I’ve been commenting on Catalonia’s fight for independence for years. My commentaries range from “Catalonia: Spain’s Kosovo Problem,” October 1, 2012, to “Catalonia Continues Sisyphean Climb Towards Independence,” October 2, 2017.
The latter includes this defining observation:
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Catalonia held an independence referendum yesterday. But only the Einsteinian definition of ‘insanity’ explains why.
It’s bad enough that legal prohibitions and political machinations rendered it invalid. But this referendum followed similar referendums in 2009 and 2011, mass independence rallies in 2010 and 2012, a parliamentary declaration of sovereignty in 2013, a self-determination referendum in 2014, and a referendum masquerading as regional elections in 2015.
Catalonia held them all to no avail.
Yet came Sunday – complete with the Spanish government daring Catalonia to hold another referendum. Except that this aped the feckless spectacle of the US government daring North Korea to launch another missile.
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Sure enough, despite that record of futility, Catalonia’s parliament elected pro-independence candidate Quim Torra as president last week.
Torra has promised to draft a constitution for a future Catalan Republic and restore regional laws that were suspended by Spanish courts in the wake of Catalonia’s October 1, 2017, independence referendum in which about two million Catalans voted to secede from Spain. …
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has warned Article 155 of the constitution, which Madrid used to impose direct rule on Catalonia, ‘could be used again if necessary’, if the region’s next government does not adhere to Spanish law.
(Al Jazeera, May 14, 2018)
Torra and Catalonia’s former President Carles Puidgemont were all smiles when Torra traveled to Berlin for a symbolic passing of the gold-medal presidential sash. But I’m sure Rajoy finds nothing amusing about this idiomatic rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic. After all, Catalans merely replaced their pro-independence former president with his hand-picked puppet.
Incidentally, the fugitive Puigdemont is sitting on pins and needles while a German court considers whether to extradite him to face charges of corruption. It ruled last month that he should not be extradited on the more serious charge of rebellion. But, once back in Spanish custody, the pretext the German court used for extraditing him will be moot.
In any event, my serial homage to Catalonia is replete with instructive references to separatist movements in regions like Serbia’s Kosovo, Iraq’s Kurdistan, Italy’s South Tyrol, Belgium’s Flemish and Walloon, China’s Uyghur, and even Spain’s own Basque.
But perhaps the best way to explain the ill-fated nature of Catalonia’s fight is to pose this question: What do you suppose would happen if a Texas referendum to secede from the United States passed and its legislature then proceeded to draft a new constitution and implement laws pursuant to that referendum?
The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2006 letter that ‘if there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.’
(PBS News Hour, May 4, 2017)
Granted, the Spanish fought their Civil War not over secession but over national control. What’s more, their 1978 constitution codified the aspirations of regional communities for some degree of self-governing autonomy (a.k.a. “state of autonomies”). But Article 2 also resolved
the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation.
This is why Catalonia has no greater chance of ever becoming independent from Spain than Texas has of becoming independent from the United States.
¡Ya basta! ¡Dejen de pelearse!
Related commentaries:
Kosovo problem…
Sisyphean climb…