Spain’s long-standing divisions show no signs of going away

Last week was a busy week in Spain. On Tuesday, 12 Catalan leaders of the attempted secession from Spain in 2017 went on trial in Madrid, charged with rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds. And on Wednesday the Spanish government fell when two small Catalan nationalist parties voted against its budget, essentially to punish it for not stopping the trial.

But Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government couldn’t have stopped the trial at this point: Spanish courts are independent. And the Catalan 12 are certainly guilty of something, although it isn’t rebellion, which in Spanish law involves a violent uprising. They are guilty of cheating, but there isn’t any law against that.

Sanchez’s now defunct government would almost certainly not have brought such extreme charges against the Catalan would-be martyrs. But the charges were brought under the previous right-wing government of Mariano Rajoy, and Sanchez couldn’t just cancel them.

Sanchez’s Socialist Party, which took power last June, depended on two small Catalan separatist parties for its majority. It has fallen because the Catalans felt he had done too little to prevent the trial of the Catalan 12. The trial will continue, and the snap election that must now follow will be held in an atmosphere of superheated nationalism.

What happened in Catalonia in 2017 was that Catalan nationalists, unable to win a convincing majority for their project of independence, decided to skip the bit about a convincing majority. They did control the regional government, so they declared a referendum on independence in which only those in favour of separation would vote.

Such a referendum was illegal under the Spanish constitution, which forbids secession, so the pro-Spanish parties would boycott the referendum. They would have to boycott it to stay within the law. Whereas all those who wanted independence — almost half the population — would defy the law and cast their votes.

That’s how it worked. Every opinion poll for years had shown that Catalonia was split right down the middle, with around 45 per cent for independence, 45 per cent against it, and 10 per cent undecided. Just 45 per cent of the population voted in the referendum, and 90 per cent of them voted for independence. Those who didn’t vote could now be dragged out of Spain without further ado. Hurrah for democracy!

For the secessionist leaders, it was a two-way bet. Just possibly, the rest of the world would fail to notice how the vote was rigged, accept it as a democratic exercise, and recognize their claim. Just possibly, too, the Spanish state would be so weak that it would fail to defend the rights of the half of Catalonia’s population who wanted to stay in Spain.

Or, more likely, the Spanish government would intervene to stop this attempted kidnapping and arrest those who had led it. They could then be portrayed as prodemocracy martyrs. That would be almost as helpful to the nationalist cause, and it’s what is happening now.

To be fair to Catalan nationalists, most of their fellow citizens in the region who oppose independence are Spanish speakers, descended from people who immigrated from other regions to share in Catalonia’s industrial prosperity. A majority of Catalan speakers back independence.

How can you choose to disregard the views of the Spanish-speaking half of the region’s population to sneak your independence project through? By believing that they’re not entitled to a view because they’re not real Catalans. Of course, you never say it quite like this in public.

These views persist, and the Catalan problem will not go away. The new Spanish government that emerges from the forthcoming snap election, whatever it is, won’t be able to solve the problem, either. The most it can do, if it’s sensible, is commute any prison sentences on the Catalan 12 and deny them martyrdom.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is “Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work).”