Catlunya? Catalonia? How about Europe?

Catalonia/Catalunya - Europa

What is happening in Catalonia today (Catalunya if you prefer - importantly both are allowed and used in both the proviince itself and the rest of Spain) is an accident that was waiting to happend, but didn’t need to. And hs been badly mishandled by both sides.

The independence movement has been simmering for years, like that in Scotland. But it success, its ability to command a majority has never been secure. Catalunya underwent terrible repression in the Franco years, but so did most of Spain. The Basque country - Euskadi - was a particular victim suffering more than perhaps of what is a remarkably diverse country in which the regions today have more devolved powers than any other country in Europe, followed closely by Germany and a greater distance the United Kingdom.

There are many to fault for this fractious referendum which is, as the government in Madrid insists, illegal as it has no basis in the constitution of 1978, which finally buried the Franco dictatorship. The problem is that that constitution also requires a majority of the ‘autonomies’ - which is significantly how Spain’s provinces are referred to, and reflects how they are governed - to agree to one being held.

But referenda are not - as widely imagined - tools of democracy, they are tools of popularism, of mob rule, as 48% of the UK population whose opinion is being flagrantly ignored by the government have experienced to their cost. Fifty plus one is no way to run a country, no way to make decisions that affect millions, not if you expect the aftermath to be pleasant.

The national government in Madrid made a mistake when it barred a law giving the regional government in Barcelona more autonomy. If you opt for an autonopmous regional system, there can be few reasons not to extend it to a logical maximum. In the UK Westminster is discovering this and will discover it further as the absurdly seized powers for government to change law ‘repatriated’ - a foolish term - from the EU to be amended at ministerial will without recourse to the elected parliament (so much for ‘sovereignty’). 

But the pro-independence politicians in Barcelona are the worst sort of opposition: neo-nationalists, borrowing traits from both the Scottish Independence Party and Britain's right wing xenophobic UKIP. What has Catalunya to gain from independence that it cannot with a little negotiations achieve within the Spanish envelope? Little, if anything. The autonomies in Spain set nearly all of their own laws, including control of their own regional police forces, with their own uniforms and the right to use their own languages. Euskadi has been a remarkable example of this, to the extent that the decades-long terrorist campaign has been dropped, in recognition of the success of the peace process in Ireland.

That, sadly, may now be threatend by Brexit, not deliberately (the English only pay attention to the Irish question when bombs explode in their cities) but accidentally. And for the very reason mentioned in the parenthesis above. 

It would be a terrible shame to see Cataunya go the same way. They have the right to their own flag, their own language and to a large extent their own economy. It is far from impossible - as the nationalists throughout Europe fear - that an eventual result of European integration could indeed be a ‘Europe of the Regions’ and the concept of the nation-state wither on the vine. But it is far from certain, and at present what Europe needs is not divisiveness, which too often only is an aid to advance the egotistic careers of certain politicians, but common sense and calm. Wave whatever flag you must, but for now the blue and gold EU banner is the safest.