Wednesday, 6 Sept, the Catalan Parliament approved a bill
calling for a referendum on independence to be held 1 October. This has been in the making for a few years,
and many Catalans never thought it would happen – some still don’t. Because during all those years, despite the
millions of Catalans demonstrating each 11 September that they want to vote,
the Spanish government has refused to talk to Catalan leaders on the
subject. They say it goes against the
constitution (something many people contest) and that a referendum is illegal. That voting should be illegal reminds me of
the places where the law once said that women were not allowed to vote. Those laws were changed.
The Catalan parliament was elected two years ago with the
majority pro-independence coalition winning on the platform of organizing a
referendum on independence. And ever
since that election, with that majority, the parliament has been moving
forward, always asking that Spain negotiate with them so that it could be an
agreed upon referendum such as Quebec held a few years ago, and that Scotland
also held recently (in both cases, the independence option lost). It has never been a case of negotiations
where no agreement could be reached.
Spain has always simply refused to talk at all.
In
response to the referendum bill being approved on Wednesday, Deputy Prime
Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría condemned the Catalan leadership for
carrying out what she called "an act of force" and for acting more
like "dictatorial regimes than a democracy".
Not being a journalist and this being my blog, I am free to
comment. A duly elected parliament that
is carrying out its electoral platform, presenting a bill for debate and vote,
is hardly performing “an act of force.”
It is carrying out a democratic act.
This is what parliaments that serve their public do. As for acting more like a dictatorial regime
than a democracy, that could only be said by someone who hasn’t the slightest
idea of how democracy functions. What is
dictatorial is for government to take no heed of people who want their voices
to be heard.
If in fact holding a referendum goes against the Spanish
constitution, maybe the constitution should be amended. The American constitution, for example, has
been amended 27 times. The Spanish
government, having little experience with democracy, doesn’t see that as an
option.
The same day that the Catalan Parliament approved the law
calling for the referendum on independence to be held 1 October, the Spanish
Guardia Civil installed itself at the entrance to the premises of a small
printing company near Tarragona. They had no court order so they couldn't enter
and search. But it seems they didn't need a court order to stay there and stop
and search every car and van and truck that came and went: employees,
suppliers, delivery companies, everyone had to stop
and have their vehicle searched. They
did this for 48 hours.
Today a court order was issued and seven agents of the
Guardia Civil entered the printing company building. They were supposedly
looking for up to 7,000 papers that pertain to the referendum. Everyone assumes
they were looking for the paper ballots. It turned out finally, after they searched
for three hours, that they didn’t find anything and left with their cardboard
box empty.
Last night, before this comedy act played
out, Josep Maria Piqué, who has a small printing company, was
inspired. He figured that the Guardia
Civil was about to confiscate all the ballots for 1 October. But there are samples of them on the
internet, therefore, he decided that if they were going to confiscate ballots
that had been printed at the other company, he would just go and print some
more. So he printed 45,000 ballots, enough for his own and the few surrounding
rural counties.
Although I believe it is supposed to, Spain does not seem to
have separation of powers between the government and the judiciary. The judiciary clearly takes its instruction
from the government and acts accordingly.
Thus, the Spanish government and the attorney general have been busy
little bees, filing complaints with the Supreme and Constitutional Courts for
every act the Catalan government has taken.
Most recently, this includes the referendum bill, the regulations
pertaining to it, the transitory law that, if the Yes vote wins, would provide
an interim constitution until a real constitution could be formulated and voted
on by the public. The original
referendum bill was already declared illegal when the parliament attempted to
debate it several months ago. And
charges have been brought against several people in the government accused of
disobeying the Constitutional Court in doing whatever they have done to make
the referendum a reality. There are
almost as many complaints connected to the referendum filed by the government
with the courts as there are criminal corruption cases before the courts (with
hundreds of people from that same government implicated).
Because the referendum vote has been declared illegal, the
Spanish government, district attorneys, and courts are going after anyone and
everyone who is in any way enabling the event. People are being threatened with
criminal charges and the possible loss of their personal property (including
their homes). Today over 1040 warrants have been issued to a variety of
Catalans: public officials and private individuals, including everyone in the
Catalan government who has supported holding the referendum.
In the midst of this legal flurry, and at
some personal risk, as of yesterday (Thursday) evening, 560 mayors had signed a
confirmation that their town will participate in the referendum and provide
polling places.
The person who perhaps runs the greatest
risk is Carme Forcadell, the President of the Catalan Parliament. The Spanish
government has already made public statements that they will go after her with
criminal charges for disobeying the law in allowing the bill to come before the
parliament to be voted on. They call
that violence and a coup d’etat. Forcadell is already facing
charges by the Spanish judicial system for having done the same thing with a
similar bill several months ago. At that
time, that bill was blocked by the court and shelved. The one this week was left to the last minute
and processed on a fast track – not the usual procedure, but the only way to
get around the Spanish government blocking it before it could be voted.
Forcadell is not a professional
politician. She's an educator who was the president of the Assemblea Nacional
Catalana (ANC), a grassroots independence organization (the organization that organized
"We want to vote" demonstrations attended by 2 million people each
year for the last five years) and was elected to Parliament at the last
elections on a coalition ticket of mixed political groups plus independents
such as herself. She is one of
the great heroes of the moment. Carles
Puigdemont is another. President of the
Generalitat, he is by profession a journalist.
Oriol Junqueras, Vice President of the Generalitat, is a history
professor.
Although Spain is ripe with corruption, the Catalans are
lucky to have people like Carme Forcadell, Carles Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras, dozens
of members of the Catalan parliament, hundreds of mayors, and countless other
people in the Catalan and local governments.
These are people who are committed enough to the public will to organize
a plan, at personal risk, that hopefully will evade all the maneuvering of the
Spanish government, Spanish puppet courts, and Spanish police, and set up polls
where any citizen who wants to can check Yes or No and drop their ballot into a
ballot box. And they are doing it with
no sure knowledge of whether the Yes or the No will win.
