THE RECOGNITION OF THE CATALAN REPUBLIC

Spain has launched a trial against in­de­pen­dence lead­ers in which mon­strous penal­ties of up to 25 years in prison are re­quested for events that sev­eral Eu­ro­pean courts con­sider were not even crimes. In­deed, the Ger­man ju­di­ciary re­fused to ex­tra­dite pres­i­dent Puigde­mont, as re­quested by the Span­ish courts, while the British courts turned down the ex­tra­di­tion of for­mer min­is­ter Pon­satí, as did Bel­gian courts for sev­eral ex-min­is­ters. But Spain will judge these in­de­pen­dence lead­ers for de­fend­ing the right to vote. The head­line of The Times news­pa­per in Feb­ru­ary was clear: “The Times view on the trial of the Cata­lan 12: Span­ish In­qui­si­tion”.

This is a po­lit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal trial against democ­racy and Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence, against the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ma­jor­ity of the Cata­lan pop­u­la­tion. This has been re­peat­edly demon­strated by the mas­sive and peace­ful demon­stra­tions of re­cent years in Eu­rope in favour of the in­de­pen­dence of Cat­alo­nia, and with ab­solute ma­jori­ties of the in­de­pen­dence par­ties in the most re­cent elec­tions to the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia, and es­pe­cially in the ref­er­en­dum on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion on Oc­to­ber 1, 2017, in which the votes in favour of the in­de­pen­dence of Cat­alo­nia ex­ceeded 90%, de­spite the bru­tal re­pres­sion by the Span­ish po­lice.

The Span­ish state al­leges that the trial con­forms with the law. How­ever, the Span­ish Con­sti­tu­tion in its ar­ti­cles 10.2 and 96 obliges re­spect for rat­i­fied in­ter­na­tional agree­ments. And Spain rat­i­fied the Char­ter of the United Na­tions and the In­ter­na­tional Covenants where the right of peo­ples to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion is en­shrined. And on Oc­to­ber 27, 2017 the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia pro­claimed the Cata­lan Re­pub­lic, ac­cord­ing to the will of the Cata­lan peo­ple, to break through cen­turies of colo­nial rule by Spain.

The spirit of Cat­alo­nia is de­mo­c­ra­tic. In 1971, cel­list Pau Casals said at the UN, in the open­ing cer­e­mony for the United Na­tions Hymn, which he com­posed, that Cat­alo­nia is a great na­tion be­cause it had the first par­lia­ment, in the 11th cen­tury. On the other hand, Spain is au­thor­i­tar­ian and im­pe­ri­al­ist. Faced with the de­sire for the in­de­pen­dence of Cat­alo­nia, the neo-fas­cist drift of Spain has ac­cel­er­ated.

In ad­di­tion to the grow­ing num­ber of human rights vi­o­la­tions, the rise of Vox, a party sim­i­lar to PP and C’s with re­spect to Cat­alo­nia, but which does not hide its ex­treme right po­si­tions, shows that. And un­like in other Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, the Span­ish right has al­lied with Vox.

Mean­while, what does the Eu­ro­pean Union say? Spain’s Pres­i­dent Sánchez was met in the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 16 with sup­port for the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and ex­iles. Yet, sadly, the EU’s de­mo­c­ra­tic deficit per­me­ates its in­sti­tu­tions. Take the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, still blind to Spain’s se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tions of human rights in Cat­alo­nia. Nev­er­the­less, this mis­match be­tween re­al­ity and ac­tion, and by not threat­en­ing Spain with ar­ti­cle 7 of the Treaty on the EU after its bla­tant human rights vi­o­la­tions in Cat­alo­nia, Eu­rope may see its image as a back­bone of free­dom and democ­racy being eroded more and more, in the eyes of the world, and among its own mem­ber states.

Re­fer­ring to Venezuela, sev­eral states have ac­knowl­edged Mr Guaidó, de­spite his not rul­ing the coun­try. The Cata­lan Re­pub­lic was validly pro­claimed in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tional law. There­fore, the fact that it is not ef­fec­tive at this time should not be an ob­sta­cle to its in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, as in the case of Kosovo. The recog­ni­tion of the Cata­lan Re­pub­lic is cur­rently the cor­ner­stone of the de­fence of democ­racy. While the de­fence of the sta­tus quo is lead­ing again to fas­cist bar­barism.