Politics

The Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) decision to suspend Catalonia’s roadmap towards independence, which was ratified last week by the Catalan Chamber, won’t stop the launching of the Constitutive Process of the Catalan Republic. This is what radical left pro-independence CUP stated this Monday. Moreover, Regarding the possibility that the TC may suspend the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell as well, CUP MP Anna Gabriel warned that this would represent “a point of no return”for the Spanish state and that this would require “a countrywide response”. “We will remain faithful to the Parliament and if we have to disobey we will do so”, stated pro-independence left wing ERC’s spokesman in the Spanish Parliament Joan Tardàand lamented the “authoritarian way”and the “judicial violence”used by the Spanish state.

The Catalan Democratic Party (PDC), the new political force which has emerged after former governing liberal Convergència decided to reinvent itself, won’t have its own parliamentary group in the Spanish Senate. This is the first time that the former Convergència party won’t have its own group in the High Chamber since democracy was restored in Spain, in 1977. The four members in the Senate’s Bureau from the Conservative People’s Party (PP) voted against the PDC’s proposal to add two senators from left-wing pro-independence ERC to their four, two from the Canarian Coalition (CC) and two from Basque nationalists Bildu, as the regulation foresees a minimum of 10 senators in order to have their own group. The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) abstained from the vote and the other member in the Senate’s Bureau, representing the Basque Nationalist Party (PNB) voted in favour. 

The magistrates of the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) held this Monday an emergency meeting and unanimously agreed to accept the appeal presented by Spain’s executive, which urged to suspend Catalonia’s pro-independence roadmap, the next steps of which were approved last week by the Parliament. By the end of August the TC will decide if it will apply prison charges to the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell. The 72 pro-independence MPs in the Catalan Chamber and the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, have expressed their solidarity with Forcadell and insisted that the decision to pass the conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process was not hers but the democratic and majoritarian will of Catalans. 

Catalan Government Spokeswoman, Neus Munté responded this Friday to Spain’s decision to take the Parliament’s approval of the pro-independence roadmap before the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). Munté considered it “unacceptable” that the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, could be suspended and insisted that the Catalan executive “won’t move” from its “deeply democratic way”. She insisted that Catalonia’s roadmap towards independence “remains intact” and stated that “no court could be higher than the democratic will democratically expressed” in the 27-S Catalan elections. “It would be unprecedented that the president of Parliament could be suspended from office by a court decision”, she stated.

Governing cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP, the two pro-independence forces in the Parliament, put in place this Friday the basis for the future Catalan Tax Agency. It will be constituted by three bodies: the Catalan Tax Agency, the Board of Taxes and the Fiscal Council. The latter is one of the main novelties of the document registered by the pro-independence groups. The Fiscal Council, a body which doesn’t exist within the Spanish framework, will include representatives from both the public and private sector and will be responsible for advising the Government. The proposal will have to be put to vote after this summer as one of the three ‘laws of disconnection’ from Spain that both groups plan to approve, according to the pro-independence roadmap.

The Spanish Government will urge the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) to allow it to claim criminal liability against the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for having disobeyed the TC’s rulings. The current Spanish Cabinet, which met this Friday, also agreed to impede Forcadell from launching the pro-independence roadmap approved on Wednesday by the Parliament. In particular, the Spanish executive calls for the TC to “proceed to consider the witness of particulars in order to claim criminal liability against the Parliament’s President for disobeying the rulings of the TC, which all public servants are compelled to obey”. The petition also aims to expressly ban the Parliament’s President, the Parliament Bureau and the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, from promoting any initiative in relation to the pro-independence process. 

The Spanish Government has again turned to the court, this time to respond to this Wednesday’s approval of the pro-independence roadmap by the Catalan Chamber. Current Spanish President, Mariano Rajoy, has already ordered the State Attorney to write a document which will be approved this Friday by the Spanish Cabinet. The Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) repeatedly insisted that any declaration or action towards the constitution of the Catalan Republic will be invalidated, since this would have emerged from the pro-independence proposal agreed by the Parliament on the 9^th of November and which is considered unconstitutional by the TC. Rajoy also called the other main leaders in the Spanish Parliament to communicate to them his decision.

The conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process, which worked to establish the next steps to take in Catalonia’s roadmap towards independence, have been approved this Wednesday by the Catalan Chamber. The majority of 72 pro-independence MPs from governing cross-part list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP supported the conclusions, including one of the most controversial points: launching a “democratic unilateral mechanism which will allow the calling of the Constitutive Assembly”, the body which will be responsible for writing the Catalan Constitution. Thus, the Parliament has ignored the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC)’s warnings that called for impeding any action regarding the constitutive process of a Catalan republic. Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’ and the Conservative People’s Party (PP) described the vote as a “farce” and showed their opposition by leaving the Parliament.  

The Parliament finally accepted to include the conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process, which established the next steps in the pro-independence process, in this Wednesday’s agenda. The decision comes amid controversy over the possible suspension by the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC), which claimed that the points agreed by the Committee emerged from the 9-N agreed proposal, which was declared unconstitutional. “We are not doing anything illegal” stated Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, adding that he considered it “absolutely normal” for the Parliament to discuss the conclusions. In a similar vein, the pro-independence forces, governing cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP stated that they are due to the democratic mandate which emerged from the 27-S elections.

Alternative left alliance ‘En Comú Podem’ renounced having its own political group in the Spanish Parliament and will therefore be inscribed within the ‘Unidos-Podemos’ Confederal Group, their partner in Spain. ‘En Comú Podem’ gathers together members from Catalan Green-Socialist party ICV, the Catalan branch of the Spanish party ‘Podemos’ and representatives from the 'En Comú' candidacies, which won significant mayoralties in the last local elections, for example that of Barcelona, with social activist and now Barcelona mayor Ada Colau as its strongest asset. ‘En Comú Podem’ obtained12 MPs in the Spanish Parliament, representing the majoritarian option of Catalans in last month’s elections. On the other hand, the other two partners of ‘Unidos Podemos’ in the Valencian Community and Galicia, ‘Compromís’ and ‘En Marea’, will seek to have their own group in the Spanish Chamber.

The Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural, the two main civil organisations behind the massive pro-independence demonstrations held since 2012 on Catalonia’s National Day, have presented their project for the upcoming mobilisation on the 11^th of September. The new campaign, called ‘A punt’ (‘We are ready’), aims to mobilise Catalans in five different cities all over the territory: Barcelona; Salt, in Girona; Berga, in Central Catalonia; Lleida; and Tarragona. The presidents of both organisations invited all those who support holding a referendum on independence to join the demonstration and explained that the motto ‘A punt’ symbolises two things; that Catalonia “is ready to achieve the republic” and that the citizens have already reached “the final stage” of the pro-independence process. 

Left-wing pro-independence ERC are pushing Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, to advance the expected date for him to submit to a vote of confidence. Although the Catalan President has never specified the exact date of the vote, he has repeatedly referred to the second half of September. However, this Monday left-wing pro-independence ERC have called him to do it earlier and before the 11^th of September, Catalonia’s National Day. According to ERC spokesman and MP in the Spanish Parliament, Joan Tardà, this will allow the citizens “to celebrate Catalonia’s National Day with optimism and confidence” since the vote of confidence in the Parliament “will be a great success”. Nevertheless, sources in the Government have told the CNA that Puigdemont doesn’t plan to change the scheduled date. 

The Catalan Democratic Party (PDC), the new political force which has emerged after former governing liberal Convergència decided to reinvent itself, will be led by former Catalan President Artur Mas. “This is a new party because we want a new country”, stated Mas in a press conference on Saturday, after winning the primary election for the PDC’s leadership with 95.07% of votes. The Catalan Government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, was designated PDC’s vice president and Marta Pascal and David Bonvehí will be the party’s general coordinators. Pascal insisted that the PDC “has to be a political reference point for the new state” and admitted that a unilateral referendum on independence “is a real option”.

47.7% of Catalans would vote for independence while 42.4% would opt to keep the current status quo. This is the first time that ‘yes’ surpasses ‘no’ since 2014, when the 9-N symbolic vote on independence was held. Moreover, the percentage of those who don’t support Catalonia’s independence has dropped by 5 points, in comparison to the last poll released by the Centre of Opinion Studies (CEO), in March 2016. The survey, run by the Government, also showed that governing cross-party list, pro-independence ‘Junts Pel Sí’ would win the elections again, if they were called in the coming weeks, obtaining between 60 and 62 MPs in the Parliament; currently they hold 62 seats. Alternative left alliance ‘Catalunya Sí que es Pot’ would come second, nearly doubling the number of seats they got in the 27-S Catalan Elections. 

Catalans living abroad will be able to cast their vote by electronic means by next June. The system, pioneer in Spain, will have to be in accordance with the LOREG, the Spanish Organic Law of General Electoral Regime. According to Catalan Minister for Public Administration, Meritxell Borràs, the electronic vote is within Spain’s legality and, therefore, “it will be nonsense” for the Spanish Government to impede its implementation. The initative will help Catalans living abroad “to exercise a fundamental right”. The LOREG and the ‘requested vote’ system, introduced in 2010, dragged out the whole process and meant more agents being involved, which  resulted in lower participation. Indeed, only 14,000 of the 200,000 people registered to vote were able to cast their ballot on the last Catalan Elections.