Catalonia: A New Independent State in Europe?

A Debate on Secession within the European Union

Xavier Cuadras Morató

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317580546
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Catalonia: A New Independent State in Europe examines the main issues of the political process which is taking place in Catalonia today. The political confrontation between the Spanish and Catalan institutions has now reached the international arena, especially the debates concerning international recognition of a new Catalan state and its membership of the European Union (EU) and other international institutions.

There are no precedents for the secession of a region from an EU member country that could be applied to the case of Catalonia. Therefore, it is not surprising that the world has many unanswered question about the process. This volume aims to provide answers to many of these questions in a systematic and rigorous way. Why has the political scenario in Catalonia changed so radically and so rapidly? Is this new situation only temporary and support for independence is likely to vanish very soon? What role has the deep economic crisis in Catalonia and in Spain played in the process? Is a potential new Catalan state economically viable? Which are the main legal controversies about self-determination and independence between the Spanish and Catalan institutions? Would an independent Catalonia be a member of the EU?

This book will be of great use to academics and students in the field of politics and international relations, particularly those interested in European economic and political studies. It will also interest a wide segment of general readers interested in contemporary political issues.

1Introduction

Catalonia, a new state in Europe?

Xavier Cuadras-Morató

Catalonia, 2010–2015: a rapidly changing political landscape

Catalonia is a region of Spain that occupies a piece of land placed in the north-eastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, in the south-west of Europe, next to the border with France and the Mediterranean Sea. The capital and largest city of Catalonia is Barcelona, centre of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the south of Europe. Although today Catalonia is politically just another Spanish autonomous community (this is what regions are called in the Spanish institutional system), there is an increasingly important political movement favouring secession and the creation of a new Catalan independent state. This pro-independence movement has grown rapidly since 2010, going from almost political irrelevance to a pre-eminent place at the centre of the political and electoral debates, not only in Catalonia but also in the rest of Spain.

Although there have always been social organisations and political parties favouring secession in Catalonia since the restoration of democracy in Spain in 1978, opinion surveys and electoral contests systematically indicated that only a minority of the population gave support to the independence of the region until 2010. This situation changed rather dramatically after then and at the moment of writing this Introduction (October 2015) both opinion polls and electoral outcomes pointed to the existence of remarkably large support for pro-independence parties. The number of MPs in the Catalan Parliament who had been elected under a clearly explicit pro-independence platform, for instance, went from 14 (and a bit over 10 per cent of the total vote) in 2010 to an absolute majority of 72 (and almost 48 per cent of votes) in 2015.¹

The political climate in Catalonia changed very dramatically in the short period of time from 2010 to 2015. Two particular episodes might illustrate very well how important transformations in the Catalan political landscape were taking shape.

28 June 2010. After four years of legal deliberations, political manoeuvring and ceaseless rumours about the content of the final ruling, the Spanish Constitutional Court released its judgement on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, the main legislative cornerstone of Catalonia’s self-government. In a highly polemical judgement, the Court declared unconstitutional parts of the Statute and offered what many observers qualified as a very centralist interpretation of some of the most transcendental issues at stake. This was politically very controversial nonetheless, because it represented a rectification of the democratically expressed will of the people in several instances, such as in the Catalan and the Spanish Parliament, plus in a specific plebiscite held in 2006. The judgement of the Constitutional Court was not well received by the main Catalan political parties, who saw it as a downgrading of the objectives of the Statute. Many interpreted that the ruling of the Constitutional Court invalidated a painfully crafted political compromise to improve and preserve Catalan self-government within Spain. It is considered by many a turning point in the history of the political relationship between Catalonia and Spain.

The immediate consequence was a massive demonstration on the streets of Barcelona on 10 July under the slogan ‘We are a nation. We decide’. The rally, attended by more than 1.1 million people according to the local police, was organised by Omnium Cultural, an NGO devoted to promote Catalan language, culture and national identity, and had the support of the Catalan government and main political parties (with the obvious exceptions of those opposed to the Statute). The gathering, initially convoked as a popular protest against the judgement of the Constitutional Court, was also used as a pro-independence expression by a large part of the marchers.

11 September 2012. On Catalan National Day a crowd of 1.5 million people (according to local and regional authorities) invaded the centre of Barcelona under a banner with the slogan ‘Catalonia, a new State of Europe’. The rally had been organised by a new social organisation, the Assemblea National Catalana (ANC) or National Catalan Assembly, which had been created only six months before. The impact of the gathering was enormous, especially because very few observers expected such a large turnout. The then president of the Catalan government, Artur Mas, decided to call an early election (which was held in November 2012), with the declared intention of winning a sufficient majority and making the holding of a referendum (‘consultation on the political future of Catalonia’) before 2016 the centre of his political action, following the steps that had led to the holding of an independence referendum in Scotland on 18 September 2014. This was to become the central political issue in Catalonia for the three subsequent years and the beginning of a series of very complex political and legal controversies and negotiations with the Spanish political parties and government, which are fiercely opposed to the mere idea of self-determination and, needless to say, the secessionist political project.

In two years the political debate in Catalonia had veered from the appraisal of the level of self-government implied by the new Statute of Autonomy to discussion about the suitability of holding a self-determination referendum and the positioning of each party on it. The Catalan government and Parliament tried unsuccessfully to reach a political agreement with their Spanish counterparts to allow for the holding of a non-binding self-determination referendum. The forceful refusal of the Spanish institutions to this claim urged the Catalan government to look for alternative ways of convoking the electorate to the polls. Thus, on 9 November 2014 a sort of referendum took place and more than 2.3 million people voted in a so-called ‘popular consultation’, in the middle of an extremely confused political and legal situation in which the Catalan government inspired, sponsored and organised the process as a sort of massive exercise of free speech by Catalan citizenship. The Spanish government did not authorise and was fiercely oppose to it, but, nevertheless, had to tolerate it, and the Spanish Constitutional Court disallowed it, although, in the end, its prohibition was not effectively enforced. In the end, however, President Artur Mas and two members of his cabinet were summoned to court a year later for their role in staging the vote and accused of disobedience, abuse of power and embezzlement of public funds.

As a last resort to have a self-determination vote, President Artur Mas and his allies on the pro-independence camp decided to call an early election on 27 September 2015 and frame it as a de facto vote on Catalan independence. Voting for the two lists that explicitly had independence in their electoral manifestos would be the equivalent to a ‘Yes’ in a self-determination referendum. The election was regarded as very important by the electorate and participation reached a record-breaking 77 per cent, a figure not registered in any election in Catalonia since 1982. In the end it was, again, a sort of ‘imperfect referendum’, which made the interpretation of its outcome highly controversial. With 47.8 per cent of the votes going to the ‘Yes’ option, 39.1 per cent of voters to the ‘No’ and 11.5 per cent to other options whose proponents explicitly refused their being added to any of the two main contenders, picking winners at one’s own convenience becomes possible and both the pro-independence and pro-union camps claimed victory, arguing respectively that the ‘Yes’ (47.8) and the non-’Yes’ (50.6) had prevailed.

Basic questions on the Catalan process towards independence

Having apparently come out of the blue around 2010, the Catalan case is relatively unknown at the European and worldwide level. Even qualified observers of the international political scene were surprised to see, on 11 September (Catalan National Day) and for four consecutive years (between 2012 and 2015), massive peaceful demonstrations in Catalonia in support of the independence of the country. Nevertheless, the political confrontation between the Spanish and Catalan institutions is slowly reaching the global arena, especially all the debates concerning the eventual international recognition of a new Catalan state and its membership of the European Union (EU) and other international institutions. There are no precedents for the secession of a region from an EU member country that could be applied to the case of Catalonia. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are all kinds of open controversies about the whole process.

This book attempts to provide the answers to some of the main questions connected with the process of political change taking place in Catalonia since the 2010s. In short, its aims are twofold. First, examining the main reasons why the secessionist proposals have succeeded in seducing a large part of Catalan voters in a very short period of time and become the most burning political issue in the country. Contrary to what happened during the years 1978–2012, today supporting or opposing the independence of Catalonia is inevitably one of the main drivers of the political strategies of all Catalan political parties. Second, the book attempts to describe the behaviour of the different social and political agents and institutions in Catalonia and Spain and their likely paths of action in order to analyse some of the probable institutional, legal, social and economic consequences of the different political scenarios ahead.

The hypothetical independence of Catalonia, a subject that very few people thought politically relevant a few years before the 2010s, raises many questions, and the objective of the book is to provide the best possible answer to some of them. A first obvious question is why the political scenario in Catalonia has changed so radically and rapidly and also whether this situation is likely to be temporary, so that the support for independence will vanish very soon or, on the contrary, this is going to remain a permanent political problem in Spain and Europe in the years to come. On a more theoretical level, the book also explores the moral arguments that justify the support and the opposition to the secession of Catalonia from Spain. The important role of social activism and grassroots organisations in the strengthening of the independence movement and its crucial positioning in the centre of Catalan politics is also taken into consideration. The book also sheds some light on the arguments advanced by some observers about the role that the deep economic recession experienced in Catalonia and Spain from 2008 onwards may have had in this process of rapid political change and the likely consequences of possible changes of the economic situation in the political preferences of Catalan voters. Regarding the economic implications of secession, the book explores the fundamental question of whether a hypothetical new Catalan state is likely to be richer or poorer, examining the economic threats and opportunities derived from the new political situation. The book also examines under what conditions the Catalan government could organise an internationally recognised plebiscite to implement what the pro-referendum coalition has defined as the ‘Catalans’ right to decide’ and what are, in general, the available political and legal strategies that the Catalan and Spanish governments may follow in order to attain their respective objectives. More tentatively, the book also dwells on how the legal and political confrontation between the Spanish and Catalan institutions is likely to end. Finally, another example of the important issues on which the book also offers some reflections is the controversy about whether an independent Catalonia will remain a member of the EU and the European Monetary Union (EMU).

The political process taking place in Catalonia since the 2010s is quite a unique phenomenon in contemporary Europe and is likely to attract much attention in the years to come. For a start, there is no precedent for a successful secession in the context of a liberal democracy. The cases of Scotland and Quebec are the closest, but in both instances voters rejected independence in referendums which were agreed on and recognised by the British and Canadian states. This last remark makes them also radically different from the case of Catalonia, because there the Spanish state has been completely closed to the possibility of organising such a referendum. Not surprisingly, the whole process has created a lot of controversy among Spanish and Catalan political actors. Still, from a broader analytical perspective, it is open to several very different interpretations that make it an interesting phenomenon in comparative politics. According to a quite popular line of thought among those opposed to secession, what is happening in Catalonia is basically the local manifestation of the kind of populist protest and often anti-political movements that the economic crisis and its social consequences have strengthened in many European countries (here the anti-European movements in the United Kingdom, extreme left parties in Greece or extreme right parties in France and many other places are usually mentioned). The inability of the old political establishment to propose workable solutions to face the consequences of the economic and social crises has propelled the appearance of this type of movement, of which secessionism would be the main Catalan version. There are other more benign views of the phenomenon, though. According to many in the pro-secession camp, the independence movement is an unprecedented experiment in democratic Europe in which a strong popular movement pushes, in an impeccably democratic and peaceful fashion, for the redrawing of the borders in the continent and the construction of a new state, which is a rather revolutionary concept in the political history of mankind. While the first interpretation of the independence movement emphasises its parochial scope and emotional character, the second stresses its radically democratic orientation and the universal scope of its endeavour.

What is Catalonia? National identity and political self-determination in a democratic context

Catalonia: a short description

Catalonia occupies a territory of a little more than 32,000 square kilometres, which makes it a slightly bigger place than Belgium. This corresponds to only 6.3 per cent of Spanish land and contrasts with the much larger share of the Spanish population (15.7 per cent) that it represents, which amounts, in absolute terms, to more than 7.5 million people. As many as 13 countries in the EU have a smaller number of inhabitants. Catalonia is a very densely populated territory within the EU context (234 inhabitants per square kilometre). If it were an independent country, it would be the fourth most densely populated in the EU, after the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The distribution of the Catalan population is extremely concentrated around the metropolitan area of Barcelona, where almost two-thirds of the population live in a territory that represents less than 8 per cent of the Catalan total.

If there is a phenomenon that characterises the demographic dynamics during the last century in Catalonia, it is immigration. Catalonia has experienced three important waves of immigration since the beginning of the twentieth century. The first two, which took place during the periods 1901–1930 and 1951–1975, brought to Catalonia a large number of immigrants from the rest of Spain. A good indicator of the importance of this phenomenon is that in 1970 the share of the population residing in Catalonia who had been born in other regions of Spain reached a striking maximum value of 36.6 per cent. The third and most recent wave, from 2000 to 2007, has a remarkably different nature, at least on three different accounts. First, it was considerably shorter and ended rather abruptly with the start of the economic crisis in 2008. Nevertheless, it was quantitatively also very intense and was the main reason behind a population growth of 17.6 per cent in seven years. This is more than three times the percentage growth experienced by the Catalan population during the period 1981–2000 (5.1 per cent). Finally, and most noticeable, immigration was now essentially coming from the rest of the world, especially Latin American countries, Morocco and Romania. As a consequence of these strong immigration flows, the percentage of the population residing in Catalonia who had been born in countries other than Spain went from 6.1 per cent in 2001 to 17.1 per cent ten years later. There is little doubt that immigration is a very important element in the configuration of Catalan contemporaneous society and also that it has important political and electoral implications.²

Catalonia has its own language, Catalan, a Romance language close to French, Italian, Occitan or Spanish. It is also spoken in other Spanish regions such as the Balearic Islands and Valencia. The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia recognises Catalan as the ‘own language’ of the country. It is also, together with Spanish, the official language of Catalonia. Moreover, it is actively encouraged by Catalan authorities in education and the mass media. Partly thanks to these public promotion policies almost everyone in Catalonia claims to understand Catalan (94.3 per cent) and Spanish (99.8 per cent), although the number of people claiming to speak Catalan is lower (80.4 per cent).³ The social use of Catalan today is decisively shaped by three very different factors. On the one hand, the education system has effectively succeeded in guaranteeing a good command of both Catalan and Spanish by all children in Catalonia. On the other hand, Catalan use in some areas of the public administration (justice, for instance) is still almost residual (less than 13 per cent of judicial sentences are written in Catalan). This is due, at least partly, to the opposition of successive Spanish governments to implementing effective measures to promote and guarantee the knowledge of the language among public servants. Moreover, there is the influence of the important immigration flows arriving in Catalonia in the last century. Mainly as a consequence of the latter, Spanish is today predominant in Catalonia (more than 50 per cent of the population declare it as its main language), especially in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. As in other places in Europe (the example of Belgium comes immediately to mind), languages are a politically controversial issue. For one thing, the Catalan language has traditionally been considered by Catalan nationalists to be one of the main identity elements of the country. Additionally, some sectors of Spanish society have often regarded with suspicion public policies intended to promote the use of Catalan in education, public administration or the mass media. Where Catalan nationalism sees policies of protection and promotion of a minority language, Spanish nationalists see ‘nation-building’ measures geared towards political objectives. In more practical terms, though, the similarities between Catalan and Spanish reduce a great deal the occurrence of conflicts in everyday life.

Catalonia is economically the most important region of Spain, accounting for 19.8 per cent of total gross domestic product (GDP). It is also a relatively rich region, so that the level of GDP per capita is substantially higher (23.7 per cent) than average. Catalonia is also a relatively rich region within the EU (its GDP per capita is 15 per cent higher than average). With a volume that reaches 25.1 per cent of the Spanish total, Catalonia is the export powerhouse of Spain. Tourism is an important economic activity as well. Catalonia receives over 28 per cent of all international visitors going to Spain, a country where this p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: Catalonia, a new state in Europe?
• 2. Catalonia at the crossroads: Analysis of the increasing support for secession
• 3. Negotiations and political strategies in the contest for Catalan independence
• 4. The morality of secession: Secessionist and antisecessionist arguments in the Catalan case
• 5. The secession of Catalonia: Legal strategies and barriers
• 6. The economic debate: Opportunities and threats from independence
• 7. An independent Catalonia as a member state of the European Union? Terra ignota
• Index