Uncertain future for divided Spain as Catalan crisis continues

Anti-independence demonstrators in Barcelona this week.

When Mariano Rajoy pledged that the referendum on independence organised by the Catalan government for October 1 would not take place, it always looked like a hostage to fortune. And so it has proved. As riot police used force to evict activists from polling stations last Sunday, pictures of elderly citizens bloodied by truncheon blows caused dreadful damage to the image of Spanish democracy. And the vote mostly went ahead regardless.

For Rajoy, Spain’s conservative Prime Minister, it was the worst of both worlds. It leaves a question- mark over the future of his government, and even of his country. On the back of the vote, Carles Puig­demont, the Catalan President, said the region’s parliament would issue a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in coming days, in accordance with a law it rushed through last month.

Spanish democracy faces “very grave times”, declared King Felipe in a rare televised address on Tuesday. He was right.

The referendum took place peacefully in much of Catalonia, in a celebratory atmosphere. The trouble happened in Barcelona and other larger towns. Activists had occupied schools where polling was to take place. Riot squads of the Spanish national police and the Civil Guard waded in to evict them, causing almost 900 injuries, four of them serious, according to the Generalitat, as Catalonia’s regional government is known. The central government said 33 policemen were hurt.

Although the police closed about 320 polling stations before being ordered to withdraw, thousands of others functioned. The Generalitat claimed that 2.3 million people voted, or about 43 per cent of an electorate of 5.4 million. With opponents of independence staying away in droves, 90 per cent of the votes were Yes. The numbers cannot be verified, but are in line with recent opinion polls, which have support for leaving at 40 to 45 per cent.

In the event of a UDI, few doubt Rajoy will feel obliged to suspend, at least in part, Catalonia’s auto­nomy under article 155 of Spain’s constitution (never before invoked). The King appeared to signal this when he criticised the Catalan authorities’ “inadmissible disloyalty” to the state and called for upholding constitutional ord­er. But invoking article 155 “will be another error in a long list of mistakes” by the Spanish government, which have boosted support for independence, Puigdemont says.

The stakes were raised further when Spain’s constitutional tribunal said it was suspending a meeting of the Catalan parliament due on Monday, at which independence was to have been debated and perhaps approved.

The events of October 1 have given the pro-independence coalition new allies. Ada Colau, the left-wing but non-secessionist mayor of Barcelona, backed last Tuesday’s regional general strike, called “in defence of democratic liberties” and to protest against police violence. For the first time, Catalan secessionism has won some sympathy in Europe beyond far-left and far-right allies. The European Commission ignored Puigdemont’s invitation to mediate, but criticised the violence and called on both sides to talk. It also reiterated its support for Rajoy and his efforts to uphold the constitution.

Puigdemont has repeatedly outwitted Rajoy. The government underestimated the strength, staying power and unity of the independence movement. “We are convinced that time will defuse this problem,” a senior official in Madrid said in March. That it did not showed how out of touch with Catalan realities the government is. Rajoy’s government is stuffed with abogados del estado — state lawyers — but is short of politicians and communicators. On the referendum, the PM “decided to act in the only way he knows how, which is to apply the law”, says a source close to the ruling People’s Party. “He’s disconcerted because applying the law didn’t work. He doesn’t know what to do.”

On the evening of the vote, Rajoy blamed the violence on the Generalitat. “We did what we had to do,” he said. But he also called on all political forces in parliament to “reflect together on the future”.

Ministers insisted that after October 1, talks could start. But can they? Neither side now trusts the other. The government has said it cannot negotiate with Puigdemont because of his defiance of the constitution; many in Catalonia abhor Rajoy and the PP, which opposed an attempt to give the region greater powers in a new autonomy statute in 2006.

The bigger difficulty is what to discuss. Spain’s 1978 constitution granted sweeping powers of self-government to Catalonia. It gave Spain, including Catalonia, democracy, a welfare state and much greater prosperity (until a housing bubble burst in 2008). But the system was made unwieldy by a decision to grant regional autonomy across the country, rather than just to the Catalans, Basques and Galicians, who had long ­demanded it. And it has not diminished conservatives’ attachment to a centralising trad­ition, says Jose Alvarez Junco, a historian at Madrid’s Complutense University. “They’d like to think Spain is like France and Madrid like Paris.”

As a result, Barcelona does not have the status of a de facto joint capital that it deserves.

Rajoy is thus constrained by pressure from his base. “The PP wins elections thanks to its nationalism and explicit anti-Catalanism,” says Alvarez. Over the past few days, Spanish flags have started to appear on balconies across much of the country.

Rajoy’s dogged determination, sangfroid and quiet ruthlessness helped Spain out of its banking crisis and economic slump. But he shows little sign of the flexibility and imagination that resolving the Catalan problem demands. Letting it fester carries a cost. Rajoy’s minority government has had to postpone sending the 2018 budget to congress, because the events in Catalonia mean it has lost, for now, the support of the Basque nationalists. The Catalan conflict could dent economic recovery. This week Spanish shares and bonds have been pummelled.

The Catalan government has quietly constructed the rudiments of an independent state. It has schooled two generations in its (questionable) narrative of oppression. The Catalan police chose not to use force to close polling stations. “Catalonia is already different, it’s a new state in Europe,” exclaimed Dolors Sola, a representative of the ruling pro-independence coalition at a polling station in Vic, a town north of Barcelona.

Not yet: secessionism has failed to achieve sufficient support in Catalonia to impose itself. A silent, divided and leaderless majority is against it, including the 30 per cent or so of the population that wants a better deal within Spain. Letting matters fester has costs for Catalonia, too. “If there’s no negotiation we could go to an Ulsterisation … with two worlds living in the same space,” fears Xavier Capelles, a tax lawyer in Vic, recalling the bitterness that once disfigured Northern Ireland.

Until now, the independence movement has been impeccably nonviolent, albeit constantly provocative. But the situation is volatile. If Puigdemont and Rajoy cannot between them swiftly take constructive steps towards an agreement, or, worse, if Rajoy attempts to arrest the Catalan leader, that could easily change.