Opinion

Obstacles to a solution

The no con­fi­dence vote that made So­cial­ist leader, Pedro Sánchez, pres­i­dent of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment has cre­ated ex­pec­ta­tions of progress in the Cat­alo­nia-Spain con­flict. Yet, read­ers should know that the so­lu­tion is still far away.

Cata­lan as­pi­ra­tions ques­tion the foun­da­tions of the Span­ish state: a monar­chy never ex­plic­itly rat­i­fied and in­her­ited from the Franco regime, the “un­break­able” unity of Spain, and a con­ser­v­a­tive vi­sion of the rule of law dom­i­nated by ju­di­cial power, oc­cu­pied by judges re­lated to a po­lit­i­cal right lack­ing val­ues in line with the so­cial re­al­ity of the 21st cen­tury. All of these is­sues closely re­lated to one an­other. But among them, the real Gor­dian knot is the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Car­los Lesmes, Pres­i­dent of the Gen­eral Coun­cil of the Ju­di­ciary and the Supreme Court, the ju­di­ciary’s high­est au­thor­ity, said that the “in­dis­sol­u­ble” unity of the Span­ish Na­tion pro­claimed in Ar­ti­cle 2 of the Con­sti­tu­tion is a “legal man­date that cor­re­sponds to guar­an­tee­ing Ju­di­cial Power” (Sep­tem­ber 5, 2017). This ex­clud­ing idea ex­plains how the ju­di­ciary’s top lead­er­ship is act­ing against the im­pris­oned or ex­iled Cata­lan pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers and against the in­de­pen­dence move­ment as a whole (938 in­dicted). Pre­serv­ing the unity of Spain jus­ti­fies every­thing (human rights vi­o­la­tions, fake in­for­ma­tion and ac­cu­sa­tions, re­pres­sion…). By the way, Lesmes was a se­nior of­fi­cial of the PP gov­ern­ment dur­ing the pe­riod of for­mer PM, José María Aznar.

The ab­solute pri­macy of the con­cept of the in­dis­sol­u­ble unity of Spain is shared by all the pow­ers of the Span­ish state (leg­isla­tive, ex­ec­u­tive and ju­di­ciary). This is es­pe­cially true since the king’s speech on Oc­to­ber 3, whose prac­ti­cal mean­ing was a kind of “free-for-all” against the in­de­pen­dence move­ment. That con­cept pre­vails over any de­mo­c­ra­tic value that is in­voked, and also con­di­tions in­ter­pre­ta­tions of laws. The same thing hap­pens with all the other fac­tual pow­ers that make up the base of po­lit­i­cal power (high of­fi­cials, po­lice, Span­ish media, army) and, last but not least, also the largest eco­nomic groups that have grown up under the pro­tec­tive um­brella of the po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions of the last 40 years. Few are the voices in Spain that dare to argue that the only de­mo­c­ra­tic so­lu­tion is to con­sult the Cata­lans. None of those few voices are in the PSOE (the Cata­lan So­cial­ists who de­fended it had to leave the party). At most, the PSOE can only try to put for­ward some pro­pos­als that put out fires be­fore new ones ap­pear; for ex­am­ple when the tri­als against the in­de­pen­dence lead­ers begin and ex­treme sen­tences are re­quested.

Sim­i­lar prob­lems in other de­mo­c­ra­tic coun­tries have been re­solved sim­ply by ap­peal­ing to de­mo­c­ra­tic val­ues. This is the case of the United King­dom (with Scot­land) or Canada (with Que­bec). For the rea­sons stated, that is im­pos­si­ble in Spain. Ap­peals to the human rights of the peo­ples con­tained in Art. 1.2 of the Char­ter of the United Na­tions, in Art. 1 (1) (3) of the In­ter­na­tional Covenant on Civil and Po­lit­i­cal Rights, and Art. 1 (1) (3) of the In­ter­na­tional Covenant on Eco­nomic, So­cial and Cul­tural Rights, are being ig­nored in spite of Art. 96 of the Span­ish Con­sti­tu­tion, which pro­claims “validly con­cluded in­ter­na­tional treaties, once of­fi­cially pub­lished in Spain, will be part of the in­ter­nal order.” All of these treaties have been rat­i­fied by Spain.

All this ex­plains why the de­scrip­tions of the facts un­der­ly­ing the crimes ac­cus­ing Cata­lan politi­cians are forced. It even ex­poses the man­i­fest false­hoods against them, as demon­strated by a re­cent doc­u­men­tary on Cata­lan TV that has been sim­ply ig­nored by the rest of Span­ish tele­vi­sion. And, fi­nally, it is what also en­sures that the fu­ture tri­als to which they will be sub­jected will be mainly po­lit­i­cal.

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