Spain’s Dilemma of Catalan Identity

Some years back I was standing in a shop in Barcelona. I had found a pack of yerba mate, the Argentinian national drink. Having grown up there, it was only natural for me to order it in Spanish. I was amazed when the shop owner refused to engage with me. He simply didn’t want to speak Spanish. Respectful of his wishes, I repeated my request in French and English. Each time he motioned to me he didn’t understand. So I told him in Spanish that I was sorry I didn’t speak Catalan. After all, I was a foreigner who wasn’t familiar with local conditions, but I did want to buy his item. I proposed that I speak in Spanish and that he answer in Catalan. (After all, with a good knowledge of both Spanish and French I guessed it would be possible to understand most of his Catalan.) Or, I asked him, didn’t he want to sell anything to me? I was relieved to see him agree to that.

Ever since, that visit to the shop in Barcelona has stuck with me as an example of the dilemma Spain faces in the Catalan question. The entire debate between the Spanish state and the nationalists has been a war of words, where politicians and activists are mostly talking past each other. It has turned into an ugly war of words and deeds of mutually exclusive nationalisms. It has resulted in a repression unworthy of Spain’s proud democratic traditions. The debate is not just about Catalonia, but about what kind of country Spain wants to be.

Let me make myself very clear from the start. It isn’t up to me to decide whether Spain and Catalonia agree on some arrangement within the Spanish constitutional order or whether Catalonia should gain independence. That is for the Spanish to decide for themselves. Spain is, however, part of the European family of democratic nations. Democracies are for, by and through the people. Our system is one that seeks to find consensual arrangements in which all people will be able to thrive and feel at home. That means a state that is respectful of the identities of all of its citizens. Constitutions are there to make that possible. Additionally, democracy is more than government by a majority. It also seeks acceptable ways to address the wishes of it minorities. It is furthermore not up to the state or the majority to determine whether there is a minority or what it is. In a free democracy, minorities should be allowed to do that for themselves. Within the democratic system, they should have standing to engage peacefully on matters that they think are important. When this concerns the personal identities of entire communities, the matter should be given even more attention.

Since 1978, Spain has created an impressive democracy. It has turned its back on monarchical absolutism and military dictatorship to become one of the solid European democracies. In doing so, it has acknowledged the diversity and cultural wealth of its population. In a significant break with its centralist past, there has been a large measure of autonomy granted to its regions. Inevitably, however, democracy has also been the fruit of a compromise with the past. Political systems may change, but mindsets will linger on. It has been said that the constitutional makeup of Spain was that of the Second Republic, with the king and the flag of its more authoritarian past affixed to it. This misses an important point. Spanish constitutional law was the result of a compromise between the Franquist elite and the emerging democratic movement. It made a remarkably smooth transition to democracy possible. By stipulating that Spain was one and indivisible, clear limits were set to the measure of diversity allowed within the country. A politically appointed Constitutional Tribunal was created as, amongst other things, the watchdog over this arrangement. Potentially, this created a structural contradiction between unity and diversity. There has always been a certain top-down rigidity in the system, that had to be balanced by autonomous measures to accommodate those at the bottom.

From the very start, this system has been contested. Naturally, the new-found freedoms that emerged after a long period of dictatorship, sought to explore the limits of the new order. In the beginning, the Basques drew the most attention. ETA was a violent continuation to a violent past. Its happy defeat was the result of more than the effective measures by Spain’s (and ultimately also France’s) intelligence and security forces. The Basques ultimately found a peaceful accommodation within the democratic order of the Spanish state, sapping support for ETA. From the very start, however, Catalan demands have followed a peaceful road. There has never been a Catalan organisation that is comparable to ETA. Violence isn’t part of the Catalan movement. That is why, perhaps, at first few observers outside Spain really took notice of it. But the problem has always been there.

So, what is really the problem here? Institutionally, Spain has all the means to accommodate regional and other differences. Politically it has a wide array of different parties with a broad range of ideals and ideas. On the whole, it has a professional and independent judiciary and a free press. Additionally, it has a large civil society with associations that espouse many different and conflicting goals. All the ingredients seem in place to make its democracy function smoothly. And let us face it, it mostly does so. There are merely a small number of issues, where the system seems to reach its limits. Most of these are issues that have a long past: the nature of the Spanish monarchy, dealing with the events of the Civil War, and yes, the Catalan question. These are issues, that evoke emotions in Spanish society. They are matters that touch the very identities of its citizens. And that is what makes matters so complicated.

As far as I can see, there are two main issues at play in the Catalan question. One is on national, cultural and linguistic matters and the other is about the amount of money Catalonia is paying to the central government.

The right to use the Catalan language is the most visible aspect of the Catalan nationalist movement. Catalan is a language that is related to Spanish, but is linguistically closer to Provençal. It used to be the native language of most of the east of Spain, from the Pyrenees to Murcia. Owing to the Spanish language policies of centralised, authoritarian governments, Catalan has been suppressed for ages and lost considerable ground. In the west and south, it has virtually disappeared. Both Aragón and Murcia now speak Spanish. Under the 1714 Nueva Planta decrees, Catalan was banished as an official language. During the Franco years, even the use of Catalan in public was forbidden. Under the democratic constitution of 1978, local governments have started to restore the use of Catalan to public life and education. Some schools now start off with teaching pupils only Catalan in the initial grades, even before they are taught Spanish. Interestingly, the language movement isn’t limited to Catalonia, though there Catalan has made perhaps the biggest comeback since the days of Franco. In Valencia, the local Catalan dialect is called Valenciano and is being promoted too. Recently, Catalan has been made the first official language on the Balear Islands. This has much been to the displeasure of Spanish-speaking residents, who share a strong tradition of mono-linguism with most other Romance language speakers. Catalan, in their view, is merely a quaint Spanish dialect and a nuisance. All of this has remained well within Spain’s constitutional order. There is something more fundamental that distinguishes nationalists in Catalonia from other Catalan speaking regions.

It is perhaps the aspiration of the Catalans in Catalonia to be recognised as a separate nation that has caused the biggest problems. In 2006, the Parliament of Catalonia approved a change in the preface of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia to stipulate that “the Parliament of Catalonia, having taken notice of the sentiment and will of the citizenship of Catalonia, has defined Catalonia as a nation”. After some substantial modifications by the Spanish Parliament and Senate, this statute was passed into law that same year. Importantly, the term “nation”, which in the Spanish constitution has been reserved for the indivisible Spanish nation as a whole, was changed into “the national reality”. Other changes, such as the status of Catalan as the language of Catalonia, its equality to Spanish in official use and references to the historical rights of Catalonia remained unchanged. It laid down a special position for Catalonia’s autonomous government, the Generalitat, in matters of civil law, cultural and linguistic affairs, education and the institutional makeup of the region. From the very beginning, this text was hotly contested by the centre-right opposition in Madrid.

Matters came to a head, first in 2010 when the Constitutional Tribunal declared the new Statute was unconstitutional and then the year after when the centre-right opposition gained power. Spanish intransigence sparked off a Catalan independence movement in the following years, culminating in an independence referendum. Although the referendum was called illegal by the Spanish centre-right government, it was held under difficult circumstances and unsurprisingly resulted in a Catalan nationalist victory. Most opponents to independence will have followed the guidelines of the Spanish government and had abstained. The referendum resulted in a largely symbolic declaration of independence in the Catalan Parliament, pending talks with Spain.

The reaction of the Spanish centre-right government to these events has been almost entirely of a legal nature. Simply put, the centre-right Partido Popular government (and the politically appointed Constitutional Tribunal) has limited itself to stressing the constitutional limits that Spain imposed on any autonomous region: Spain was one and indivisible as a nation. The Catalans could not be allowed to enjoy the status of a nation. In this, it has been followed by much of Spanish public opinion. The national newspaper El Mundo even went so far as to quote Cicero to say that the law was a cage to which each citizen found himself. Unlike earlier Socialist governments, the centre-right PP government has consistently refused to engage in any talks. On the contrary, its whole reaction to the referendum movement has consciously sought a confrontation. Instead of declaring that a referendum would merely be viewed as an instance of the freedom of expression, that would have no legal effect, it ruled that the referendum was unconstitutional and hence illegal. It subsequently used quite some police violence through Guardia Civil officers brought in from other parts of the country, to try to repress the event and make voting impossible. After the referendum, it prosecuted politicians and organisers on the basis of a law on sedition that made violence against the state a crime. The problem was, as many Spanish lawyers weren’t slow to point out, that the Catalans had entirely engaged in peaceful events. Attempts to show that the Catalan politicians were corrupt and had misused public funds were subject to interpretation. The Spanish authorities proceeded to arrest a number of Catalan politicians, though it took very long to see them convicted. The nationalist leader, Carles Puigdemont, fled abroad with a couple of supporters. Embarrassingly, Spanish requests for his extradition were turned down by courts in several EU countries. Foreign judges were unimpressed with the charges on sedition and differed in the interpretation of corruption the Spanish authorities advanced in court. One observer astutely pointed out that the attitude of the Spanish government resembled that of the Inquisition: the Catalans had sinned against the Spanish constitution and their only salvation lay in a very public repentance. Spain is still waiting.

An underlying issue is that of the contributions Catalonia has to make to the national treasury. It quite plausibly complains that together with Madrid it makes by far the largest payments, but that Madrid unlike Catalonia receives massive investments from the central government. By comparison, that other hotbed of separatism, the Basque country, has a much better deal. All these figures are indeed a matter of public record. To be fair, this is an issue that could always have played and which wouldn’t have arisen as sharply without the larger identity struggle.

At present, there seems to be a stalemate in the Catalan problem. Within the EU, Spain has clearly lost face through its brash actions. It has lost a number of court cases requesting extraditions. By and large, however, the EU and the other member states have limited their reactions to a reserved and muted criticism. As social media show, this is very much to the frustration of the Catalan nationalists, who really expect to much from the EU. There are simply other, more pressing problems, such as Brexit, the Covid crisis and the far more serious attacks on democracy and the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. As a consensual union of states, the EU simply lacks the tools to deal head-on with the Poles and the Hungarians, let alone the Catalan problem. In Spain itself, the conflict with the Catalan nationalists has spurred Spanish nationalism to an extent never seen since 1978. A new, crypto-Franquist party, Vox, has appeared on the scene. In regional elections in Catalonia, the pro-Spain party Ciudadanos emerged as the largest party, although overall the Catalan nationalists retained their majority. Ciudadanos has since been more than decimated in national elections. The Partido Popular, hoping not to be outdone by Vox, is still the main standard bearer of Spanish nationalist intransigence. It remains to be seen when the new Socialist minority government will find the time to address the problem. Covid and economic collapse rightly have their main attention.

The main question behind the Catalan problem, to my mind, is whether Spain’s elite and its electorate want to offer a place to the Catalans that is acceptable to Catalans. As I have said at the beginning, a democracy should be there for all of its people. That doesn’t mean that the Catalan nationalists get everything they want. It would be a game of give and take. It was only when the Spanish government closed the door to an acceptable accommodation within the constitutional arrangements of the country, that Catalan nationalists actively started to campaign for independence and received substantial support from the Catalan electorate at the same time. That was the moment the Catalan nationalists stopped talking and resorted to action. As such, the problem is to no small extent one of Madrid’s own making. After all, there could be other possible interpretations of the oneness and indivisibility of the Spanish nation. How else would the far-reaching nature of Spain’s autonomous regions be possible? Or would the official Spanish interpretation exclude Catalans from the Spanish nation? Does Spain wish to force its identity views on its citizens?

It is to be hoped that the Socialist government returns to the path of peaceful talks and frees what are in fact political prisoners. The centre-right Partido Popular could contribute to the peace and stability of the country by playing a constructive role in such talks. Spain has enough problems as it is without Catalonia. Repression looks ugly and will not make it go away. It will merely serve to damage the country and strengthen separatist resolve even further. Finding an acceptable outcome for all to the Catalan problem may be a way of taking Spain a step further away from its sometimes authoritarian reflexes and towards a more consensual mindset. Perhaps a game of give and take between brothers could provide an opening. It will mean having to overcome a lot of emotions and mistrust on both sides. Dare I say it?, it will also mean accepting the possibility of Catalan independence. Perhaps paradoxically, such a course could be the best way of keeping Catalonia as a contented part of Spain.

That is the dilemma democratic Spain faces.