catalan way

The Catalan Government approved this Tuesday the creation of four new delegations abroad. One of the offices will be located in Copenhagen and is set to cover the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. The delegation to Poland will be based in Warsaw and the delegation in Zagreb aims to have influence in the Balkan area and in the near future in Greece, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania. A fourth delegation is going to be opened in Geneva and focus on Switzerland, a country which has been covered by the delegation to France up to now. Although the Catalan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva, admitted that the pace of enhancing the Catalan delegation network “depends on the budget for 2017” he insisted that this doesn’t mean that “nothing can be done”.

The Delegation of the Catalan Government in Portugal is already a reality. The new office located in Lisbon started working this Monday and aims to “increase the economic and cultural relationships” between Catalonia and Portugal, which are “historic and very fluent”. “Catalonia is willing to be, and has to be, a global actor” stated Catalan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva and added that “the delegations are a tool for Catalonia to have its own voice in the world”. Romeva also emphasised the need for Catalonia to be “connected” to the world and insisted on the Catalan executive’s will to “keep the dialogue” with the Spanish Government. The journalist Ramon Font has been appointed as the Head of the Delegation in Lisbon, which now becomes the eighth office of the Catalan Government abroad.

Radical left pro-independence CUP announced that they will support the head of the Catalan Government in the upcoming vote of confidence that Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, will submit himself to on the 28th of September. Thus, the Government’s partner in the Parliament doesn’t see Puigdemont’s commitment to the celebration of a unilateral referendum on independence as a condition ‘sine qua non’ to renew their confidence in the President. “Hopefully on the 28th of September a referendum to be held in May or June next year will be called”, stated CUP MP Anna Gabriel this Monday, but added that “if this is not the case, CUP could support the vote of confidence and discuss how to culminate Catalonia’s political process later”. Although Gabriel didn’t consider the referendum as a red line for renewing confidence in Puigdemont, she insisted that this would be the best democratic instrument to move towards Catalonia’s independence. 

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, said in an interview with the CNA that the European Union will have to intervene in the Catalan conflict. “At some point, probably not now, the EU will have to stop looking the other way. It will need to recognise that there is a political problem that requires some decisions to be taken” in Brussels, he stressed. Amid growing political tensions between Catalan and Spanish institutions over independence and threats of suspension or even prosecution against the Catalan Parliament President, Carme Forcadell, Puigdemont warned that political problems require “political solutions”. According to the Catalan President, however, it is now “understandable” for the EU to stay away from the Catalan issue and to describe it as an “internal matter”. “They do not want to create a conflict between member states”, he pointed out, adding that this will change in the future if someone asks Brussels to intervene. “Then the EU will not be able to refrain from” answering, he said.

The Catalan President and radical left CUP held a two-hours long meeting on Friday to rebuild trust after the CUP’s veto to the 2016 budget in June kept their relations frozen. Carles Puigdemont said “more coordination” and a “better exchange of information” between the government and its main ally in the Catalan Parliament is needed in order to move forward in the independence process. “The government needs parliamentary stability to move forward in our disconnection road map”, he said in an exclusive interview with the CNA. The Catalan President, who is facing a confidence vote on the 28th of September, added that Catalonia needs a budget and that it would be “nonsense” to vote ‘yes’ to the confidence ballot and then rebuff the government budget.

Sergi Marcén took office on Thursday with the aim of strengthening bilateral relations between Catalonia and the governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland. After the ‘Brexit’ result, Catalonia wants to improve its support and service to Catalan citizens and companies in the UK and Ireland. The new Head of Delegation held his first meeting with the Minster of Foreign Affairs Raül Romeva in Barcelona to analyse the main priorities of action. Marcén replaces Josep Manuel Suàrez, who retired last spring.

The Catalan President warned Spanish politicians on Thursday that the political deadlock will continue as long as they refuse to engage in constructive talks with Catalonia and consider the possibility of a referendum. “It’s a catch-22”, he said a day after Spanish interim president Mariano Rajoy lost his confidence vote in the Spanish Parliament. Puigdemont stated that 36 out of 47 Catalan MPs, all except those from PP and Ciutadans, voted against Rajoy and will do so again on Friday, when a second ballot is expected. “Anyone aspiring to become Spanish president should recognise the reality in Catalonia”, he said, adding that without a solution in Catalonia there won’t be a stable government in Spain.

The leader of the People’s Party, Mariano Rajoy, lost two confidence votes in the Spanish Parliament this week with 170 votes in favour and 180 against. Spain will therefore continue to have an interim government after eight months of political standstill and amid growing speculation over a possible new election on Christmas Day. “I am not asking you to form a coalition, I am asking you to let me govern”, said Mariano Rajoy to the Socialist leader, Pedro Sánchez during a debate in Madrid. The PSOE, the radical left-wing coalition Unidos Podemos and the Catalan and Basque nationalists voted against the PP government plans, which had the support of liberal Ciutadans (C’s). But despite calls from Podemos´ leader in favour of an alternative left-wing coalition, the PSOE is unlikely to accept, as such a government would need the support of pro-independence parties in Catalonia.

The leader of the People’s Party (PP) stressed in Parliament that he represents the only “viable” option to form a “stable” government in Spain. “It is urgent for Spain to have a government as soon as possible, a government ready to act, to put an end to this democratic anomaly”, he said referring to the eight-month period of political deadlock in Madrid. The PP has the support of Ciutadans (C’s) and the Canary Islands nationalists, but their 170 seats fall short of the majority needed to form a government. The main opposition party, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) will vote ‘no’ in the confidence vote scheduled for Wednesday, and so will Podemos and pro-Catalan independence parties ERC and PDC. As things stand, the PP does not have enough support for Rajoy to pass the confidence vote this week and Spain will continue without a functioning government.

The leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) described as a “waste of time” his meeting on Monday with conservative leader Mariano Rajoy. In a press conference in Madrid, Sánchez said that the Socialists will vote against a new Rajoy-led government. The People’s Party (PP) and Ciutadans (C’s) agreed on Sunday a 150-point plan to form a new Spanish government, but they do not have enough support in parliament. Rajoy will face a confidence vote on Wednesday, and a second one on Friday if the first ballot fails. According to Sánchez, the socialists cannot be blamed for the expected failure of Rajoy.

The Catalan government spokeswoman, Neus Munté, criticised on Monday the agreement between the conservative People’s Party (PP) and liberal Ciutadans (C’s), which includes a compromise to exchange the immersion education system in Catalonia, in place since the regaining of democracy, for a trilingual model. In a TV interview, Munté said that Catalonia won’t change “a single comma” of its school system, which she reminded is entrusted by law and attracts a “very broad consensus” in the country. According to Munté, C’s “changes its principles depending on which way the wind blows” in Spain, but has always kept intact its aim to “kill the immersion system” in Catalonia.

The conservative People’s Party (PP) and liberal unionist Ciutadans (C’s) are negotiating in order to form a stable majority for a new government in Spain and Catalonia is one of the main issues on the table. The MP from Ciutadans Jorge Soler has confirmed that the so-called ‘Catalan package’ of demands from C’s to the PP includes changing the school model, even though education is a devolved power in Catalonia. The current school model has been in place for more than 30 years and is widely recognised by school teachers unions, associations and experts, as well as families. In Catalan schools, Catalan is the language of instruction in order to guarantee that all pupils end their studies knowing both Catalan, which not everyone learns at home, and Spanish, which is widely used both in the media and on the street. However, C’s has always campaigned against this system, saying that it discriminates against Spanish families that want their children to be taught in the Spanish language. That’s why they’re asking the PP to scrap the system and introduce a trilingual model with Spanish, English and Catalan. Some of the other ‘Catalan-package’ demands of C’s is a new fiscal system and the prioritisation of key infrastructure projects such as the Mediterranean Corridor. Both PP and C’s frontally reject a referendum on independence in Catalonia.

The spokesman in the Catalan Parliament of the liberal and unionist party Ciutadans, Carlos Carrizosa, said in an interview with the CNA that voters in Catalonia will have to go to the polls next year because, according to him, the current government will collapse. “This very unstable government has the support of an unreliable and dangerous ally, the CUP, and it will not be able to survive beyond 2017. There will be elections and their result will worsen”, he stated. In September last year, Junts pel Sí and CUP together achieved 48% of the vote. According to Carrizosa, they won’t be able to improve this result in a new election, and this will mark the beginning of the end of the independence process. The Catalan government roadmap towards independence, led by President Carles Puigdemont, already foresees the call of an early constituent election next year.

He was the president of the left-wing pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana (ERC) between 1996 and 2004 and a renowned Catalan philologist. Carbonell was responsible for the first four volumes of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (the ‘Big Catalan Encyclopaedia’), that he compiled between 1965 and 1971. During the Franco dictatorship he was incarcerated twice because of his anti-fascist and pro-Catalan language activism. One of the more famous sentences of the pro-independence movement is his: “Que la prudència no ens faci traïdors”, (“Don’t let caution turn us into traitors”, in English). He pronounced it on the 11th of September 1976, during the first Catalan National Day demonstration after the death of the dictator.

The president of the civil society organisation Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Jordi Sánchez, stated on Sunday that the process towards independence has to be completed and a binding referendum needs to be called by the Catalan Parliament this autumn. Otherwise, he admitted, Catalan independence supporters might not achieve their goal. “We either start to complete this process (towards independence) or it will finish us off”, he said, admitting a certain fatigue amongst pro-independence groups. The ANC, together with Omnium Cultural and other civil society organisations in Catalonia, have for many years been organising massive pro-independence demonstrations every 11th of September, the Catalan National Day. In 2013, for example, they made a human chain from the North to the South of the country inspired by the Baltic Way, and in the last two years more than 1.5 million people demonstrated in Barcelona. The ANC is planning a new rally in 2016, this time with five different events across Catalonia.