Is the European Union mutating?

As an ex­pres­sion of the will of the ma­jor­ity of the Cata­lan peo­ple to be free of cen­turies of colo­nial op­pres­sion in Spain and to build a new de­mo­c­ra­tic and so­cial state on Oc­to­ber 27, 2017, the Cata­lan Re­pub­lic was pro­claimed by the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia. The legal basis is in­ter­na­tional law, specif­i­cally the Char­ter of the United Na­tions and the In­ter­na­tional Covenant on Civil and Po­lit­i­cal Rights, where the right of peo­ples to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion is en­shrined. Spain rat­i­fied this agree­ment in 1977 and ar­ti­cles 10 and 96 of the Span­ish Con­sti­tu­tion oblige re­spect for it, above na­tional reg­u­la­tions.

How­ever, the re­ac­tion of Spain was un­de­mo­c­ra­tic and typ­i­cal of an old em­pire. Vi­o­lat­ing its own rule of law, it car­ried out an in­sti­tu­tional coup d’état and dis­solved the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia, im­pris­oned the mem­bers of the Cata­lan Gov­ern­ment who had not been ex­iled, along with promi­nent mem­bers of civil so­ci­ety, and ruled Cat­alo­nia di­rectly from the hy­per­central­ist cap­i­tal. Spain once again demon­strated that it pre­ferred to aban­don democ­racy be­fore the in­de­pen­dence of Cat­alo­nia.

De­spite the re­pres­sion, the Cata­lan peo­ple con­tin­ued to re­sist, as in the last cen­turies. Thus, in spite of very un­favourable con­di­tions, the in­de­pen­den­tists again won in the elec­tions to the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia in De­cem­ber 2017. But Spain did not like it at all and its ju­di­cial ap­pa­ra­tus in­ter­vened to ar­bi­trar­ily change the re­sult of the bal­lot box. And so it pre­vented pres­i­dent Car­les Puigde­mont and other rep­re­sen­ta­tives from tak­ing of­fice. But the in­de­pen­dence move­ment did not stop and on March 16, 2019, in Madrid it or­gan­ised an his­toric mass demon­stra­tion of more than one hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple to protest the trial against Cata­lan po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Like­wise, de­spite the in­ter­fer­ences of the Cen­tral Elec­toral Board (JEC), which ac­quired an un­usual role, in­de­pen­den­tism in the elec­tions to the Span­ish Par­lia­ment on April 28, 2019, im­proved the pre­vi­ous re­sult of June 2016. As the JEC did not like that, it tried to pre­vent pres­i­dent Car­les Puigde­mont and two other ex-mem­bers of his gov­ern­ment from be­com­ing can­di­dates for the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment elec­tions on May 26, 2019. This time the ir­reg­u­lar­ity was very ev­i­dent and the courts an­nulled the de­ci­sion. On the other hand, the Supreme Court in the trial against Cata­lan po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers ve­toed the pres­ence of in­ter­na­tional ob­servers, but ac­cepted the pres­ence of lawyers of Vox, a clearly neo-fas­cist party.

An­other ex­am­ple of the re­silience of the Cata­lan in­de­pen­den­tist move­ment was the land­slide vic­tory by a pro-in­de­pen­dence can­di­dacy at the re­cent elec­tions of Barcelona’s Cham­ber of Com­merce this May, 2019. That also shows the high level of sup­port for in­de­pen­dence from a sig­nif­i­cant part of Cata­lan busi­ness peo­ple, thus con­tra­dict­ing the fab­ri­ca­tions from most of the Span­ish media. In fact, it also shows the di­ver­sity within Cat­alo­nia’s pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment.

It is true that the Cata­lan Re­pub­lic has not yet been im­ple­mented, but this should not be an ob­sta­cle to its in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, as in the case of Kosovo. The Cata­lan in­de­pen­den­tist move­ment is civic and de­mo­c­ra­tic. The in­de­pen­dence of Cat­alo­nia will in­crease the num­ber of Eu­ro­pean de­mo­c­ra­tic and ad­vanced coun­tries. And at the same time, help op­pose the as­cent of the ex­treme right that will weaken the un­de­mo­c­ra­tic Span­ish State.

In any case, the Eu­ro­pean Union can­not af­ford to con­tinue to turn a blind eye to the se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tions of human rights in Cat­alo­nia and so be­tray its found­ing val­ues. Nor can the Eu­ro­pean Union con­tinue to delay the ap­pli­ca­tion of ar­ti­cle 7 of the Treaty on the EU in Spain. The al­ter­na­tive is fas­cist bar­barism and the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union.