The Catalan Question

We are "a party divided" no longer "united in our diversity."

The words of Pere Navarro, leader of the PSC (Partit dels Socialistes del Catalunya, http://www.socialistes.cat/) in his resignation speech earlier this month.

The cause of his sudden departure? The Catalan Question, mainly. The nationalist movement here is led by the left. As a result the PSC, the mainstream socialist party, has haemorrhaged votes to the nationalist left. Like Gordon Brown in Scotland, the PSC has tried to outline a federal future, but like Mr Brown's version it sounds neither clear nor likely. Voters are not buying it.

The Catalan Question is dominating Madrid politics. Our new king, Phillip VI, made an oblique reference to it in his coronation speech on Thursday. The Catalan Question seems more important in Madrid, than the Scottish Question is in Westminster.

In part this is because of different ideas of nation and thus nationalism, defined here by language, by street protest, by youth participation in Assembleas and Casals. Catalonia has suffered from a history, still in living memory, of bloody oppression.

The images of the nation are different, too; there is no equivalent here of the postcard-packaged image of Scotland (castles, lochs and kilts). Catalonia is harder to package.

Language is central to the debate. In the village in which I live almost everyone speaks Catalan. Our kids go to school in Catalan: a teacher in Mallorca has just finished a hunger strike as part of a mass protest against the imposition of Castellano in state schools there. Catalan is the starting point in any debate. Open your mouth and we know which side you are likely to be on. Harder to do that in Scotland.

We have a generation of protesters to rely on. At the village festas, and most other mass events you'll see a busy wee stand, the Catalan Senyera fluttering, surrounded by a group of older people talking animatedly. This is the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC, https://assemblea.cat/), the campaign of signatures for a referendum. The ANC volunteers are, many of them, people who were case-hardened under the 'porres' (batons) of the oppressive Guardia Civil under General Franco. There have been hilarious scenes at demonstrations of the modern police trying to move them on, caught between respect for the elderly, and their orders.

Protest seems much more natural here. People fly the Estellada (Catalan independence flag) at every Barcelona FC match. We couldn't understand why Alex Salmond was criticised for doing the equivalent when Andy Murray won Wimbledon.  Extraordinary numbers of people here join the mass protests. For the Via Catalana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Way) 1.6 million people held hands along 480km of our coastline on 11 September 2013.

The great gasping maw of a difference is that in Scotland you can vote. Here, we can't. The Madrid Government refuses to give the Catalans a vote, and both the main parties agree. Artur Mas, Catalan President, has laid plans including ordering 6,000 ballot boxes for the referendum he plans to hold on 9 November.

But Madrid will not allow Catalans to vote and refuses all talk of a referendum. We can expect a summer of discontent followed by an autumn of protest, with the 11^th September, Catalan national day, a special focus.

The Catalans will celebrate their day just one week before the people of Scotland vote for their independence.  We’ll be watching, with envy.

Power Corrupts...

We've hit an interesting point, politically and historically, in the referendum campaign for Scotland. Catalonia and any other place with pretensions to separate will hit the same point sooner or later.

It's the conundrum of power.

Politicians from the three main parties at Westminster have said in the last three weeks that Scotland cannot be independent and 'keep' the pound, join the EU, share intelligence and safeguard pensions. We can expect more of this, and we'll be told that we can't have the BBC, the Queen and fish from our seas.

Which illustrates one half of the conundrum. Because these assets are ours. The pound, the pension insurance schemes and the Beeb are (currently) the property of all UK citizens.

But when a politician from Westminster says we can't have them he (it is always a man) is saying "These assets are mine, not yours. I say who gets them. Not you." He is underlining exactly why a country would want to separate - to win back the control it thought it had over its assets. The people who vote Yes in September are saying "No, not yours. These assets are owned by the people."

What else can a Westminster politician say? His or her only strategy is to say to the Scottish children "We'll take back our sweeties. Even if they are half sucked." And the minute she or he says that they are caught in the conundrum of power, trapped into admitting that these assets that we believed were owned by the people are in fact under the sole and absolute control of Westminster. Politically, it's checkmate.

Could it be different?

A little humility would be good. To say, for example, that thanks to all that Scottish ship-building in the 19th century, and those Scottish financial brains, and the steam engine, the television, golf and football and Silicon Glen and Charles Rennie Macintosh and Iain Banks and James VI and the Scottish regiments and..., that thanks in fair part to Scotland's contribution we have all these lovely assets. And we would now like to work out how better we might share them with the five million who live in Scotland. To accept that politicians are servants of the people, not key-holders of the Crown jewels.

But Westminster politicians are locked into the conundrum of power. They will not offer humility, nor power sharing. 

Everyone who votes Yes on 18 September, is saying "no" to the arrogance of Westminster.