Catalonia prepares to vote on secession

EACH year Sergi Rubió has joined the huge demonstrations that Catalans have held since 2010 on September 11th, their national day, to demand independence from Spain. This year several hundred thousand people thronged the streets of Barcelona in warm sunshine. It was a festive, family affair with giant puppets and human castles. But there was a change, said Mr Rubió, a manager in his mid-30s from Vilafranca del Penedès, in cava country: “Now we have politicians who are standing up and fighting for their ideals.”

Days before, the Generalitat, as the Catalan government is known, had rammed through the Catalan parliament a law mandating a “binding” referendum on independence and another requiring a unilateral declaration of independence within 48 hours in the event of a “Yes” vote. “We have a single objective: to be able to decide on our future…and that prevails over everything else,” said Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president.

With that, he set Catalonia, one of Spain’s most populous and richest regions, on a collision course with the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy in Madrid. For months Mr Rajoy has been warning that the referendum cannot take place because it violates Spain’s constitution. The prime minister has pledged to act “with firmness and proportionality” to stop any vote happening.

The situation is getting steadily nastier. Acting on a government petition, Spain’s constitutional court has suspended Catalonia’s referendum law. Madrid has taken temporary charge of Catalonia’s finances, in an attempt to prevent spending on the referendum. The attorney-general has begun proceedings against Mr Puigdemont and his cabinet for misappropriation of public funds, a charge that carries a potential prison sentence. The police have seized campaign materials, and have orders to do the same with ballot boxes as they are deployed. On September 20th, acting on the orders of a judge, the Guardia Civil raided offices of the Generalitat, arresting 14 officials involved in organising the referendum. This was an “aggression”, said Mr Puigdemont, and a de facto suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy.

Nevertheless, more than 700 mayors (out of 948 in the Catalonia region) say they will defy a legal warning not to assist the holding of the vote. “I’m not scared of being arrested,” Mr Puigdemont said recently. “We haven’t committed any crime.” Indeed, he is visibly enjoying the battle he has unleashed. He appears to want to provoke Mr Rajoy into a heavy-handed overreaction. “If there is penal action, that will prompt solidarity,” warns Miquel Iceta, leader of the Catalan Socialist Party, which does not support the referendum.

Mr Puigdemont claims a mandate for pursuing independence, but it is a debatable one. His coalition of nationalists and republicans won only 39.5% in a regional election in 2015 that it had claimed was “plebiscitary”. His narrow majority in the parliament comes from an alliance with an anti-capitalist outfit, which won 8.2% and also supports independence.

Surveys by the Generalitat’s own pollster show that support for independence, while double that in 2008, has never amounted to a majority and is drifting gently down (see chart 1). Some recent polls, though (see chart 2), predict a majority for independence on October 1st, though many No voters will stay away, making the size of the turnout crucial, assuming the poll goes ahead.

Generalitat dissatisfaction

That so many Catalans want a referendum is the result of three main grievances. The first is the bad blood left by an attempt by Mr Iceta’s party to change Catalonia’s statute of autonomy to give preferential status to the Catalan language, and to note formally that the Catalan parliament has defined the region as “a nation”. This rather modest reform was approved by referendum in Catalonia, and by the Spanish parliament in 2006. But Mr Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP) campaigned against it, and in 2010 the constitutional court overturned these and other clauses. “For Catalan society, that was an insult,” says Ferran Mascarell, a former Socialist who is now the Generalitat’s delegate in Madrid.

The second factor is the recession and the austerity that followed the bursting of Spain’s property bubble in 2009. The mood was inflamed by the nationalists’ claim that the Spanish state “robs” them. The gap between what Catalans pay in taxes and what they get back in services is €8bn-10bn a year. Ángel de la Fuente, a public-finance specialist, argues that it is normal for Catalonia, and other richer regions such as Madrid, to be net contributors. But as part of a review begun earlier this year, the size of the gap may be reduced. Catalan governments, for their part, have spent much on things like subsidised local media and foreign “embassies”.

Catalans also complain that they get less than their due in public investment. In that they are partly right, says Mr de la Fuente. Spanish governments have followed an investment policy that, he says, has “probably been too redistributive at the expense of efficiency”, partly because of EU funding mechanisms.

The third, less tangible, gripe concerns identity. According to Mr Mascarell, society is fed up with “permanent and stupid quarrels against the Catalan language”. Catalan governments have educated two generations of youngsters in the historically questionable notion that Catalonia is an ancient nation-state oppressed by Spain.

Behind the support for the referendum lies a sense of insecurity. Catalans like to see themselves as a highly advanced part of a backward country. This is no longer as true as it was. The rest of Spain has caught up. In 1962 income per person in Catalonia was 50% above the national average; now Catalonia’s is only 19% higher, according to Mr de la Fuente.

In that sense, Catalan nationalism reflects the fear of loss of relative status, also embodied by Italy’s Northern League and other right-wing populist movements. This fear has been exacerbated by the way that governments in Madrid have washed their hands of Catalonia. Barcelona hosts almost no institutions of the Spanish state. “Spain is more like [decentralised] Germany, but it has tried to be like [centralised] France,” says Jordi Alberich of the Cercle d’Economia, a business think-tank. “Spain has to try to win over Catalans again,” admits Xavier García Albiol, who heads the PP in the region. “If we don’t generate a narrative that seduces, Catalonia is lost.”

In 2014 the Generalitat supported an informal referendum on independence in which it claimed 1.86m people voted Yes. If it manages to get as many to vote on October 1st it will claim victory. But the courts are likely to strip Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues of their jobs nonetheless, possibly even before the referendum takes place. One way or another, at a minimum Catalonia is almost certainly headed for a fresh regional election. “Whatever happens, October 1st is the end of a chapter, though not of the book,” says Mr Alberich. “The next chapter has to be to find a third way.” That is a job for politicians, not courts, and in today’s poisonous atmosphere, it will be hard.