Legal “disconnection” from Spain to start only after a ‘Yes’ victory, says CUP

Barcelona (CNA).-The spokesman of radical left pro-independence CUP’s national secretariat, Quim Arrufat, explained that the laws to start the disconnection from Spain will not enter into force unless the independence option wins the referendum in 2017.  In an interview with the Catalan News Agency, he referred to the three laws that establish the necessary framework for the disconnection process: one on social measures, a second on the Catalan tax office and a third on the legal transition. Regarding the legal transition law, which regulates the conversion of the Autonomous Community into an independent state, Arrufat explained that it will be applied in two steps. In the first phase only the aspects that allow the Catalan Government to carry out the referendum will become effective. The other clauses of the law will only come into force in case of a pro-independence majority in the referendum. “No step forward will be made, unless it is supported through the ballot boxes”, he claimed. 

These two steps of the process will be reflected on paper with an additional provision in the law that will impede making the disconnection effective unless the referendum shows a majority for independence. This clause will also exist in the laws for the creation of the Catalan Agency for Social Protection and the Catalan Tax Office. The aim is to make the transition from one reality to another with “maximum legal certainty” and avoid situations where citizens do not know to which administration they have to pay taxes or address their queries. “This cannot happen, it would be absurd. We must ensure that everything happens with legal certainty”, he concluded.

Arrufat explained that the two main pro-independence forces in the Parliament, cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ (JxSí) and CUP, are working to reduce the time between the adoption of the laws and the celebration of the referendum. Thus, avoiding a likely intervention from the Spanish Government.

In the Debate on General Policy last October, the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, set the timetable for the roadmap towards independence. According to it, the laws to start the disconnection have to be passed by the Catalan Parliament in late July 2017. The referendum, on the other hand, is scheduled for the second half of September. In this vein, Arrufat urged a shortening of the time between the two events in order to reduce “to a minimum” the chances for Spain’s intervention.

31st of December, the deadline for finishing the text on the legal transition 

JxSí and CUP are debating weekly the text of the legal transition. Negotiations, according to Arrufat, are moving “in the right direction” and the text will be finished by the 31st of December. 

The law must specify “everything that the country needs to transfer at a legal level, what it needs to abolish and what it must create”, the politician explained. Although the Parliament counts on specific commissions to debate the three laws of disconnection, Arrufat justified bilateral negotiations with JxSí alleging the “permanent boycott” of other parties who do not want the rules to go ahead.  

Differences with the 9-N symbolic vote  

The main difference between the referendum in 2017 and the 9-N symbolic vote in 2014 is that this time the Catalan Government has already built the republic, through norms, and the referendum is the instrument for validating the laws already passed, Arrufat explained. “It is not a desideratum of people’s views in order to start working on the construction of a republic, because the laws of disconnection already set the basis of the new republic”, he argued. If the 'No' side won the referendum on independence, the laws would be stopped and Catalonia would return to the initial status quo: an “intervened Autonomous Community”, he said.