There was something immensely sad about the exuberant faces of young Catalans demonstrating in support of their regional government’s pell-mell rush to declare independence. For them this was an emotional issue. They were fired up with enthusiasm for a Catalan state and angry at the appalling behavior of Spanish police sent to stop the weekend referendum from going ahead.
The sadness is prompted by the blithe ignorance of these young people at the tragedy that could be facing them. In a social media world where intolerance and egotism dominate and careful thought is at a premium, the demonstrations for independence are clearly prompted by a false sense of entitlement. There is also a feeling that this is almost a game. It is not. This is serious and it could become deadly serious. Less than a century ago, Spaniards fought a brutal three-year civil war in which over 600,000 people died.
The Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy has mishandled the challenge by the Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont. The law is on its side but the attempt to seize ballot papers from printing works and the heavy-handed reaction of the federal police who tried to stop the vote from taking place were mistakes. Beating unarmed demonstrators in front of now ubiquitous smartphone cameras was crass. It merely created sympathy for the independence movement. It also served to underline the Catalan government’s argument of bad treatment by Madrid.
Rajoy also gave bad advice to King Felipe VI whose broadcast to the nation after the vote offered no olive branch but simply insisted on the rightness of the law. As the country’s constitutional head, the king could have sought to reach out to the Catalans as fellow Spaniards, been emollient and pressed for negotiations that might address Catalonia’s breakaway ambitions. It was a tragic missed opportunity. By following his prime minister’s hard line, the king enabled Catalonia’s own hardliners to reject his authority as well as that of the Madrid government.
All this said, the actions of Puigdemont have been deplorable. Even if it had been legal, the referendum gave no mandate for further precipitous action. What the breakaway movement deliberately chooses to ignore is that around half of the people living in the autonomous region, the majority of them ethnic Catalans, do not want to quit the Spanish state. It is not just that their voice has not been heard but that it is being willfully disregarded.
The independence movement is asking for Brussels to mediate in the crisis and back full independence. This is surely a serious miscalculation. Even if it had the power to act against the constitution of a member state, there is no way that the European Commission would wish to become involved in a breakaway which runs against every centralization nerve in its body.
If Puigdemont and his people persist in their plan to declare independence in the coming days, Catalonia faces economic disruption of a major scale, continued unrest on the streets and the now very real possibility of violence as hardline hotheads turn to terrorism to fight the presence of the Spanish state. The 52-year Basque insurrection, which cost almost a thousand lives and left thousands injured ended with greater autonomy. Catalonia should be given the same status and this madness must end.
