21 September. The final score left no room for doubt: 106 - 28*

Vicenç Villatoro
2 min

Perhaps that’s why hardly any Madrid newspapers carried the story. When a state ignores, fights and looks down on something that the institutions of a territory have approved by 106 yeas vs 28 nays, that state has a problem. When a Constitution is used to ensure that, in a given territory, the opinion of 28 individuals prevails over that of 106, when it is used to tell the legitimate representatives of that territory that their decision is worthless, then not only does that Constitution have a problem, but it is a problem in itself. Much more so when the decision of those institutions refers only to their own territory: the Catalan parliament wouldn’t dream of telling what someone from Murcia is or isn’t, what they may or may not do.

The opposite is true, though: a man from Murcia feels entitled to tell me what I am and what I am not. When the Constitutional Court struck down the Statute that Catalans had passed in a referendum, some of us said that the clash between the legitimacy of the ballot boxes and the defence mechanisms of the State would have serious consequences. That’s why we are where we are. Well, here they go again. In this clash, 28 beat 106. It’s mistaken, unfair and humiliating. And humiliation is one of the driving forces of history.

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*On Friday afternoon the Catalan parliament passed the bill of consultations by an overwhelming majority: 104 MPs voted in favour (CiU, ERC, ICV-EUiA, the CUP, the PSC plus independent MP Joan Ignasi Elena). Only the PP and Ciutadans opposed it with their 28 MPs, claiming that the consultation set for November 9 is illegal.

Now that this legal instrument is in place, Catalan president Artur Mas has the key element needed to formally call the consultation in the coming days. The Spanish government is keeping a watchful eye on the Catalan president’s moves and has announced unscheduled meetings to take the necessary steps to strike down both the law and the president’s decree.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the Catalan parliament following a public appeal by the ANC (Catalan National Assembly) in order to voice their support for the new law and to demand that the vote takes place.

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