Catalonia’s elections on Sunday are an imperfect referendum on the position of Catalans regarding the possible constitution of Catalonia as an independent state. They are imperfect because, although Catalans would have preferred to have a direct vote on this question, the Spanish government and parliament have systematically refused to authorize it. Still, they are a referendum because voters will be able to choose between three options –Yes, No, and blank– backed by different electoral candidacies.
In these elections, I will vote Yes (in fact, I have already voted, by mail) – more specifically, for the “Together for Yes” slate. The reasons that have prompted me to vote Yes are many. Cultural: the Catalan language remains unprotected –in its use in mass media, in customer service phone numbers, in the labeling of all kinds of products, in Europe. Social: without addressing the existing tax-and-revenues imbalances with Spain, I don’t believe that it will be possible to fund the kinds of policies needed to protect those social sectors that have been worst hit by the crisis and to respond to the structural and technological changes that are defining the 21(st) century. Economic: without true sovereignty in things such as infrastructures and R&D, there will be no way of adapting to the challenges imposed by today’s globalization.
But above all these reasons, I am voting Yes for a fundamental, strictly political reason. Within Spain, Catalan autonomy does not have –nor will it ever have– any real guarantee against the constant interferences from the central power. The 1978 Constitution was negotiated and accepted on the promise of transferring a set of meaningful powers to the Catalan government – hence responding to a century-long struggle for self-government. We now know, however, that this promise was both nominal and insufficient. On all key matters, the Spanish central government decides on its own. In all essential policy areas (and, in fact, in all non-essential ones as well) that were supposedly devolved to Catalonia, it ends up encroaching upon Catalan decisions. The fact of the matter is that the position of Catalonia as a minority –as a national minority– within Spain deprives Catalans of any real capacity to decide on their own. Catalan institutions have no guarantees against the interpretation that the majority makes of the constitutional text and the pacts that, at one point or another, have been made between the central government and the regional government.
The political and constitutional history of the last forty years has proven all this. Already in 1982 the LOAPA(1) eroded the nature and extent of the powers promised in the first Catalan Statute of Autonomy enacted in 1979. The real transfer of powers theoretically granted by the Statute turned out to depend on political pacts with Spanish parties that governed without having secured a parliamentary majority in the polls. Yet, once they obtained that majority in the following elections, they rushed to pass organic and higher-ranking laws to undo everything that had been granted before. Catalonia, a kind of Penelope obliged to weave and unweave its modicum of power, approved a new Statute in 2006 with the hope that it could put an end to such an exhausting political process. However, this Statute was heavily amended in the Spanish Parliament. Then, in 2010 the Constitutional Court struck down any legal clauses that have been left in place and still had any real political bite.
The adventure of the Statute taught me a fundamental lesson: words and promises alone are useless. In 2006 the Catalan Parliament drafted a long, weighty, detailed text with the intention of "shielding" Catalonia’s powers from Madrid’s meddling. However, for all the words that it may contain, a contract isn’t worth anything if one of the parties is both judge and party to it, that is, if it is free to interpret and execute the terms of the pact on its own. This is, in the end, the problem of Catalonia within Spain: due to the former’s minority status, it will always have to accept the latter’s position. Aristotle defined democracy as a system in which citizens take turns governing: one day A governs, the next day B governs, etc. This is not the case with the Spanish political system: some always govern; the others never do.
A federal system, which would require a constitutional reform that is highly unlikely given the distribution of votes and parliamentary seats among Spanish parties, would not resolve anything either. There would continue to be a majority of autonomous regions or federated states that would control the interpretation and execution of all agreements. Catalans, in their most essential interests, would not have enough allies to protect themselves.
Faced with this situation, the only solution that can guarantee the (legitimate) aspirations to self-government is to become a sovereign state –able to veto any harmful decisions; able to resolve the cultural, social, and economic problems mentioned above; and also able, of course, to cooperate with neighboring countries from a position of equality.
We all knew that the pressure, threats, and lies coming from the No camp would be unbearable during the current electoral campaign. Nevertheless, all these threats, which merely confirm the failing state of the current system, will amount to nothing concrete after the election for two reasons. First, because making them happen would be harmful for everyone –and especially for those who, in an absolutely frivolous way, are making them right now. And second, because a solid Yes majority should erode Spain’s resistance, may crack Europe’s neutrality, and will open the gates to a road (not easy, but doable) towards dignity. Let us vote, then, with freedom and peace of mind. And let’s vote Yes. The effort is worth it.
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(1) N.T. The LOAPA (Ley Orgánica de Armonización del Proceso Autonómico) is a Spanish law passed in 1982 that effectively limited the powers granted to Spain’s regional governments.
