Basically Catalonia, the region of Spain that includes Barcelona, is attempting to gain independence. The Spanish government is attempting to prevent that. These protests are a result of this tension.
It's worth noting that much of this "independence" business is not as serious as outsiders might assume. The Spanish government largely brought this 'independence' movement on themselves by rejecting requests for more sensible forms of increased local self-govenment. To a mildly-sophisticated observer, this just looks like a whole lot of overstated politicking. (This is also why PSOE - the party with the more "sensible" position within the Spanish govenment - is pushing for a soft approach. They realize that this will easily blow over as soon as the government comes to their senses.)
It’s also worth noting that Spain is already one of the most decentralised countries in the OCDE and Catalonia is one of the regions which a higher level of self-government in the country. Including its own police force, which results in the amusing situation that the regional government is at the same time encouraging the masses to revolt and sending the police to repress the revolts.
I'd rather not to take anyone on Spain very seriously about this, as this is a very "with me or against me" kind of problem, and practically everyone has a strong opinion.
Everyone will tell you their side of the story, with half-truths and euphemisms wherever they need them.
Source: I'm Spanish, currently living in Barcelona.
It's true, and neither side is handling this very well. The government could have let the referendum happen but campaign against it, appeasing the people who wanted a democratic vote but still winning. Instead, they went full suppression and made themselves look much worse.
The thing is, the government can't let a "comunidad autonoma" organize a binding referendum about a region's secession of Spain, because that would put the region's sovereignty on the region's people, and that's against the Spanish constitution (art. 1.2, the sovereignty of the entire Spanish territory is of all Spanish citizens).
That also infringes Spanish constitution's 2nd art., "the Constitution is fundamented atop the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".
It's not that they "should have let them vote", it's that they can't, unless the Spanish citizens reform the constitution and remove those articles.
The separatist movement is blocked in that regard, and unless all other UN countries were to recognize Catalonia as an independent state, they are locked in as a "comunidad autonoma" until a constitution reform happens.
And yet, doesn't this violate the principle of self-determination? If the people of a region want to create a separate region, who is to tell them not to? Catalonia now needs the permission of the others to leave?
It seems as though the Spanish constitution was written for the primacy of a centralized state, rather than federated government down to the individual. I suppose the idea that sovereignty is effectively granted by the central state is a result thereof. Maybe reforming that would be a good first step.
Very many constitutions are actually silent on secession.
I am from Australia. To my best recollection, Australia's constitution never mentions the topic of secession, neither positively or negatively. But, territories of Australia have become independent before. Same is true of United States.
But, some will say a territory is not fully integrated, unlike a state or province, and a state or province would be different.
People say the US constitution doesn't allow secession of a state (as opposed to a territory) without a constitutional amendment. Not directly, but indirectly it does:
1. It is accepted that a territory (as opposed to a state) can secede and become a new country with consent of Congress
2. The US constitution allows a state to surrender some of its territory to the federal government (most obvious case is District of Columbia, but actually a lot of the Midwestern states were formed out of territory originally surrendered by the Eastern states which used to be a lot bigger than they are now)
3. So, a state wishes to secede could surrender all its territory to the federal government, and then Congress allows that territory to become independent.
Objection: States can only surrender some of their territory, not all of it.
Reply: Even if that is true, there is a workaround. Two states are allowed to merge with consent of Congress and their state legislatures. So, seceding state could merge into a neighbouring state, and then the new state would surrender the former territory of the seceding state to the federal government, and then Congress would grant that federal territory independence. (This would of course require the cooperation of a neighbouring state, which might be thought unlikely, but maybe not impossible – the neighbouring state might be pleased to see the seceding state go; the seceding state might sweeten the deal somehow by letting the neighbouring state keep part of its territory.)
Of course, the US Supreme Court might decide this is against the "spirit" of the US constitution. But they aren't compelled to conclude that it is against the letter. Strict constructionism would suggest this would be constitutional.
> People say the US constitution doesn't allow secession of a state (as opposed to a territory) without a constitutional amendment.
Congress granting a territory (or state, directly) independence isn't secession, whether or not it is allowed. Secession is unilateral, grants of independence are a different thing.
Madrid insists they couldn't allow Catalonia to become independent even if they wanted to.
Many people in Spain outside of Catalonia are resolutely opposed to Catalan independence, under any circumstances. By contrast, most people in UK outside of Scotland don't really care, and even the vast majority of those opposed to it would be willing to accept it if a referendum voted in favour. (Even those opposed to a second independence referendum, their argument is "too soon" rather than "never again"). In this regard, Spain is culturally more like China than the UK – pro-Beijing people get terribly upset at the idea of any territory claimed by the PRC ever becoming independent of it.
> Madrid insists they couldn't allow Catalonia to become independent even if they wanted to.
Which may or may not be a correct interpretation of the Spanish Constitution, but what the US Constitution does or does not allow regarding either secession or Congressional grants of independence is not really germane one way or another. They aren't even products of the same legal tradition such that analysis of one might be illuminating on the other.
Spanish opponents of Catalan independence repeatedly use the argument "Our constitution doesn't allow a part of our country to become independent; but in that regard our constitution is no different from those of many other countries".
So the question of what other countries' constitutions allow is relevant to the debate.
And the comment I was initially responding to was suggesting that the UK could only allow Scotland the choice of independence because it has an unwritten constitution. Explaining how other country's written constitutions could allow grants of independence to parts of the country is a relevant response.
No, current constitution was redacted after the death of the dictator. There were mainly seven people involved in writing it. Between them, there was a communist, a socialist, a representative of the Basque and Catalan minorities, and only one who came from previous governments during the dictatorship. By the way, two of these seven people (the communist one and the representative of Basque-Catalan minorities) were from Catalonia (this is almost the perfect proportion taking into account the fraction of Spain that Catalonia represents, but if you know that Spain has 17 autonomous regions, it is obvious that Catalonia was not misrepresented).
You will read several comments here saying similar things (I have read something like that this constitution was only voted because the only other option was another war), but it is simply not true, as you can easily check in any independent source.
The current Spanish constitution was drafted by a process heavily dominated by members of the former Francoist regime. The Spanish people were never formally asked "What sort of constitution would you like?" They were asked "Would you like a democratic constitution or not?" And I think a lot of people voted 'yes', whether or not they liked the constitution on offer, but simply because they wanted to ensure the return to democracy and the end to dictatorship was solidified. A fairer process of drafting a constitution would have produced a very different document.
If a dictatorship offers people democracy on its terms, people will accept it. But, was their choice really free? Would they have agreed to the same terms if the threat of dictatorship wasn't there? (1978 was only three years after Franco died, Spanish democracy was very young, and it was entirely believable in 1978 that it might not have lasted.)
The committee of 7 people that drafted the constitution included people from very different ideologies, for example a former member of the Franco government, a Catalan member of UCD, a Catalan nationalist, a socialist or a Catalan member of the communist party and they all agreed on the text that was voted. Were they all dominated by the Francoist regime? By that time Spain had already had democratic elections so, if that text were rejected the result would be to restart the constitutive process, not to go back to the dictatorship.
Ultimately we need to answer one question: is the current Spanish Constitution democratic or not? if it is, it does not matter how it came to be. Any changes could be done by a democratic process. If it is not, then all the Spanish citizens are affected and a whole new constitutive process is needed where all the citizens vote, not only Catalans.
Not sure how many constitutions around the world have a "Secession Procedure" section, but I suppose not too many. I know UK sort of has one in its "unwritten" constitution. I understand that Spanish government cannot simply ignore the constitution and must do something, I'm sure they could have come up with a better something...
I expect in vast majority of cases of gaining independence from a country with existing constitution it wasn't something along the lines of: "OK, so you want independence? Fine, just wait a bit until we change the constitution". Then again, and sadly, it probably wasn't happening without violence either.
Here's a list of unilateral declarations of independence, some more successful than others:
It didn't have to be binding, just advisory or symbolic with no action to be taken. It might have prevented most of the current situation if the result had been to remain (which would have been most likely, back then, now I'm not so sure). If it had been independence I suppose we would be in a very similar situation.
We had a non-binding referendum on November 9th, 2014, with 90% saying yes to independence, but 37% voter turnout.
Then an illegally-binding referendum was organized by the Catalan government on October 1st, 2017. The result was 90% leaves, but yet again, 43% voter turnout, and there were no democratic guarantees, as some people were caught voting multiple times, the census was obtained illegally, etc.
After that illegal referendum, the Catalan government decided to secede and declare independence. That's why they were prosecuted and recently convicted. Declaring the independence of a part of Spanish sovereign territory is explicitly forbidden under the name of "secession" in Spanish constitution, and because it goes against the nation's own sovereignty it is considered a very serious crime, that's why they were convicted up to 13 years.
From my POV, as a Catalan citizen, this is ordinary application of law, the law that we all agreed upon in the first place, and the riots and violent scenes seen recently are simply caused by a minority of the pro-independent minority which want independence at all costs, and police forces can't allow that, thus, conflict.
Fair enough, but they could still have campaigned against secession and declared any referendum void. They probably could have managed it better than send armed police to confiscate the ballot boxes.
Compare Spain to Iraq. Around the same time, Iraqi Kurdistan had a referendum on independence. The Iraqi central government declared it void. But they didn't make any physical attempt to stop it.
The Spanish central government and court system didn't have to try to physically stop the referendum. They could have just declared it illegal but then ignored it rather than seeking to physically prevent it. They could have followed the same approach as Iraq. They chose not to. Likewise, rather than imprisoning those who declared unilateral independence, they could have just declared the act legally void and then pretended it never happened.
Governments (and judicial systems) always have discretion about enforcing the law. A wise government knows when to step back. A foolish government demands it be enforced 100% of the time. (And I guarantee you, that there will be other issues, on which the Spanish government and judiciary make no such demand for 100% enforcement – prosecutorial discretion exists in every country, Spain included.)
It's against their constitution to do so. My country has similar wording in its constitution. Nevertheless, independence can happen if there's enough support for it, either through peaceful means or not. Unfortunately the central goverment's actions only escalate the situation further. It's like they've learned nothing from the Basque conflict.
There's a massive ongoing police operation to suppress the catalan independence movement. The spanish paramilitary is trying to take down the source code of an app that people use to coordinate peaceful demonstrations. They say that this is to "fight terrorism" which is ridiculous, albeit there are already several people preemptively incarcerated, falsely accused of terrorism (still waiting for a trial).
I think that regarding the Catalan independence the Spanish judiciary system had proven itself to be at the level of the worst dictatorial country. People taking part in it should be shameful. When most of these cases will go up to the EU court they will likely get squashed.
They don't try to supress catalan independence, but violence. People on jail are there because they set fires, throw stones to police or hold some explosive substances.
A good example of why I think "terrorist" and "terrorism" communicate almost nothing other than "I think they are the bad guys". That sort of statement is ripe for debate.
On the other hand if you say that someone was arrested for arson, assault, or unauthorized possession or explosives then some objective reasoning can sort things out rather than having to fall back on an endlessly subjective debate of what is or isn't terrorism.
The phrase "hate crime" is another example of this problem. Someone being arrested for assault is pretty straightforward to investigate and adjudicate. If you also want the police to make some additional determination as to their motive and thoughts in order to make it a "hate crime" then everything is much more complicated. How about just punish appropriately for the assault and move on.
Note, I'm just talking about the use of language here, not trying to discern who are the bad guys in this particular dispute.
The word "violence" has a similar problem in spanish and catalan discourse. It has been used to describe the acts of blocking a street, moving dustbins around, or simply covering your face. The worst perpetrators of this semantic drift turn out to be catalan "extreme" pacifists, who aggressively condemn anybody who does these things in demonstrations. They are mockingly called the "dustbin protection society".
The tsunami app it's trying to build a decentralized network on a way that anonymous individuals can control and send messages to specific peers, to coordinate "peaceful" demonstrations and make noise on their independence desire.
They managed to close the access to Barcelona airport and disturb the lives of thousands of individuals, and their plan is to continue doing so in an anonymous and unaccountable way.
Spanish government on the other side, it's trying to find who is behind this network, and making some bold moves, not because their effectiveness, but more to say that it's doing something instead of sitting idle.
They misused the political institutions for their benefit and pushed their agenda even when they have been warned several times of the penal consequences. There can be disagreement with the conviction time, but they are not innocents.
> they have been warned several times of the penal consequences
If this is a common sentiment in Spain on how to resolve such issues, I wouldn't call it a democracy. The UK has many problems, but it handled the Scottish referendum much better.
The Catalan parliament, which works based on laws on which the central government does not have nothing to say, required a large majority to pass important laws. The independentist government decided to ignore that law and go on with it, ignoring the advice of their own layers. They know not even half of their population wants independence [1], and they still decided to declare it based on the results of a referendum that, independently of how bad the police actions were, cannot be taken seriously.
If you think that not allowing a minority to impose their ideas on a majority is not democratic, then I do not know what democracy is.
That is, there is no majority of voters in Catalonia that want independence, according to the last election.
Failing to win the popular vote, all independence parties left any ideological differences aside and united forces to obtain majority in the parliament, using that majority to push for an illegal referendum that most of the population in Catalonia didn't took seriously. They then tried to used the results of the illegal referendum, where mostly only those citizens pro-independence went to vote to try to push for independence, ignoring the will of the 53% of the voters that voted against them in the last democratic election.
All in all, a pretty good shit-show, that has resulted in a couple of politicians accused of treason and in jail or in exile.
IMO the worst parts of this are that (1) ~50% of the population has a different opinion than the other 50%, and they will need to manage to live together independently of how things turn out, and (2) Catalonia's politicians do not care about their constituents, and only appear to care about those constituents that voted for them. I personally think that's pretty shameful, and don't have any respect for any of the politicians on either side.
> IMO the worst parts of this are that (1) ~50% of the population has a different opinion than the other 50%, and they will need to manage to live together independently of how things turn out, and (2) Catalonia's politicians do not care about their constituents, and only appear to care about those constituents that voted for them. I personally think that's pretty shameful, and don't have any respect for any of the politicians on either side.
That's pretty exactly the UK/Brexit problem as well. :(
You could literally s/Catalonia/UK/g and have the sentence be 100% valid for the UK too. :)
> That is, there is no majority of voters in Catalonia that want independence, according to the last election.
Indeed, but I didn't say "a majority". This is exactly why I said "remain" would have won, Spain could have ruled it void anyway, and everyone would have been happy.
> Spain could have ruled it void anyway, and everyone would have been happy.
This would have sent the message that it is ok for public servants to ignore the will of half the people they are responsible for, and that they are above the law.
That's a dangerous message to send.
What was stupid was sending the police against the voters. That was completely unnecessary and gave the independence movement a lot of "legitimacy" in the international community.
They should just have arrested the organizers of the referendum on that same day and call it a day. Instead, they let them flee to brussels.
that's a large simplification of the problem. ¿Can Barcelona where people is less independent secede from the rural Catalonia? ¿Can the rich secede from the poor? As a matter of the actual law, only all the Spaniards can vote for a change like that, but Catalonians will never accept such thing because they will never be able to convince that the separation of Catalonia is a good thing for both sides.
