The Catalan issue after the referendum

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As it was predictable, the referendum set up in Catalonia has had, as a result, a prebiscite for a new, independent, Republic of Catalonia.

Last night king Felipe held a speech in which he assured that Catalan people “will be never left alone”.

This aknowledgement looked like a threat, rather than a riassurance. A discourse focused on more autonomy would have been better accepted. Some important politicians of the Catalan area, as the mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau said that the independence will not be declared by the Catalan institutions. A different point of view seems to have the Catalan governor’s Puigdemont, who made clear that the declaration of secession and independence will come out in the next few days.

The king’s declamation, that still has a symbolic great power nowadays,

even if the the monarchy institution is necessarialy a little more than nominaly, it is placed in the same order of ideas that PM Rajoy ordered. As everybody knows, the votation was interrupted many times by the intervents of Guardia civil and Policia, enforcements that made difficult for many voters to enter the the poll. Some violence scenes were captured by the media. This hard responce to the attempt of secession has one and only consequence: renforcimg the nationalist and independentist movement.

The independentists, as well, made a huge mistake:

in the last few years the identitary feeling of Catalan people rised up facing against the central State. The fatal error consists in confusing a political issue, as the one that divided the local Government of the autonomous Region of Catalonia (left wing) and the Spanish Government (centre-right wing), with a much bigger matter: the secession; the independence of a eventual new Country on the European soil.

The referendum should have been interpreted as a higher reason to fight, rather than a political skirmish with an -all economic- base. Catalan “patriots”, or even “revolutionaries” should have been clear about the fact that their rebellion against the central State wasn’t a left/right quarrel.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy,

with his actions, compared throughout all Europe to dictator Franco‘s manners, made a very bad service to the centre-right credibility in Europe. Inside the EU Parliament Rajoy will have to explain his behavior, and better for him to be convincing, specially to those, among the European Popular Party (his own party) who will ask for detailed explanations.