bill that passed both the Catalan and Spanish Parliaments, and was approved by the Catalan citizens in a legal and binding referendum in 2006.
But that text was too much for the Partido Popular, the major center-right political party now in power in Spain. The party promoted a nationwide campaign against the Catalan law, claiming that it was unconstitutional. The Spanish Supreme Court took the case and in 2010, the judiciary’s body president, a member of the PP party himself, ruled the law unconstitutional.
That was the tipping point for millions of Catalans, who felt that they had played by the Spanish rules only to be fooled at the end. During every subsequent Catalan National Day millions of people have demonstrated in the streets, asking for a political conversation that the Spanish government refuses to have.
The events of October 1 are a potential game changer. Article 11 of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights reads that “everyone has the right to freedom of expression.” Article 12 states that “everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association at all levels, in particular in political, trade union and civic matters . . . .”
Millions of Catalans were denied these rights during the referendum on independence, no matter the judicial interpretation of the Spanish law that applies to this issue. The European project is now at stake over the right of self-determination demanded by much of the Catalan population and the rigidity of a nation unwilling to address it.
Europe, therefore, must orchestrate a high level political mediation towards a legal and binding referendum that settles the dispute once and for all. The idea of Europe would suffer a fatal blow otherwise. Europe cannot look the other way. This is not an internal Spanish matter anymore.
Xavier Vilà is a Catalan journalist and analyst who lives in Washington, D.C.