Spain’s Catalan dilemma

Spain has cracked down on Catalonia and imposed direct rule over the prosperous region whose Parliament had voted for a unilateral declaration of independence. Does any nation, facing a separatist threat have a choice other than insisting on federalism for national sovereignty? Madrid may, however, not have handled the Catalan calls for independence too well. Its police action in Barcelona on October 1, leading to 800 people being injured at the hands of federal riot police lead to a further hardening of the stand under Catalan President Carles Puigdemont.

Europe has been facing such calls for freedom in several regions like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the UK alone, besides in various other countries, including in the former Soviet Bloc. European borders were rearranged after World War I and again after the fall of the Iron Curtain and a collapse of communism in many nations. Catalonia, with its history of socialist, communist and anarchist movements, all of which fought Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and its location nearer France has nursed separatist tendencies for long. It may well be a test case in long running battles between European regionalism and federalism.

Passions have been running hot since the referendum and the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is now on the horns of a dilemma as more harsh action like imprisonment of Catalan pro-independence legislators may well see the making or breaking of his nation. A decade ago, Spain had given greater autonomy to Catalonia, only to declare four years later that while Catalan is to be recognised as a “nationality”, Catalonia itself is not a “nation”. The question is — will granting autonomy, say, on the lines of Quebec in Canada, douse the separatist fires or will they merely stoke greater ambitions in regions? Spain’s problems can find its echoes as we live in a world that must recognise and accommodate multiple identities.