BARCELONA, Spain — The violent images
from Catalonia’s prohibited referendum on independence from Spain will
not be forgotten anytime soon. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain now
has a legacy that includes gruesome photographs and videos of policemen
confiscating ballot boxes, using tear gas on voters and swatting
elderly women with batons.
Despite
this repression, more than 90 percent of the voters on Sunday — more
than two million people — in Catalonia voted to secede from Spain. Far
from defusing the crisis, Mr. Rajoy has strengthened the resolve of the
independence movement and further polarized the country.
This
was not the only option available to the prime minister. In early
September, pro-independence parties in Catalonia’s regional Parliament
broke their own laws when they bypassed the opposition to pass
legislation that would make the referendum’s result binding. If Mr.
Rajoy’s intention was to delegitimize the vote, all he had to do was
refuse to recognize the result and he and his right-wing Popular Party
would most likely have faced little resistance from most of Spain’s
political forces.
This
would have maintained the deadlock of recent years, but it would also
have avoided escalating the conflict. Instead, the use of force has
confirmed the referendum’s legitimacy in the eyes of those who
participated in it.
At
first glance, Mr. Rajoy’s strategy seems counterintuitive. If his
intention is to persuade the people of Catalonia to remain in Spain, the
violence on Sunday does not make an attractive case. But winning hearts
and minds in the region is not his main objective. He is putting his
own interests and those of his party ahead of Spain’s stability.
Support
for Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party has always been weak in Catalonia, as it
has been in the Basque region, where separatist sentiment is also
strong. One consequence of the Franco dictatorship’s decades-long
repression of Basque and Catalan culture is that today conservative
parties in both places can distinguish themselves from the Popular Party
by referring to anti-fascist struggle with some credibility. In fact,
this has been a crucial factor in bringing about the current crisis.
Opposition
to Mr. Rajoy has fueled the Catalan independence movement for years. In
July 2012, some eight months into his first term as prime minister, Mr.
Rajoy rejected a plan that would have given Catalonia more fiscal
autonomy. Before then, the conservative Catalan nationalist party
Convergence worked with the Popular Party to push austerity measures
through Parliament. But austerity was deeply unpopular — as evidenced by
the rise of the “indignados” movement throughout Spain — and
Convergence saw the writing on the wall. It jettisoned its alliance with
Mr. Rajoy’s party and joined forces with progressive nationalists and
the movement for independence.
In
this context, the political costs of a heavy-handed approach to
Catalonia have been low for Mr. Rajoy. Indeed, he is using the issue to
sow division among his rivals. Spain’s federal model and the right to
self-determination are extremely divisive issues for the country’s
left-wing parties, the traditional center-left Socialist Party and the
new, grass-roots Podemos. While the Socialists support a federal model
and wanted to avoid a referendum, Podemos backs a legally binding vote
on Catalan independence. Mr. Rajoy’s obstinacy capitalizes on this
division, weakening the Socialists by forcing them to compete with the
Popular Party for hard-line unionist voters.
Podemos
and its regional affiliates are well equipped to deal with this
deadlock. Their critique of the “regime of 1978” — a term they use to
refer to Spain’s current constitutional order — singles out the
shortcomings of a Constitution that was written primarily to guarantee a
peaceful transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy. The upstart
Podemos, whose affiliates have won the past two elections in Catalonia,
has called for reforms to the Constitution, and it offers a vision of
Spain as a “plurinational state.”
What
this actually means is unclear. But as Spain’s territorial crisis
deepens, Podemos has acquired a new political centrality that will
require it to propose an alternative to the status quo that appeals to
both the center-left Socialist Party’s supporters as well as Catalan
nationalists.
Whether
this is possible after Sunday is anybody’s guess. As the conflict
between the Spanish and Catalan governments escalates, those who condemn
repression and try to promote dialogue between the two are often
criticized for having an artificially equidistant stance. At the same
time, however, both sides are so entrenched that they can’t recognize
that constitutional reform could solve the problem for them.
Tellingly,
both Mr. Rajoy’s government and the independence movement refer to
their positions as a defense of democracy. In a speech on Sunday night,
Mr. Rajoy referred to democracy as the rule of law, and heaped praise on
the police and the judicial system. The Catalan independence movement
expresses itself in terms of popular power and the right to
self-determination.
These
fundamental questions suggest that the implications of Spain’s
territorial crisis extend well beyond the country’s borders. What is at
stake is whether one constitutional order can guarantee democratic
governance among several nations. In this sense, Spain is a microcosm of
Europe’s existential crisis.
By
fanning the flames of conflict, Mr. Rajoy has shown that he is
incapable of reaching a lasting agreement with either the leaders of
Catalonia or several of the parties in his own Congress. It is now up to
the rest of Spain to respond to the challenge of rebuilding the bridges
he has burned, if it is not too late already.
