Catalan elections: independence back on the menu?

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Last week, the Spanish region of Catalonia voted in its regional elections to fill its Parliament. Although many have wanted the region to become independent for years, it was the first time a majority of the popular vote was won by pro-independence parties. With the amount of seats they gained also up, it keeps Catalan independence on the agenda for the foreseeable future. If a legal referendum happens there before a Scottish one, what happens between Madrid and Barcelona could have significant consequences for the relations between London and Edinburgh.

74 seats were won by pro-independence parties, giving them a majority of 13 over pro-union parties. The leaders of the national government in Madrid, the centre-left PSOE party, were in fact the biggest party in the new Catalan parliament, but they have little in common with the other pro-Spain parties beyond their support of the union. These include the hard-right Vox party — an outwardly nationalist group that wants to ban pro-separatist parties — which became the biggest representation of the pro-Spain right-wing. 

But the two big independence parties don’t agree on how to get there, which might throw a spanner in the works. The left-wing PSC got the most pro-independence seats, and they favour gradually building up support for independence (taking inspiration from Nicola Sturgeon’s management of Scotland’s independence bid).

They’ve managed to dislodge Junts, who are still more in support for declaring independence outside of the Spanish legal system, as they were punished for doing after a nationally unrecognised referendum in 2017. They have similar amounts of seats and not much love between them, so coordination might be tricky.

Also not on their side was the turnout: only 54% of those able to vote, did, down 25 percentage points on 2017. Although the pandemic did its part to suppress the numbers at the ballot box, political disaffection and the winter weather also kept people away. 

Potential Catalan independence has big implications for Scotland. In 2017, the then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Catalonia wouldn’t maintain EU membership from having been part of Spain, and so would have to reapply for it, including Scotland in his explanation.

When Croatia joined the EU in 2013, it had started its application in 2003, and it involved meeting all EU standards and getting approval from all EU members. This means that Spain could block Catalonia’s entry if it wanted, and Scotland’s too if it wanted to make an example of separatist regions for Catalonia’s benefit. 

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Catalonia has had a long and sometimes bloody history with rule from Castile, Spain’s larger original kingdom. It stopped having any independence from Madrid in 1714, when Catalonia (as part of the regional kingdom of Aragon) backed the wrong horse in the War of Spanish Succession. Their independent parliament, called the Corts, was dissolved by Madrid. The region, including its language and culture, was then brutally suppressed during the lifetime of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship until his death in 1975.

It was only in 1978 that the region regained its own parliament, and steadily more and more powers have been transferred to Catalan lawmakers. In 2006, it was recognised as a ‘nation’ within Spain, although much of this was then reversed by the Constitutional Court in 2010, who said that these ideas of nationhood had “no legal effect”. Some say this was the trigger for the decade that followed. 

Others say it initially grew out of the 2008 financial crisis. Some Catalans saw Madrid using their comparatively prosperous economy as a cash cow to bail out other regions of Spain ravaged by unemployment. It’s difficult to prove this and many economists disagree that Catalonia would have been better off independent, but it’s an argument often heard. Maybe cynically, some suggest it was a way for past Catalan president Artur Mas to explain his deeply unpopular austerity measures.

The fact that its rich artistic culture has been suppressed over its history has also been a factor. Future Catalan president Quim Torres accused Franco in 2012 of committing “cultural genocide” with almost complete suppression of Catalan-language works during the dictatorship. 

The elections keep independence for Catalonia firmly on the agenda, despite a decade of division. That division reached a peak in 2017, when the Junts-led government held a referendum that was considered illegal by Spanish national law because it was not endorsed by the government in Madrid. Authorities loyal to the national authorities were ordered to confiscate ballot boxes, and there were reports of violence as polling stations were dismantled.

Nine Catalan members of parliaments were jailed afterwards for ‘sedition’, conspiring against the nation. The Catalan president at the time, Carles Puigdemont, managed to flee the country before he could be brought to trial. He is currently in Belgium, where he is working as a Member of the European Parliament. As an MEP, he is currently beyond the arm of the Spanish legal system, although MEPs are voting on whether to remove this immunity.

The Spanish government from Madrid has continued to put pressure on the pro-separatist forces since 2017, although later centre-left governments have been more conciliatory than the earlier centre-right one. In the wake of the referendum, Madrid dissolved the independent authority of the Catalan parliament for the first time since its reestablishment. Those nine independence leaders were jailed for sedition. Then, the Spanish Supreme Court forced the resignation of President Torra in 2020, after he refused to take down a pro-independence symbol from a government building. He was given a ban of 18 months on holding public office. 

Although the parliament may hold a majority for pro-separatist parties, the opinion polls on independence are much closer. They show a slight trend towards remaining in Spain: in February, ‘No’ had a 2% lead ahead of ‘Yes’. The last time a major opinion poll put Yes ahead was in autumn 2019, at a lead of 4.6%. These are, however, still very close, and the most recent election results ensures that the issue will remain in the headlines. It also means that the fight for an independent Catalonia still has plenty of appetite among significant parts of the local voter base. 

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The Scottish National Party-led Scottish Parliament, meanwhile, is making the case for a second independence referendum from the UK. It believes Brexit had fundamentally changed the proposition of staying in the UK. Scotland’s voters broke 62% to 38% in favour of remaining in the EU. Many believed at the time of the Catalan referendum that the EU would welcome Scotland back quickly as a snub to the rest of the UK — in spite of Juncker’s comments. But one of Spain’s bargaining chips is that they would refuse Catalan membership of the EU, and that of any other separatist region that wished to join. That would include Scotland.

Not only Spain could make the chief goal for an independent Edinburgh difficult. Professor and barrister Marc Weller uses the example of Kosovo, formerly of Serbia. Kosovo has been trying to gain accession to the EU for years but is rebuffed by other nations concerned about their own independence and minority nationalist movements. These include Spain, Cyprus (which has an unofficial Turkish-supported state in the north), Greece, Romania, and Slovakia (who all have ethnic minorities that might want to join their compatriots across the existing borders). Garret Martin adds the French Corsicans, the Belgian Flemish, and Italian Lombards to that list. 

None of these countries want to let Catalonia or Scotland set a precedent, and Weller admits that Scotland might need the help of London to get dispensation. Whether or not that happens might depend on the relationships between London and Edinburgh and London and Brussels, both of which are less than cheery at the moment.

Things might be easier for Scotland if somehow Catalonia does become an independent EU member, but it’s not just Spain’s mind that Edinburgh would have to change: every member gets an equal vote on who gets in. If Edinburgh becomes independent before Barcelona does, then Madrid and other capitals could well make an example of them to deter Catalan independence for good.

The EU themselves, meanwhile, aren’t in a better place to help the Catalans or the Scots. The Lisbon Treaty, the document that replaced the rejected EU Constitution in 2009, explicitly states that the EU cannot get involved in matters that deal with “territorial integrity” (whether a piece of land belongs to a state or not). What’s more, the Prodi doctrine (named after a former European Commission President), states that any region that separates from an EU member must be thrown out of the EU as well and reapply for membership on its own merits. They can advise, but not guide.

Catalonia, like the rest of Spain, is very pro-EU, and the knowledge that Spain would block their potential membership to maintain the principle is quite a gamble if it decides to secede anyway. This isn’t great news for Scotland either: time will tell if that inconvenience makes a difference in a second independence referendum there.