Ripples from Catalan referendum could extend beyond Spain
Catalonia is not unique: all over Europe groups are seeking to redefine
identity and rejecting the centralised state
The Guardian, Monday 2 October 2017
by Simon Tisdall
The Spanish government’s attempted suppression of Catalonia’s
independence referendum by brute force has raised urgent questions for
fellow EU members about Spain’s adherence to democratic norms, 42 years
after the death of the fascist dictator, Francisco Franco. Charles
Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, spoke for many in Europe when he
tweeted: “Violence can never be the answer!”
Madrid’s pugnacious stance, while widely condemned as a gross and
shameful over-reaction, has nevertheless sent a problematic message to
would-be secessionists everywhere. It is that peaceful campaigns in line
with the UN charter’s universal right to self-determination, campaigns
that eschew violence and rely on conventional political means, are
ultimately doomed to fail. In other words, violence is the only answer.
Sorry, Charles.
Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, did everything he could to derail
a referendum that the courts had deemed illegal, but his pleas and
threats were not persuasive. That is democracy. Rajoy’s subsequent
choice to employ physical force to impose his will on civilians
exercising a basic democratic right carried a chill echo of Spain’s past
and a dire warning for the future. That is dictatorship.
Surely no one believes the cause of Catalan independence will fade away
after Sunday’s bloody confrontations that left hundreds injured. Rajoy’s
actions may have ensured, on the contrary, that the campaign enters a
new, more radical phase, potentially giving rise to ongoing clashes,
reciprocal violence, and copycat protests elsewhere, for example among
the left-behind population of economically deprived Galicia.
In Spain’s Basque country, where Eta separatists waged a decades-long
terror campaign that killed more than 800 people and injured thousands,
the dream of independence is on ice – but not forgotten. The danger is
that a new generation of younger Basques who feel ignored by Madrid, and
repelled by what happened in Barcelona, may be tempted to revisit Eta’s
unilateral 2010 ceasefire and its subsequent disarmament.
The ripple effect of the Catalan crackdown could potentially extend
beyond Spain. There were covert links at one time between Eta and the
IRA during Northern Ireland’s Troubles, with the two groups comparing
notes and sharing expertise. Belfast, like Bilbao, is another place
where a dissident minority remains unimpressed by placatory measures
such as devolution, limited autonomy and power-sharing. Fringe outfits
such as the New IRA, responsible for several attacks since 2012, find
self-justification in the violence of the state.
Similarities between Catalonia and other supposed secessionist hotspots
in Europe can be exaggerated. The Lega Nord (Northern League) is
influential in parts of northern Italy, but is not serious about
independence. The same may be said of conservative Bavarian nationalists
in southern Germany and the Tyrol, whose frustrations have often found
release through the CSU, sister party to Angela Merkel’s ruling
centre-right CDU. A closer comparison is with Scotland’s SNP.
What all these groups do have in common with the Catalan nationalists is
their dislike, if not rejection, of the centralised authority of the
state. Previous polls suggest most Catalans do not support independence
from Madrid. But not unlike Scotland, a majority does appear to question
the legitimacy of a distant central government that speaks a different
language, hands down political diktats, levies unfair taxes and
allegedly gives back less than it takes.
The attempt by Rajoy and his ministers to depict the Catalan
independence movement as belonging to the wider, recent phenomenon of
rightwing European nationalism, xenophobia and populism was an obvious
smear. Many Catalans distrust rule by Madrid. That does not mean they
have renounced values of tolerance and inclusion. Quite the opposite, as
any visitor to Barcelona knows.
But the distinctions can get blurred. Politicians such as the new Lega
Nord leader, Matteo Salvini, are only too happy to exploit voters’
distrust and disillusion with central government to advance their
particular anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and extreme nationalist-populist
agendas. In France, the Front National’s key presidential election
message was that the state was broken. Upon that basic premise were
heaped its objectionable policies.
Nigel Farage’s Ukip did something similar in Britain last year, playing
on a basic distrust of “establishment elites” to whip up support for
Brexit. In last month’s German elections, the insurrectionary,
hard-right Alternative für Deutschland ambushed the two main parties,
which polled at record low levels. The AfD’s success was not, for the
most part, an endorsement of neo-Nazism. It was a rejection of the
status quo.
Looked at in this broader context, the upheavals in Catalonia are part
of a chaotic, Europe-wide, multifaceted fracturing of the authority and
legitimacy of the traditional, all-powerful, uniform nation state, and
of the control exercised by mainstream centre-left and centre-right
political parties. Catalonia’s brave and battered voters are in the
vanguard of a new movement towards a Europe where identity is being
radically redefined. If leaders and governments such as Rajoy’s remain
stubbornly inflexible and refuse to bend, they risk being broken.
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