Nothing less than 21.37% of the citizens of Barcelona took part yesterday in a non-official referendum on the independence of Catalonia. This is a very high figure considering that the vote is not official and has no legal value: it means that a lot of people thinks important to support at least the right to decide of the Catalan nation. Percentages of support for each option are not yet known but we can easily assume that, as opponents of independence (except a handful of fascist provocateurs who showed up with banners opposing independence and eventually voted anyhow), will typically shun the event, victory for the independentist option is almost guaranteed.
Do you believe that an independent Catalonia will ever happen?
ReplyDeleteIt's not a matter of belief but of willpower (and a bit of luck).
ReplyDeleteCatalonia has been independent in the past, mostly until the 300 years ago, when the War of Spanish Succession ended with its self-rule. There's no particular reason why Estonia or Eritrea can be independent and not Catalonia, really. Catalonia is larger by population and GDP than any other Baltic countries or the ex-Yugoslavian republics (except Serbia probably but only by population). It's larger and richer than Ireland and larger but not probably richer than Switzerland or Austria.
The only buts can come from the geopolitical environment:
The main issue is the persistence of Spain as unitary state, which is, as so many other geopolitical stravaganzas (Belgium, Yugoslavia...) a creation of France and Britain, part of the European status quo. France specially is very keen on keeping artificial states because itself is pretty much artificial and easy to fragment.
Also Spain (unlike post-Cold War Yugoslavia) is strategical because of its control of the Strait of Gibraltar and the location of two key US (Morón, Rota) and one key British base (Gibraltar). For those reasons the big powers are interested in keeping the status quo, the stability.
But nothing is forever and, after the decolonizations of Africa and Asia first, of East Europe later, it must soon come the time of West Europe. Scotland, Catalonia, the Basque Country... are particularly well placed for independence, it's just a matter of opportunity, for instance, we could only benefit from Spain collapsing in a dept implosion, right?
I don't think there is any reason to doubt that Catalonia could be viable economically as an independent state. But, the question of whether it would do so or not is a little different.
ReplyDeleteOne important factor is the depth to which there is a sense of national difference, another is the degree to which the way to do a geographic divide is clear, a third is the extent to which either side sees an advantage to unity, a fourth is the extent to which the international community accept it.
International community acceptance would surely be forthcoming if a division took place by mutual consent (a la the Velvet Divorce of Czechoslovakia, or the break up of the Soviet Union's first tier Republics). If both successor states were part of the E.U. (whose constitution would seem better suited to managing that these days), so much the better, since the impact of the transition would be smaller.
On the other hand, if the Catalans can secure all they want within the Spanish state as an autonomous region, why bother? The Swiss have a fragile sense of multinationality, but are happy enough remaining their federation anyway, because they have sufficient autonomy to be happy. Catalan nationalism doesn't seem to have been as intense historically as Basque nationalism, for example, or Irish Republicanism.
Belgium seems to be a case with far less sense of common benefit from unity than Spain. The distaste seem mutual, and but for the difficulty of dealing with Brussels, it seems they might have split already.
In Spain, my outsider's perception is that the Catalans tend to favor independence, but the central government doesn't want to cede it, although it isn't clear how much of that desire is the desire to be a big country, how much of that is national identity and pride, and how much is economic benefit that flow from Catalonia to the rest of Spain. My perception is that the rest of Spain wants to keep Catalonia more than the U.K. cares about keeping Scotland, despite the fact that Scotland has more cultural similarity to the rest of the U.K. perhaps than Catalonia does to the rest of Spain.
"One important factor is the depth to which there is a sense of national difference"
ReplyDeleteThere is. Furthermore there is a real sense that Catalans are not accepted as equals in Spain. The lack of Catalan prime ministers speaks volumes on its own.
"another is the degree to which the way to do a geographic divide is clear"
The boundaries of Catalonia as such are very clear. Another thing would be the Catalan Countries but that's not something that Catalan nationalists would push, as it's up to each of the various such countries.
I'm not sure anyhow why would this issue be a problem. The historical/ethnical boundaries of Ukraine are not clear, yet Ukraine is a sovereign country. Same for Croatia, etc.
"a third is the extent to which either side sees an advantage to unity"
IMO this only matters for Catalans. Spaniards will always favor "unity" (forced annexation) as long as they make up the majority and can therefore control power.
"a fourth is the extent to which the international community accept it".
Trivial. Other states will accept consumated facts. Maybe not all but that's something to work by diplomatic means a posteriori, not a priori.
Whatever the case, both Spain and France would have to either accept or invade an independent Catalonia and Basque Country because nearly all communications with the peninsula go by our countries, not just roads and trains: Barcelona and Bilbao are major ports as well (industrial hubs, etc.)
Invaded we are already, so...
I do not really think you have the right understanding of the situation anyhow: what matters is what the Basque and Catalan people want, there is no way to defeat a determined willpower, not in a thousand years.
"If both successor states were part of the E.U. (whose constitution would seem better suited to managing that these days), so much the better, since the impact of the transition would be smaller".
Personally I'd rather join ALBA than EU but I understand what you mean. More worrisome for me is NATO (rejected in referendum by Basques and Catalans) but EU can also also a problem for Basque political trends. I'd rather be part of the Schengen and Eurozone area but out of EU, because the restrictions on public economy are excessive. A sovereign nation needs to be able to control its own economy.
Ideally, the process would happen inside of a larger pan-European socialist revolution... but obviously we are not going to wait for that.
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ReplyDelete"On the other hand, if the Catalans can secure all they want within the Spanish state as an autonomous region, why bother? The Swiss have a fragile sense of multinationality, but are happy enough remaining their federation"....
Do not compare: Switzerland is almost a direct democracy of 8 million people, Spain is a parliamentarian monarchy of absolutist-jacobin-fascist design of 45 million. We could indeed apply the Swiss model to the Basque Country alone but Spain is a totalitarian imperialist structure, where 20-30 million of Spaniards will always impose their will over the smaller nations, if these are not sovereign, if these cannot walk out of any negotiation.
"Catalan nationalism doesn't seem to have been as intense historically as Basque nationalism, for example, or Irish Republicanism".
Ask them. They are indeed somewhat softer in their ways because they are Mediterranean and Latin but whatever the case, ask them. At least a million people (out of 6 million) gathered a few months ago in Barcelone demanding self-rule. Do you think that is not "intense"? Do they need to resort to armed struggle for you to understand? WTF!
"Belgium seems to be a case with far less sense of common benefit from unity than Spain".
Actually not so much because in Belgium both component nationalities are balanced (and as self-ruling as possible). They resemble more the Swiss case, where the various peculiarities and self-rules are respected.
The real problem stems where there is a larger dominant nation that oppresses the peripheral ones, as happens in Britain, France and Spain (and formerly in the USSR, now in Russia, China, Turkey, Iran also). In these cases the imperial ethnicity has the means to keep "unity" by pseudo-democratic means (as they are majority in the empire) but the sense of oppression and the lack of understanding is only increased for that very reason.
All conditions accumulate for a quasi-perpetual instability, even under "democracy" (for the imperialist nation, as the smaller ones are not really allowed any choice or self-rule).
"My perception is that the rest of Spain wants to keep Catalonia more than the U.K. cares about keeping Scotland"...
That's because the British are more pragmatic and less Jacobin (surely Jacobinism, as Fascism and Catholicism, is rooted in the Roman concept of state, I imagine).
"Spain is a parliamentarian monarchy of absolutist-jacobin-fascist design of 45 million."
ReplyDeleteSurely you don't assert that Spain's parliamentary monarchy today is absolutist, whoever designed it, or that Spain has more than faint echoes of WWII style facism.
I'm not quite sure what "Jacobinism" means in this context and had always thought of it as French rather than Roman. Is there specific features of the Spanish state that fit this model? "In modern American politics, the term Jacobin is often used to describe extremists of any party who demand ideological purity.", such as the Tea Party, pushing for extreme positions within the American Republican party, and secondarily as a form of extreme leftism (almost synonomous with communism) but this clearly isn't what you mean in this context.
Do you mean by Jacobinism a centralization of power in the central government at the expensive of local government? Sort of the opposite of federalism?
The design is absolutely absolutist, by origin and concept. Don't let yourself be deceived there is nothing really democratic nor federalist in modern Spain.
ReplyDeleteJacobinism is a term we use (in Spain and France at least) for a hyper-centralized monolithic state such as France (or Turkey). Spain between the War of Spanish Succession and the "coffee for all" decentralization of the 1980s, with the ultra-brief exception of the Federal Republic of 1873 has been such a hyper-centralized kind of state (all the time because of French influence but also because the centralist state was rooted deeply into the Castilian political structure).
The main exception were the four Basque provinces, which retained full self-rule (up to the point of the customs toll being placed looking to Spain, not towards France or the sea) until 1833, when the "liberals" decided to suppress it starting the Carlist Wars (the Carlist pretenders never had other serious support but the Basque provinces trying to retain self-rule). Because of the wars and then nationalism, Basque self-rule was never totally destroyed but it was so diminished that it's just a pale shadow of what we used to have. We retain autonomy for taxation and budget but being submitted to Spanish and EU laws, it's not like we can really exert it in full democracy.
Another partial brief exception was the autonomy statute of Catalonia between 1933 and 1939. On this the modern Spanish regional "autonomies" are inspired but while the Catalan statute of 1933 was exceptional, something proper of a nation within another nation, now every other region with a mild peculiarity has that and more - that's why it's called "coffee for all", as the distinctions between regions of Spain and nations under Spain has been blurred to a point that is insulting (for the nations).
There is no concept of Spain as made of constituent nations. That's because it was forged as a dynastic alliance (plus conquest) and national autonomy was only an obstacle to such "grand project". The case of France is similar, though France had more success in erasing ethnic peculiarities, although Brittany and the Basque Country (and I understand that Alsace and also to some extent the brave island of Corsica, cradle of modern democracy) still resist the Jacobin French imperialism.
Just to clarify, as it seems that in the USA political terms always seem to have a different meaning (you say liberal to mean socialdemocrat, libertarian to mean liberal and, it seems, jacobin to mean extremist). From the French Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete"Plus tard, et aujourd’hui encore, le jacobinisme renvoie à une conception centralisatrice de la République française, faisant de Paris le lieu essentiel d’exercice du pouvoir, à la différence de ce qui existe dans les pays fédéralistes ou qui du moins ont fait de fortes dévolutions de pouvoir aux entités régionales et locales. Le terme jacobinisme est donc couramment utilisé aujourd'hui, par glissement de sens, comme synonyme de centralisme. Voir aussi parisianisme".
Google translates: "Later, and still today, Jacobinism refers to a centralized design of the French Republic, making Paris the essential place of exercise of power, unlike that found in federal countries or at least have strong devolution of power to regional and local entities. Jacobinism is the term commonly used today, shift in meaning as a synonym of centralism. See also Parisianism".
We do not have the idea of Jacobins as revolutionary extremists, Anarchists and Communists have long displaced Jacobins to a very moderate and irrelevant place in this sense (and anyhow they were more like the center-left, there was a left to the left of the Jacobins in the French Revolution: the montagnards and sans-coulottes). Would it not be because they lent their name to an extreme centralism such as the one in style in France since the Revolution and copied by many other states in the name of "democracy" and "equality", they would occupy a very anecdotal place in our imaginary.
The case of France is similar, though France had more success in erasing ethnic peculiarities, although Brittany and the Basque Country (and I understand that Alsace and also to some extent the brave island of Corsica, cradle of modern democracy) still resist the Jacobin French imperialism.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget North Catalonia (aka Rousillon), annexioned to France since the Treaty of the Pyrenees(1659).
Like the Basque country, Catalonia is divided into two states, excluding the Gasconian Val d'Aran, which was part of the anicent Crown of Aragon but not of Catalonia. In fact, the Nueva Planta decrees issued by Philip V of Bourbon didn't extend to that territory.
I understand from other discussions that North Catalonia has been by now pretty much absorbed into French language and identity, as most of Occitania. But you tell me if I am wrong.
ReplyDeleteI've never been in North Catalonia, although some day I'll go there. You're right in that they've been Frenchified, specially as regarding to language, but they still keep the Catalan flag or "senyera", which is even displayed at bullfights.
ReplyDelete