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Spain: why prosperous Catalans may beat rebellious Basques to the exitTurbulent history between region and Madrid leaves Catalans

feeling ignored and wishing for autonomy

Julian Glover

The Guardian, Friday 1 April 2011

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A market on Las Ramblas, Barcelona. Many Catalans feel alienated from the rest of Spain. Photograph: Peter

Bowater/Alamy

In a smart Barcelona office block this week I came across a map of a state that doesn't

exist. This imaginary country has long borders and many provinces. It has history and

an ancient language; a famous capital city and some of the world's best chefs. There is a

sunny coast, snowy mountains and attractive islands. People come from around the

world to visit. All this splendid country lacks is reality.

Spain: why prosperous Catalans may beat rebellious B... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/01/spain-catal...

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The Països Catalans – the Catalan lands – stretch out like a ballerina's extended leg

down the Mediterranean coast from France to a toe far to the south of Spain. In an

alternative history of Europe – one in which different local medieval monarchies had

conquered their neighbours – Catalonia, larger than Denmark, could have become a

successful member of the European Union.

The Catalans have at different times acquired the trappings of independence: a

constitution in the 15th century, and a parliament, twice, in the 20th. But for the most

part they have thrived or struggled in Spain. Prosperity has been some compensation for

a sense of cultural injustice that like all nationalism draws its power from emotion as

much as hard fact.

Franco's repression – most but not all Catalans backed the defeated republicans in the

civil war – fuelled Catalan distrust of Madrid. Lluís Companys, the Catalan president

during the civil war, was returned from exile in France in 1940 and shot by the fascists:

the only elected head of a European government to have been executed in office.

That dark time for Spain is over. Catalans regained their autonomy in 1980. Their

language – banned in public under Franco – is flourishing, its sharp tones a curious

staccato descendent of Latin. Varied flavours of nationalist parties dominate the Catalan

parliament in Barcelona and use their role as powerbrokers in Madrid to demand

favours. Devolution is not total – most controversially it does not allow Catalans to keep

their tax revenues as the devolved Basque country does – but nor is it fictitious. Spain,

like Britain, is an unstable and imbalanced amalgam, devolved in parts but in theory

still loyal to its king.

Why, I asked Catalan politicians, did the politics of national identity trouble them so

much? The answer lies partly in the events of last summer when a vast crowd in

Barcelona protested at the Madrid constitutional court's rejection of a new Catalan

statute of autonomy.

Outrage at this ruling – after the statute had been approved by the Catalan and Spanish

parliaments and a referendum – has led mainstream Catalan politicians, once largely

opposed to independence, to change their thinking. More than a million Catalans – one

in seven – marched under the banner "Som una nació. Nosaltres decidim" – "we are a

nation, we decide".

I began my journey last Sunday in Figueres, as joggers on a fun run passed fresh graffiti

calling for "independencia". This is the town where the republican parliament sat for

one last desperate session in early 1939 as a million civil war refugees fled north from

the town on the French border. Now Figueres has acquired a symbol of what should be

the collaborative new Spain: a station on the first section of a high-speed rail line that


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will soon link Paris, Barcelona and Madrid. The sleek trains cutting through the Catalan

countryside suggest Europe really could be a continent without borders or political

differences.

The reality is different. To find out why I went to the Barcelona offices of Esquerra

Republicana de Catalunya – a leftist party which wants Catalan independence and untilelections last year was part of the Catalan government. This is where I came across that

map of the Països Catalans – those old linguistic territories which now run deep into

other provinces of Spain and France.

The ERC is anxious to present itself as the pragmatic face of nationalism. Members

disassociate themselves from that other, violent, nationalist force inside Spain, in the

Basque country. "Here there is no armed movement. Discussion has not been

contaminated by the personal experience of people who have been injured," I was told

by Pere Aragonès, a young ERC MP.

He was keen to convince me of Catalan moderation. Blame for the independence

movement lies in Madrid, he said. "Spain fails to recognise Catalan identity as a part of

itself". And growing economic pressures – Catalan resentment of taxes subsidising

poorer parts of Spain – mean that "independence is now a rational question, not just

one of identity".

But while Aragonès was likeable, his older ERC colleague Josep Huget was more

disturbing. His nationalism seemed based on hostility to others. "There is a Spanishtsunami in Catalonia," he claimed – the impact of Madrid's taxes on Catalans in his

opinion three times greater each year than the consequences of the disaster in Japan.

Huget encapsulated the worst of parochial nationalisms. "I expect people to speak

Catalan," he said – absurd in Barcelona, a city of migrants where most citizens do not.

The ERC has overreached itself. Its vote plunged at the last elections. But although polls

suggest two-thirds of Catalans do not want independence now, while only a quarter

support it, the tide is running against Spain. The ruling centre-right CiU party, long a

bastion of Catalonia's post-Franco devolved settlement, is now increasingly sympathetic

to a full breakaway. So are some Catalan socialists. Only the rightwing People's party is

firmly against.

This is crucial. In the Basque country two centrist parties, the PP and the Spanish

socialists, run the devolved government together against a nationalist opposition. But in

Catalonia, the major parties are nationalist. No one has an interest in fighting the drift

away from Madrid.

How do Catalans feel about this? I phoned Pilar Rahola, a well-known Catalan


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commentator who once sat in parliament for the ERC but left to write a biography of the

current Catalan president, Artur Mas, leader of the CiU. "Catalans are in a phase of

perplexity and disenchantment," she told me. "One part of the population are totally

pro-independence and the majority, although unhappy with Spain, are slowly evolving

towards pro-independence ideas."

The pressure, she said, was growing "because Catalans feel they suffer what is basically

burglary, the theft of their economic resources. Spain is taking more than the Catalans

are able to give."

On top of that comes a feeling that parties in Madrid are no longer interested in

assisting Catalan autonomy. "Spanish parties are the best promoters of Catalan

independence," she said. Rahola cites the current Catalan president's stark remark as a

sign of what is to come: "Spain is a closed road now."

Certainly there is a casual contempt for Catalans among many Spaniards. Catalans find

their accent and their culture mocked. The heir to the Spanish throne is never seen

trying to speak Catalan, Basque or Galician. TV3, a Catalan channel, has been blocked

from broadcasting in neighbouring Valencia.

But I wonder if the Catalan sense of injustice is not overdone. Catalonia is awash with

fast roads, new railways and oversized airports: not a sign Madrid has spent all its

money elsewhere. Huget, from the ERC, boasted that without Spain, Catalonia could

repay its debts in two years, but there seems be economic ignorance about theconsequences of a Catalan walkout from Spain. It is simple for politicians to pretend to

voters that all their woes can be blamed on Madrid.

In search of politicians who share my fears I walked though Barcelona's Parc de la

Ciutadella, amid palm trees and spring sunshine, to the Catalan parliament, which –

tellingly – faces the city zoo. It is a grandiose stone building whose red velvet carpets

and uniformed retainers give it the air of a London gentleman's club. It feels no place for

a revolution.

In a remote basement office I found Albert Rivera, the young leader of the small Citizens

party which has set itself against the nationalist tide. One Catalan dismissed him as "a

snake charmer" – a plausible front for the rightwing PP. I found him intelligent and

impressive and about the only person I met who admitted to being proud of being both

Catalan and Spanish.

Rivera agreed Spain had alienated Catalans but added that nationalist parties were

cooking up rows with Madrid to engineer greater resentment. "We are trying to build a

border with Spain, not just physical but cultural," he said. "Catalonia is more closed


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guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

than it was. I don't want to live in Kosovo. I want to be in a powerful region of Spain in a

large country in the heart of Europe."

This drift dismays others for whom self-determination is not a priority, such as Dolors

Camats of the Green party. "The big parties use the national debate as a curtain to hide

other issues," she said. Last week, she tried to stage a debate in parliament on nuclearpower after the Japanese disaster. No one was interested.

Across the hall from Rivera's office the clipped Oxford tones of an unusual nationalist

are audible. Antoni Strubell is an MP for a small alliance of pro-independence parties.

Born in England, his father was a republican exile. Strubell's argument is

straightforward. "Catalonia is a nation. Madrid doesn't recognise us as such. No one in

Madrid talks about federalism any more." Pressed on the benefits on independence,

though, and like most Catalans he seemed vague. "There is a general change to

independence worldwide" – Catalonia, like Flanders or Scotland, should break away."

This depressed me. The financial crisis has made Catalans understandably anxious. But

there is naivety in wanting to leave Spain to become rich. Members of the public, for the

most part, are little involved: turnout in Catalan elections is low. But their politicians

are drifting towards a contrived showdown.

"I am disconcerted and pessimistic," said Pilar Rahola – even though she favours

independence. After 500 years, it is possible to believe that Spain is on the brink of

falling apart – with the pragmatic Catalans, not the rebellious Basques, leading the way to the exit.


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