Catalan independence paying no heed to democracy

It was win-win for Puigdemont, and lose-lose for the Spanish government.

Catalan nationalist leader Carles Puigdemont got most of what he wanted out of the chaotic pseudo-referendum on Sunday: 761 people injured by the Spanish police trying to block it.

One or two martyrs dead for the cause of Catalan independence would have been even better, and no doubt the 761 injured include a fair number of sprained ankles and broken nails, but the pictures will do the job. Even the foreign media coverage bought the story that the brutal Spanish police were suppressing the popular will – so now Puigdemont will feel fully justified in making a unilateral declaration of independence.

Puigdemont, the president of the Catalan regional government, is no stranger to histrionics. In the past he has compared Catalan separatists’ non-violent campaign for independence to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 and even to the Vietnamese struggle to drive out first the French and then the Americans.

‘‘Every day is a Vietnam,’’ he said in a TV interview last year, which seemed a bit over the top as American B-52s hardly ever bomb Barcelona. But it’s the sort of stuff that rallies the troops and there is a minority of people in Catalonia who really want independence. There always has been, because Catalonia has had a hard time from some Spanish governments in the past.

It fought on the losing (Republican/communist) side in the Spanish Civil War. General Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who won the war, punished Catalonia by banning the use of the Catalan language – which is close enough to Castilian Spanish that with a little practice you can understand most of what people are saying. But that was all a long time ago.

Today, Catalonia is the richest region of Spain, and Catalan enjoys equal status with Spanish and is used in the schools. The region’s wealth has attracted so many people from other parts of Spain over the years that 46 per cent of the population now speaks mostly Spanish – 37 per cent use mainly Catalan and 12 per cent say they use both equally.

Why do so many Catalans want to break from Spain today? Historical grievances dating from the Civil War and even before, resentment that so many Spanish-speakers have immigrated to Catalona, resentment that they have to share some of their wealth with poorer parts of Spain (but this is Europe, where that is perfectly normal), and, most of all, what Sigmund Freud called ‘‘the narcissism of minor differences’’.

Equally minor differences saw Norway break away from Sweden non-violently in 1904 and Slovakia peacefully secede from former Czechoslovakia in 1993, so pettiness in itself is no obstacle. Catalan separatists, however, faced two major obstacles: An independence referendum is illegal under the Spanish constitution – and if they did hold a referendum, they’d almost certainly lose.

The problem is all those Spanish-speaking people who don’t share the romantic nationalist dreams of many (but not all) Catalans. A poll in March showed 48.5 per cent opposing independence and 44.3 per cent in favour. By July, it was 49.4 per cent against independence and only 41.1 per cent for it.

It’s not easy to disenfranchise all those ‘‘Spaniards’’, most of whom were actually born in Catalonia, but a simple referendum won’t deliver the goods.

Puigdemont’s big idea probably occurred to him after a symbolic referendum in 2014 produced an 80 per cent majority for independence – because it was illegal, and therefore only a third of the population voted in it. What if he held another illegal referendum, but this time have the Catalan parliament, where his coalition has a narrow majority, declare it ‘‘legal and binding’’?

Once again, most Spanish-speakers wouldn’t vote – but this time, he said, there will be no requirement of a minimum turnout, and the regional parliament can declare independence ‘‘within 48 hours’’ if the vote goes in favour. Or, if the Spanish government intervenes to stop the vote, he could use that as a pretext for a unilateral declaration of independence.

It was win-win for Puigdemont, and lose-lose for the Spanish government. If Madrid didn’t intervene, Catalonia would declare independence on the strength of a referendum in which only a minority of the population, almost all Catalan-speakers, voted. If it did intervene to stop the referendum, it would be guilty of ‘‘thwarting democracy’’, and the images of Catalan protesters being dragged away from polling booths would prove to the world how evil the Spanish government is.

Madrid went with the latter option and now is seen across the world as an oppressor. Puigdemont, in a televised address on Sunday evening, said: ‘‘With this day of hope and suffering, the citizens of Catalonia have won the right to an independent state in the form of a republic.’’ He also hinted that a unilateral declaration of independence was on the way.

Nice strategy. Shame about the mess.