‘Free’ Catalans disillusioned
INDEPENDENCE MAY HAVE BEEN DECLARED, BUT REGION HAS LOST WHAT IT HAD Spain crushes Catalonian effort to take control of its own finances.
Amonth ago, residents of the Catalan village Dosrius were facing off against police in their struggle to break away from Spain. Now independence has been declared – but nothing, they feel, has been gained. Indeed, they have probably lost what they had.
Spain’s central government has taken control of the region for the first time since the end of dictatorship in the 1970s. Catalonia’s separatist leader, facing likely prosecution, has fled to Belgium.
“I feel impotent,” says farmer Oscar Jansana, 43, who flies a Catalan independence flag – red and yellow stripes with a white star – outside his house in this small valley town north of Barcelona.
He and other separatists want the rich region to have control over its finances. They feel dismayed that in just a few days their independence effort has apparently all but collapsed.
“We have worked hard. We have collaborated as much as we could,” said Jansana. “And in the end we have ended up worse off than we were before.”
The northeastern region’s parliament proclaimed an independent “Catalan Republic” on Friday on the basis of an outlawed Octo- ber 1 referendum.
Madrid promptly declared that regional president Carles Puigdemont and his government were dismissed.
Puigdemont and his followers still insist he is the rightful leader of the Catalans. But he is hundreds of kilometres away in Belgium. His lawyer says he will not return to Spain to face rebellion accusations unless he is assured of fair treatment by the courts.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has put his own deputy, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, in charge of the region, replacing Puigdemont.
“They have taken the republic to Belgium and we have been left with a viceroy,” said Susana Mora, a tobacco-seller in Dosrius.
Like thousands of Catalans, Mora acted as a human shield to try to block the way of national police from shutting down the local polling station during the referendum.
Despite the police resistance and a lack of electoral regulations, the separatists pushed ahead with the vote.
They said a majority of participants voted for independence. Last Friday, separatist lawmakers sang the regional anthem triumphantly after declaring a republic. The euphoria has since faded. “We don’t understand what is happening. The people are angry,” said Mora. – AFP