On Catalan independence and resistance

Editor’s note: In a referendum about wider national autonomy, the residents of Catalonia are finding entering the polling booth to vote in the October 1 independence referendum a challenge in itself. Spanish police have clashed with the thousands of voters who have turned out to participate in a vote that the powers in Madrid have judged illegal and tried to curtail at every turn.

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I arrived in Barcelona on September 20 after seven years covering the Arab Spring, and it felt like I was observing a somewhat familiar landscape. The same day I arrived, Spanish police arrested 14 Catalan officials and raided several offices of the Catalan government. In response, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona in protest.

More than 10,000 members of the Guardia Civil (Spanish paramilitary police) and other security forces were deployed in Catalonia in the weeks leading up to the October 1 self-determination referendum. They can be seen on tourist cruise ships, decorated with Warner Bros cartoons. Barcelona, the rebellious and irreverent city, global capital of anarchism in the early 20th century, has been swept again by the winds of revolt.

The tensions had been simmering for a while. On September 11, Catalonia's national day, around 1 million people marched in Barcelona to support the referendum, considered illegal by both the Spanish government and courts. This was the sixth year in a row that more than 10 percent of Catalonia's population demonstrated in support of their right to hold a self-determination vote, a degree of mobilization unseen in Europe's contemporary history. However, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, from the conservative and nationalist Popular Party, chose to ignore them, as he had done every previous year.

Rajoy's attitude may seem foolish to international observers, but it is coherent with his political trajectory. In the mid-2000's, he stirred anti-Catalan sentiment as a means of regaining power. He led a campaign against a new law that granted Catalonia greater autonomy, including a boycott of Catalan products, and collected signatures against the law. His actions deepened the divide between the Spanish government and Catalans in favor of independence.

“I have never been interested in politics, and I did not support independence. But the boycott, the signatures, they touched my Catalan dignity. By the time of the first big demonstration in 2012, I had already become pro independence,” says Marta, a 39-year-old nurse, at a pro-independence event in Sant Adrià de Besòs, a working-class suburb of Barcelona. Her political trajectory is quite common among Catalans. Before 2010, Catalan pro-independence parties used to get between 10 to 15 percent of the votes, and, according to most polls, the majority of people voted for a dual Catalan-Spanish identity. The percentage of those identifying as Catalan has risen dramatically since then, as indicated by a 2014 non-binding referendum.

The rift between the Catalonia region and the Spanish state was further entrenched on September 20, the day Rajoy decided to prevent the referendum using repression. Since then, a number of websites have been blocked. Spanish police tried to raid the headquarters of a far-left Catalan political party without a judicial order, and a number of events organized in other parts of Spain in support of the referendum were forbidden. “This is not about independence. It is about our rights and freedoms,” stated the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, who is part of a coalition of Catalan left-wing groups associated with Podemos. The party headed by Pablo Iglesias is the only one among mainstream Spanish parties that supports a legal referendum to determine the question of Catalonia national autonomy, similar to the one that took place in Scotland in 2014.

The Spanish government has the support of the majority of other European Union governments, which are wary of a unilateral secession that could become a precedent, amid other challenges that threaten to thrust the European project into further crisis. Before the clashes of October 1, Catalan activists called for civil disobedience if Madrid did not permit a legal referendum, a reality that may soon come to bear.  

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Photo by Marc Almodóvar