Spain's restive northern region is talking of independence. But
besides the political obstacles, the legal ones are substantial. A
Catalan referendum poster highlighting the "Catalan lands" in red.
Recent referendums held on Catalan independence have been unofficial
and non-binding.
When, at his party's congress on March 28-29, the former Catalan
president Jordi Pujolexclaimed that "we live in a state that has no
Constitution", he touched the nerve of a Catalan nationalism that has
become increasingly belligerent. It's a nationalism that openly defies
court sentences it believes threaten the nation it claims to
represent, such as the Constitutional Court's ruling on the region's
Statute of Autonomy (or Estatut) in 2010 or more recent ones by the
Supreme Court related to language use in Catalonia.
No wonder that at the same congress, Convergència Democràtica de
Catalunya (CDC) adopted a strategy that, even though it avoids the
word "independence", strongly argues for secession. One had to wonder,
however, what effect such an absence of the rule of law must have on
the citizen, for whom the law means protection, first and foremost
against any arbitrariness on the part of the government. What does
Pujol's disciple, Catalonia's current president Artur Mas, intend to
replace Spanish law with? Or will he keep the people in a legal limbo?
The coordinator of CDC's strategy paper and Catalan government
spokesman, Francesc Homs, has now addressed issues of legality in an
April 22 interview withCatalan newspaper Ara: "In legal terms, before
a law of the Parliament of Catalonia that hypothetically contradicts a
law of the Spanish Parliament the Government [of Catalonia] will
follow the legality of the Parliament of Catalonia. And we will not be
told that it is not legal what we are doing, because we defend that we
are a nation and we understand that the democratic will expressed
peacefully by a people is above everything."
Remembering Yugoslavia
Having followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, it's tempting to remember
how differently things were done in Slovenia. This might be a
difficult comparison, but it is precisely the differences that count.
The first one, that Spain is a democracy whose Constitution was
approved by referendum, while Yugoslavia was a dictatorship whose four
successive Constitutions emanated from a one-party system, tells the
story of which legality one can legitimately rebel against, and which
not so much.
Secondly, the Constitution of the old Socialist Republic of Slovenia
was "based on the right of every nation to self-determination, which
also includes the right to secession". Catalonia's Estatut offers a
different situation, in legal terms: "The self-government of Catalonia
is based on the Constitution, and also on the historical rights of the
Catalan people…".
Thirdly, Slovenian citizens were never exposed to any legal void as a
result of the democratisation process. From September 1989 until the
declaration of independence on June 25, 1991, a series of amendments
were made to the Slovenian Constitution that bit by bit replaced
federal legislation, culminating in the so-called "independence
amendment" XCIX of February 22, 1991. Thus independence was, with a
referendum in favour, not only possible. It was also legal.
What the Catalan government offers are no duly approved legal measures
that would change present legality according to the expressed will of
the people, but a spokesman with law studies who stops at the simple
claim of "we are a nation" to describe what, for lack of a better
word, is the legal philosophy of his government.
But the comparison with Slovenia, a country Catalan separatists
themselves have often liked to see as mirroring their own situation,
can and must continue. The document with which Slovenia declared its
independence did not leave any doubt about the territorial ambitions
of the new state: the borders were not to be changed. And there are
Slovenian minorities in neighbouring states.
The Catalan vanguard
Catalan separatism, on the other hand, is trying to unify all Catalans
in one country, and it is in this sense much closer to Serb rather
than to Slovenian conceptions about statehood. Mas himself last year
voted for independence of the "Catalan nation" in an unofficial
referendum that understood the term "nation" in its most ample sense,
including every territory where Catalan is historically spoken.
However, those parts of the "nation" that are outside of Catalonia
were only asked about, but not asked; the referendum was only
organised in Catalonia proper. An indication that separatists see
Catalonia as a kind of vanguard, the part that goes independent first,
and other parts should follow.
Mas is presently cultivating a certain ambiguity and making everybody
guess what he is really aiming for: a new fiscal pact with Spain – or
independence itself. It is nevertheless his own actions and the words
of his closest associates that do not point towards a very promising
future, or present for that matter. With regards to both its internal
and its external organisation, Catalonia under Mas is at odds with
principles that are the backbone of democracy as we know it.
One thing is certainly similar: as in Yugoslavia, ethnic disputes are
taking place against the backdrop of an economic crisis.
http://iberosphere.com/2012/04/spain-news-5966/5966
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