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

Spain: why prosperous Catalans may

beat rebellious Basques to the exit
Turbulent 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.

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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 until
elections 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 Spanish
tsunami 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 the
consequences 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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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 nuclear
power 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.

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

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