independence

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.

Radical left pro-independence CUP have insisted on the “need” to meet with Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, before he submits to a vote of confidence, on the 28^th of September. The Government’s partners aim to discuss the pro-independence roadmap first, which was ratified two weeks ago by the Catalan Parliament and suspended a few days afterwards by the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). Regarding the debate on the budget for 2017, which became an essential point after CUP refused to pass the bill for 2016, the radical lefties insist that approval is not guaranteed and that the draft for 2017 will have to be designed according to the roadmap. “It would be nonsense if the bill for 2017 didn’t foresee an allocation for the unilateral referendum on independence”, CUP pointed out.

The current situation of judicialisation of politics in Catalonia and the obstacles that the Spanish executive puts in the way of the pro-independence roadmap “are similar”to previous episodes “of military coup d’états”in Spain, stated CUP MP, Anna Gabriel. The representative of the radical left pro-independence party told the CNA that the Catalan institutions haven’t been “threatened by criminal means”so much for “many years”and she predicted that such threats could be increased “if the pro-independence process continues to move forward”. Thus, Gabriel considered that it would be “ridiculous”to appeal the Spanish Constitutional Court’s decision to suspend the pro-independence roadmap, ratified last week by the Parliament, since “those who take part in the coup d’état don’t come to reason”. 

The Catalan Government Spokeswoman, Neus Munté warned this Tuesday that the “Spanish Constitution can’t be understood as a Criminal Code” and insisted on the Government’s commitment to “obey the democratic mandate of the 27-S Elections” and launch the pro-independence roadmap. She made these statements one day after the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) decided to suspend Catalonia’s plan to disconnect from Spain and opened the door to applying criminal charges to the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for allowing the approval of the conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process. According to Munté, the TC should be “a referee” in charge of settling “the constitutionality of the laws” rather than “an executor court”.

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 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 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.