Despite Scotland’s choice, a November 9 vote could still tear Spain apart
The Scots voted against independence last week, by a fair margin and most commentary from business leaders and financial analysts began with “a sigh of relief” – followed by a wary recognition that serious reform to Britain’s system of government had been promised, and that might again disturb the delicate nerves of investors.
The wariness is right. The nationalist surge isn’t over.
Attention paid to nationalism in Europe has recently focussed on movements of the right in France, Italy, the UK the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Hungary and Finland. The groups are diverse, with some solidly democratic and others racist. But all tend to be hostile to immigration; to the European Union; and to liberal policies.
The present surge isn’t like that. The Scottish National Party had its thuggish supporters, but the Party itself is enthusiastically pro-EU, friendly to immigrants (though Scotland has proportionately many fewer than England); and, ideologically, a mix of liberal and social democratic. And because of that, it presented a larger challenge to the integrity of the British state than anything on the far right. Decent people could vote for it.
Now, it has a comrade in arms – which could pose a greater threat to a major European state: even spark conflict. It’s the movement for independence in Catalonia, in Spain. And unlike the laissez-faire British, the Spanish government is going to fight, not the prospect of Catalonia breaking away, but the right of the Catalans to vote at all.
Unlike the British – too cunning to have a constitution that binds the hands of legislators – Spain follows most international practice in having one. It’s quite specific that no part of Spain should defect. There’s an early clause which says that “The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards;” the king is “the symbol of (Spain’s) unity and permanence” and the “mission of the armed forces is to… defend its territorial integrity and the constitutional order”
Professor Montserrat Guibernau of Queen Mary’s College at the University of London – herself a Catalan, and an expert on nationalism – believes that the Spanish state has itself to blame for the position it’s now in. “Over the years the region has asked for greater devolution and autonomy: it was refused. So they have turned to independence, and most of the people are behind it.”
The Catalonian government has set the date of November 9 this year for an independence vote. The region’s president, Arturo Mas, said in Barcelona, the regional capital last week that “If they think in Madrid that by using legal frameworks they can stop the political will of the majority of the Catalan people they are wrong… It is something we will have to fight for.”
But ‘they’ in Madrid do intend to use the law to stop the vote. The constitutional court has already declared ‘null and void’ a move by the regional parliament last year to declare Catalonia ‘sovereign’: it’s also likely to reject the region’s move to an independence referendum.
Catalonia is one of the wealthiest parts of Spain, and judges that it could, if freed from a larger nation still struggling with the effects of recession, get richer. After painful reforms, Spain’s economy is improving – but unemployment is over 25 percent (50 percent for the young) and there’s a strong risk of long-term deflation.
Scottish nationalism has for many years held out the prospect of greater wealth through full control of the North Sea oil: Catalonia hasn’t got oil, but it has got a stronger economy than the state which enfolds it, and in Barcelona it has one of the loveliest cities in Europe.
Both the British and the Spanish state have been neglectful of their regions, if in quite different ways. The creation of regional assemblies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales left England – 85 percent of the total UK population of 64 million – with no separate voice of its own. Scots, Irish and Welsh members of parliament can vote on all-UK measures which mostly affect the English: the English MPs can’t vote on the health, transport, justice and other reserved issues in the regions. Now, Scotland has been promised still more powers by politicians hoping to keep it in the UK, and a call for greater equity mounts in England.
The Spanish government doesn’t want to go through the suspense that its British counterparts suffered during the Scots’ vote: it wants to stop a vote taking place. Yet the confrontation which now looms could have been avoided – according to Guibernau – had it entered into a real debate on devolution.
Independence for Catalonia’s 7.5 million people is as bad an idea as it would have been for Scotland’s 5.3 million. The challenges facing Europe, and the globe, are now as large as any in the lifetimes of most of us. They demand a response by states large enough to carry the burdens of managing global disorder, and united enough to take hard decisions.
There is a way to avoid damaging separations. Britain is already involved in a – certainly testing – exercise to restructure a union settlement of some 300 years. Spain should follow suit: the regional government’s pollsters recently showed that though a plurality – 45 percent – want independence, 23 percent are content with its current autonomy and 20 percent favor greater integration with Spain (the rest don’t know). With only a little more than half of the respondents calling for separation, a serious negotiation between the regional and national governments could produce a devolutionary settlement that moderate nationalists could accept.
In the end, the existing state authorities have the responsibility to find new ways to preserve unity. That the two strongest nationalist movements in Europe have leaderships that are liberal and politically moderate gives hope for avoiding a confrontation that could turn ugly.
In a little over a year’s time – in October 2015 – Spain will mark 40 years of democratic rule, after the end of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. It should celebrate them united.
Any opinions expressed here are the author's own
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