Whither the independence issue?

With sum­mer over, a new po­lit­i­cal term be­gins with the in­de­pen­dence issue set to top the agenda in Cat­alo­nia. The bid to split from Spain, with a uni­lat­eral ref­er­en­dum and a de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence in the Cata­lan par­lia­ment, took place in au­tumn 2017, but the po­lit­i­cal con­flict is far from re­solved. In fact, the rest of the year will see a se­ries of de­vel­op­ments that will take the mat­ter to the next level, as the in­de­pen­dence camp con­tin­ues to push for a bind­ing ref­er­en­dum on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

The po­lit­i­cal year in Cat­alo­nia will begin how it ended, with the dozen pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers tried by the Supreme Court for their role in the bid to split from Spain two years ago. After four months of tes­ti­mony in the high court ear­lier in the year, a ver­dict on the 12 – who be­tween them are ac­cused of re­bel­lion, sedi­tion and mis­use of pub­lic funds, and face prison sen­tences of up to 25 years – is due in late Sep­tem­ber or early Oc­to­ber, un­less the Span­ish So­cial­ist Party fails to form a gov­ern­ment and a gen­eral elec­tion is called for No­vem­ber.

What­ever ver­dict the Supreme Court judges come to, there will be a strong re­ac­tion in Cat­alo­nia. With the po­lit­i­cal par­ties in favour of a ref­er­en­dum seek­ing a united re­sponse to the ver­dict, there will likely be new at­tempts to pres­sure Madrid into agree­ing to a vote on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, while demon­stra­tions and gen­eral strikes, and even a new Cata­lan elec­tion, are among the other likely fu­ture sce­nar­ios.

Yet, be­fore that will be the an­nual mass gath­er­ing of in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers on Sep­tem­ber 11, Cat­alo­nia’s Na­tional Day. Since 2012, the Diada as it is known has be­come a high point of the year for those in favour of Cata­lan self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, at­tract­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple. This year’s Diada demon­stra­tion has the motto Ob­jec­tiu in­de­pendència (Ob­jec­tive in­de­pen­dence). The or­gan­is­ers of the event, the Cata­lan Na­tional As­sem­bly (ANC), have pri­ori­tised the idea of a united front over per­son­al­i­ties and pur­pose­fully not in­vited any po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the space re­served for VIPs. With an eye on in­ter­na­tional media cov­er­age, for this year’s demon­stra­tion the ANC has de­vised a protest in which some of Barcelona’s main thor­ough­fares will fill with peo­ple, form­ing a huge star shape that will be seen from the air, and con­verg­ing on Es­panya square. “We want to show that dif­fer­ent roads lead to a meet­ing point where we can come to­gether in a shared ob­jec­tive,” ANC pres­i­dent, Elisenda Paluzie, de­scribed it.

Yet the na­tional day protest and the Supreme Court ver­dict are only the start of a se­ries of de­vel­op­ments likely to go on for months. Among them are a num­ber of legal bat­tles at home and abroad that will shape how the po­lit­i­cal con­flict un­folds. In fact, many in the in­de­pen­dence camp be­lieve the issue is more likely to be re­solved in­ter­na­tion­ally, and there are al­ready sev­eral fronts open, with more yet to come.

The Supreme Court ver­dict is set to end up in the Eu­ro­pean Court of Human Rights in Stras­bourg, with the de­fences ar­gu­ing that any­thing other than ac­quit­tal amounts to an abuse of their clients’ human rights. Mean­while, the jailed Oriol Jun­queras and the ex­iled Car­les Puigde­mont and Toni Comín, who were pre­vented from tak­ing up their seats in the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment, have ap­pealed to the Court of Jus­tice of the Eu­ro­pean Union. Then there are the cases be­fore the United Na­tions, after the UN Work­ing Group on Ar­bi­trary De­ten­tion ear­lier in the year called for the re­lease of some of the im­pris­oned lead­ers, cit­ing breaches of human rights. The UN is also look­ing at the cases of ac­tivist leader turned politi­cian, Jordi Sánchez, and for­mer Cata­lan pres­i­dent, Car­les Puigde­mont, who lodged ap­peals after the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties pre­vented both of them – the for­mer in prison and the lat­ter threat­ened with ar­rest – from tak­ing up the post of pres­i­dent after the Cata­lan par­lia­ment elected them to head the gov­ern­ment.

Nor are these the only pro­ceed­ings, as five for­mer mem­bers of the Cata­lan par­lia­ment bu­reau and a for­mer MP are charged with dis­obe­di­ence for al­low­ing laws en­abling Cata­lan law­mak­ers to vote on in­de­pen­dence. Mean­while, a Barcelona court is pros­e­cut­ing some 30 peo­ple for or­gan­is­ing the 2017 ref­er­en­dum, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and em­ploy­ees, civil ser­vants, media work­ers, tech­ni­cians and busi­ness peo­ple. The charges range from mis­use of pub­lic funds, dis­obe­di­ence and de­ceit to re­veal­ing se­crets and per­ver­sion of jus­tice.

Then, in Jan­u­ary, the trial of the Cata­lan po­lice chief at the time of the bid, Josep Lluís Trap­ero, and three other for­mer po­lice heads is due to begin in Spain’s Na­tional Court. The Mossos d’Es­quadra po­lice are ac­cused of aid­ing the in­de­pen­dence bid and Trap­ero, an­other Mossos head, and a for­mer in­te­rior min­istry of­fi­cial are charged with re­bel­lion, with an­other for­mer po­lice of­fi­cial ac­cused of sedi­tion.

Not even the cur­rent Cata­lan pres­i­dent, Quim Torra, is im­mune, as he faces being barred from of­fice in the com­ing months over charges of dis­obe­di­ence lev­elled against him for his re­fusal to re­move signs sup­port­ing the jailed Cata­lan lead­ers from the front of the gov­ern­ment HQ.