Spain: Catalonia’s demand for independence

Catalonian independence is the will of the people, said El Periódico de Catalunya in an editorial. Last week, on the anniversary of the Catalonians’ 1714 defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession, more than 1 million Catalonians—in a province of just 7.5 million people—formed a human chain that stretched from the French border in the Pyrenees all the way to the southern tip of Catalonia. Called the Catalonian Way Toward Independence, the event was modeled after the Baltic Way, the mass protest of 1989 that spurred Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to break away from the Soviet Union. The huge turnout shows that “even if the independence movement was once driven by a party, now it is driven by the people.” It’s not a political movement, “but an emerging social movement.” Like the Basque people, Catalonians have our own language and culture, yet we don’t enjoy the same autonomy over our finances and laws.

Look, I don’t want to see Catalonia go, said Ignacio Escolar in El Diario. With vibrant Barcelona at its heart, the province is an economic engine for all of Spain. But “I have no arguments to oppose the democratic right to decide” on self-determination—whether for Catalonia or Quebec or Scotland. “In a free country, in Europe, in the 21st century, neither laws nor tanks alone can sustain a state.” The government can’t just “stick its head in the sand” and pretend that Catalonian separatism will go away if lawmakers refuse to authorize a referendum. But are we so sure there is a genuine pro-independence majority? asked novelist Javier Cercas in El País. Right now, living in Catalonia is like “living under a kind of soft totalitarianism,” in which everyone is pressured to self-identify as a secessionist or risk being labeled a “bad Catalonian or a bad democrat.” This illusion of unanimity is “a conceptual trick concocted by a minority to impose its will on the majority.”

That’s why Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s refusal to consider a referendum is the proper course, said El Norte de Castilla. A minority of -Spaniards—those living in Catalonia—can’t impose on everyone else the breakup of Spain. According to the constitution, national sovereignty resides in the people as a whole, not region by region. And the constitution says that only the federal government can call a referendum. Rajoy has offered Catalonian leader Artur Mas “open-ended dialogue within the constitutional framework.” That’s a solution we can all embrace.

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This isn’t over, said Victor Alexandre in ElSingularDigital.cat. We Catalonians are more energized than ever, and next summer, on the 300th anniversary of our annexation, we will mount a peaceful uprising that will only end when we succeed. “Once Catalonia is independent,” we will be able to look back in pride, knowing that we achieved our goal with “civility, harmony, resolve, perseverance, and peaceful hearts.” No one will call the Catalonian Way a human chain, for a chain holds one back. They will call it a pathway, a road. The Catalonian Way Toward Independence will go down in history “because it is not the way of violence and contempt, but of the ballot box and the voice.”