Catalonia: are the independence parties staging a coup? by Romaric Godin

A critical point may be reached very soon on Catalonia's independence issue, with the Spanish government likely to instigate judicial action against the new Catalan parliament, as early as this Monday, November 9. The post below is a roughish translation from the original article in French of an intelligent piece looking at the claim that a "coup" is underway in Catalonia - even Spanish government ministers are giving it this label - as the pro-independence parliamentary majority, which won the election on September 27, prepares to pass a declaration of its intention to "disconnect" from Spain. 

Romaric Godin of the French business weekly La Tribune looks in some depth and from an outsider's perspective, at a question which is sure to get some international airing in the days and weeks ahead. 

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In the next few days, the Catalan independentist crisis will move into an acute phase. The three unionist parties in the Catalan Parliament - the socialist PSC, the conservative PP and Ciudadanos -have decided to seek recourse from Spain’s Constitutional Court against the pro-independence resolution setting in motion a process of "disconnection" of Catalonia from the Spanish state. This decision could lead the sovereignist parties to begin "disobedience" towards Madrid, as the resolution itself envisages.

What Catalonia is now engaged in is a struggle between two forms of legitimacy. The first of these is that of the Catalan independentist parties asserting they have the democratic legitimacy to implement their programme of "disconnection" since they have a parliamentary majority. Opposing them, the unionist parties base their argument on the legitimacy of the Spanish constitution and the illegality of the independence process. Thus, they respond to the votes of the Catalan parliamentary majority with court proceedings, awaiting the activation of certain measures that could be used to implement decisions made by Spanish courts, such as Article 155 of the Constitution which allows Catalonia’s autonomy to be suspended.

In this struggle, the idea of the unionist parties is to present the Catalans as "rebels" and "outside the law." A number of Spanish politicians, mostly on the political right, have stated that the independentist declaration represents a "coup d’etat” in that it is a rupture with the Spanish constitutional order. In particular, unionists do not cease to point to the lack of legitimacy of the independentists’ parliamentary majority. The two Catalan lists in favour of independence –firstly Junts Pel Sí, which included the centre-right CDC, the republican left party ERC and the pro-independence civil-society groups, and secondly the CUP, a radical left secessionist party – did in fact obtain 47.8% of the votes. Independence supporters are thus 80,000 votes short of an absolute majority. And since the President of the Generalitat (the Catalan Government), Artur Mas, had proclaimed that the regional elections of 27 September were to be "plebiscitary" on the issue of independence, the sovereignist lists, despite winning a majority of seats, do not, it is argued, have a sufficient mandate to break with Spanish legality. Such a break would thus be a "coup."

These arguments, however, have weaknesses. The first is that by staging a judicial fight against a programme presented by a parliamentary majority which has simply tried to apply it, you are in effect criminalizing pro-independence ideas. Pro-independence opinions will still be permissible - on the condition that they are never applied in practice. Once these ideas reach majority support in a parliamentary assembly, they immediately become illegal. This [illegalization] is, in fact, precisely the goal of the unionist parties, who aim to demonstrate the "impossible" nature of the independence movement in order to disqualify secessionism from the next elections. The trouble is that this logic could just as easily be used to disqualify unionism since its thrust is to create a way of circumventing Catalonia’s democratic choice. An inverse situation of the "coup" could thus be turned against the unionists, revealing that the strategy is a dead end.

This "judicialization" of the Catalan question has been the path taken since 2010 by the Spanish government, most notably when they prohibited the referendum planned for 9 November, 2014. However, the strategy has not really paid off. Despite the ban on last year’s referendum [causing it to be reframed as an unofficial poll], this year’s election saw the pro-independence parties increasing their popularity, gaining 95,595 more votes than those said “yes” to an independent state in the earlier poll. The strategy is therefore hardly functional in political terms. It actually reinforces the idea that the Spanish government is still refusing to hear the message and the will of the Catalans. It feeds the feeling that Spain is contemptuous towards the "Catalan people", and this in turn, naturally creates the opportunity for independence support to grow.

As for the absence of a majority vote for the pro-independence parties, this argument is not valid either. First, because the unionists did not recognize the plebiscitary nature of the elections of 27 September. It is therefore strange to hear them today arguing that it was a plebiscite. As well, because a parliamentary majority that has the majority of seats in a democracy has a legitimate mandate to implement its programme. There are many governments in Europe that have a majority of seats without a majority of votes, and they are not subject to any challenge to their legitimacy. In fact, following the recent Portuguese election, that country’s president is trying to impose a government that is in the minority in both votes and seats. And once again, the argument can be turned against the unionist parties. For if the pro-independence parties did not have a majority vote, the three unionist parties only managed to win 39.17% of the vote on 27 September - less than the figure for just one of the pro-independence lists, Junts Pel Sí (39.55%). The fact that these three minority lists are clearly trying to prevent the operation of the Catalan Parliament and criminalise its decisions could also fall within the definition of "coup."

But above all, if these elections were plebiscitary, it was precisely because the Spanish state had banned the referendum on independence using the Constitutional Count. Thus, holding a plebiscitary election was the "least worst option", a way of giving voters a voice, but an imperfect way, as the result produced from these elections could not be clear for two reasons: for one, in this type of vote, issues unrelated to independence can play a part in the choice of a party by the voters. For example, some independence supporters might have chosen to vote for a non-independence left-wing party in order to avoid endorsing the austerity policies of Artur Mas, but who knows how they would have voted in an actual referendum? Moreover, the pro-independence vote’s shortfall from an absolute majority is so small that one cannot write off the possible significance of such a "deviation." The second element is that several parties refused to take a stand on independence as such, or said they were in favour of a legal consultation. This was the case of the left alliance CSQP and the Christian Democrat party UDC who together accounted for over 11% of votes. Again, of these 11%, how many voters would have voted yes in a dedicated referendum on independence or would have abstained? It’s impossible to say. It is therefore impossible to say that all those who did not vote for the pro-independence lists voted against independence.

So, the Catalan parliamentary majority can claim to have the right to apply its disconnection programme. Especially as the disobedience towards Madrid and the Constitutional Court has only one goal: to organize a legal referendum on independence in Catalonia, despite its illegality in Catalonia. A referendum which is the only act capable of justifying independence, or burying it. The determination of the unionists to refuse such a referendum is thus highly suspicious. Once again, it highlights a refusal to listen to the will of the Catalans and -and most gravely - it also highlights the refusal of union supporters to defend Spanish unity as part of a clear democratic process, given that there are obviously excellent arguments in favour of Catalonia’s remaining in Spain.

It is striking that the major Spanish parties reject this referendum option even though it has enabled the UK and Canada to defeat their respective independence movements, in Quebec and Scotland. The refusal of a democratic process on the Catalan question, can only further widen the gap between Catalonia and Spain, and within Catalonia, between the Catalans. This is a very dangerous strategy for the very future of Spain, which could come to be seen by an increasing number of Catalans as a "prison", further promoting the radicalization of the independence movement.

From this point of view, there are two actors in the process who seem to bear major responsibility. The first is the PSOE, the Spanish socialist party which has gone along with the position of the two right-wing unionist parties, the PP and Ciudadanos. By refusing the principle of a self-determination referendum, which has been admitted by the rest of the Spanish left, the PSOE justifies the position of the Catalan "coup". The party therefore helps make the situation more difficult.

The second responsibility is that of Europe and the rest of the world, which has been supporting the unionist position in the hope that the independence movement will abandon its plans due to lack of external support. Even the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, has recently denied that the Catalans have a right to self-determination, thus following in the footsteps of the EU and most major countries. But again, this manoeuvre seems doomed given the democratic legitimacy of the independentist parties.

In particular, the position is weak in legal terms: Ban Ki-Moon affirms that Catalonia is not a part of the "territories recognized by the authorities as "non-autonomous". But this was also the case of Scotland, Quebec and Montenegro, which were all part of UN member states and which held self-determination referendums. And, in the case of Montenegro, despite the referendum being contested by some, the UN recognized the new state without difficulty. In short, all this seems to be first and foremost intimidation, which is ultimately counter-productive. Thus, while the legal strategy of criminalization of Catalan independence seems to have created a stalemate, the attitude of the international community in sticking to this strategy is pure madness."

by ROMARIC GODIN
www.latribune.fr
04-11-2015

http://www.latribune.fr/economie/union-europeenne/catalogne-les-independantistes-font-ils-un-coup-d-etat-519618.html

The catastrophe is already inevitable, by Carlos Elordi

The post below is a very powerful blog commentary by journalist Carlos Elordi on the current Spanish political situation, which, as Elordi sees it, is about to enter into a major crisis. I thought it worthwhile to translate it to English. Elordi writes from a critical Spanish left perspective, and gives good background on the issue and a sobering prognosis - perhaps a little alarmist but to me credible. And he does, at least tentatively, point to a way out. The original version "La catástrofe ya es inevitable" can be found here.

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If the Catalan electorate does not substantially alter its current voting patterns, on September 27 this year, Spain could begin to enter a constitutional crisis whose severity would only be comparable to that of the attempted military coup in 1981. The current threat is not new; rather, it has been gradually but very visibly brewing, for all to see, over the last four years, even over the last decade. However, the two major Spanish political parties, along with the institutions they control, the leading Spanish media and a large proportion of the intellectuals who think about these issues, have decided year after year to ignore this possibility, contenting themselves with making noises about the evils of the Catalan independence movement and enshrining with almost holy status the idea that the law must simply be enforced when necessary. And now it's too late to react. A head-on collision is inevitable.

If the unified pro-independence ticket wins the Catalan elections on September 27 - and that seems the most likely outcome, although some polls doubt it – then within 6 months, the new Catalan parliament will adopt a "Law of Transition" that will, in fact, be an interim declaration of independence from Spain, pending approval of the final text, which is set down to occur a year later. The electoral programme of this ticket, known as Junts pel Sí (United for ‘Yes’), defines this sequence of actions clearly and unequivocally, and there is nothing to suggest that the groups that make up this candidacy intend to deviate an inch from their script. They have made their commitment to the voters; the voters will vote for them to so they can put it into practice.

The supposedly forceful rhetoric of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy - "there will be no independence", "the law will be enforced" – and the pathetic insistence of the opposition socialists, the PSOE, in their proposal for Spanish federalism – something they have done nothing at all to advance in the last ten years - will not alter the determination of Catalan independence supporters who since 2011 have continually demonstrated on an ever-more-massive scale the strength of their convictions as well as their rejection of everything thrown at them by Madrid. To combat this, last-minute manoeuvres are irrelevant.

A change of attitude by the central government is unthinkable. The major priority of Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP) is to win the Spanish general election [also due before the end of 2015], and any minimal gesture of compromise with the pro-independence movement would be interpreted by the more traditional part of the PP electorate, which still believes in the Francoist idea of a single homogenous Spanish nation, as an intolerable concession that would surely cause the PP to lose their votes. In perfect harmony with its Francoist ideological origins, the right has built its discourse on the basis of irreconcilable opposition to Spain’s peripheral nationalisms and any reversal of those principles would be traumatic and impossible.

Convinced about its mission – and it is probably on this issue that the PP’s stance is firmest and most ideologically intransigent - the Spanish government and Rajoy's governing party have done everything in their power to ratchet up the tension to breaking point. Earlier, when in opposition in 2006, they had opposed the Catalan reformist initiative - for a new Statute on Catalan autonomy within Spain - that the then-Prime Minister, the socialist Zapatero, had agreed with the Catalans to accept without alterations. They forced the socialist leader to back down; Zapatero’s weakness split the Catalan branch of the socialist party, the PSC, and sent it into crisis. And that led to the sharp decline of the PSC and the disappearance of a balancing force, which, had it survived, could have changed the dynamic of much that has happened in recent years.

Rajoy praised the PSC disaster as a great helping hand to his interests. And since then he has not stopped tightening the screws on Catalan nationalism. With his appeal to the Spanish Constitutional Court claiming that the already-watered-down Catalan Statute passed by the Spanish Parliament in 2006 was unconstitutional. With his implementation to the letter of the Constitutional Court ruling on the Catalan Statute which was given in 2010, consecrating the PP’s court action. With his attempts, always frustrated, to curb the growing separatist movement by means of an abusive application of the law and the processes of prosecution. And by cutting the legal powers of the Catalan government.

In 2005 a Basque nationalist challenge led by Basque President Juan Jose Ibarretxe [also seeking a referendum on independence from Spain], ended when he had to face a vote in the Spanish parliament, but had failed to see he had lost the support of much of Basque nationalism, both the radical wing and his own more conservative party. To avoid this fate, Catalan leader Artur Mas anticipated events in the Catalan sovereignty movement, and decided to ally with the whole spectrum of pro-independence groups. Rajoy gambled on splitting Mas’s party, the Convergencia i Unió alliance (CiU). Rajoy achieved this, but now the split-off section is neither an ally for him, nor scarcely of any importance at all.

What will the Spanish Prime Minister do if the pro-independence groups win on “27-S”, and begin to implement their programme? He will have no alternative but to follow through on the stance his party has taken and attack the new Catalan government with as big a stick as he can wield. That means, either suspending the power of the Catalan government, or unceremoniously applying the new Public Safety Act [the so-called “Gag Law”] recently passed with the support of the socialists, which provides that in a situation of "national interest" the Catalan authorities would be subject to central government control and the Spanish Prime Minister could take charge of regional police functions without the authorization of parliament.

Both devices would serve the same purpose. That is, to effectively remove from power the Catalan government elected just a few weeks earlier. If the putting into practice of the pro-independence manifesto might be traumatic for Catalonia, given that it would be against the wishes of the many Catalans who oppose it, the suspension of Catalonia’s own government and/or the application of the Public Safety Act would be much more so. Thus, any catastrophic scenario you can imagine is perfectly possible, whether sooner or later. A tough stand against independence could lead Rajoy to victory in the Spanish general elections, but the reactions that it could cause would make his government unviable. That risk is already leading some people to exhume the idea of ​​a bipartisan PP-PSOE coalition to govern this morass. And this, without considering the readings that this new Spanish situation would lead to at international level, and in the economic and financial sphere.

If the Spanish right was not what it is - and what more than a few people forget that it is - and if the Spanish socialist party had felt capable of playing more than a bit part when faced with major questions of state, a similar route to that followed in Scotland by the British government could have been tried in Spain. But here, that possibility was devalued and deprecated. And the idea that Catalans might have the right to decide their own future was considered anathema. A political class incapable of rising to the circumstances has led us to where we are. The Catalan crisis is yet another reason to throw that class out of power. And it is never too late for that, even if things get really bad.

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Carlos Elordi

http://www.eldiario.es/zonacritica/catastrofe-inevitable_6_412668742.html