Why Catalonia’s Independence Bid Is Failing

Why Catalonia’s Independence Bid Is Failing

Oct 12, 2017

Shlomo Ben-Ami

What frequently seals the fate of independence movements is the response of third countries. And it is all but unimaginable that any European country would see any political advantage in facilitating Catalonia’s independence, which would alienate a key EU member and boost myriad nationalist movements across the EU and in nearby states.

BARCELONA – In the confusing aftermath of Catalonia’s messy independence referendum, the Catalan regional government’s president, Carles Puigdemont, has wanted to have his cake and eat it. His long-awaited speech to the regional parliament, in which he had promised to declare independence from Spain, ended up being a muddled effort to placate his radical nationalist allies, the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), without further alienating the central government in Madrid. He achieved neither objective.

Puigdemont did declare a Catalan state “in the form of a republic.” But he immediately “suspended” the declaration to allow for negotiations with the Spanish government. To the Spanish government, Puigdemont’s address was an implicit declaration of independence, and to the impatient CUP, it was a moment of inadmissible betrayal. It is now highly probable that the central government will invoke Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which allows it to take direct control of Catalonia, a step that would undoubtedly provoke more civil unrest throughout the region.

Historically, national independence has usually been achieved through violent, even cataclysmic processes of decolonization. New states have almost invariably been born in blood, sacrifice, and deprivation. In the case of the former Yugoslavia, independent states emerged out of civil war and even genocide. Enslaved nations have also recovered sovereignty through state failure and imperial collapse. Amicable breakups, like that of Czechoslovakia, or of Norway and Sweden, are a historical rarity, however laudable.

Catalonia’s bid for independence, as Puigdemont probably knows, lacks the compelling revolutionary élan that has characterized struggling national movements throughout history. Real, and sometimes imagined, grievances can explain the recent nationalist tide in Catalonia. But the independence project mainly reflects Catalan elites’ extravagant dreams of grandeur and condescension toward the supposedly inferior Spaniards. Those elites should now ask themselves whether their middle-class constituency is capable of enduring blockades, massive capital flight (which is already happening), a collapsing standard of living, and the enmity of both Spain and Europe.

In Iraq, the Kurds base their demand for independence on the claim that the Iraqi state is oppressive and failing. But Catalonia is not an oppressed nation, and Spain is not a failed state. Invoking Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s long dictatorship – now four decades in the past – is a feeble attempt to disguise the separatists’ economic pretensions and overblown sense of cultural superiority.

The West does not support Kurdish independence for the same reason it would not support Catalan independence. Just as Spain is not an occupying power in Catalonia, the West does not regard the countries seeking to prevent Kurdish independence – Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran – as true colonial powers. Conversely, the cause of Palestinian independence is supported worldwide precisely because Israel is perceived as the last Western colonial power in Arab lands.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is Vice President of the Toledo International Center for Peace. He is the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.