One treaty, two standards

To deal with the se­vere eco­nomic down­turn re­sult­ing from the fi­nan­cial cri­sis of 2007, and ex­ac­er­bated by the Covid pan­demic of 2020, the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil ap­proved a large pack­age of funds to be dis­trib­uted among EU mem­ber states. Re­spect for the rule of law was es­tab­lished as a con­di­tion for the al­lo­ca­tion of this money. Thus, the funds to Poland were called into ques­tion be­cause the Con­sti­tu­tional Court of that coun­try ruled that its law pre­vailed over Eu­ro­pean law.

In fact, Ar­ti­cle 2 of the Treaty on Eu­ro­pean Union states that this po­lit­i­cal en­tity is based on the prin­ci­ples of democ­racy and re­spect for human rights. So an ob­server of the po­lit­i­cal events of the past few years in Spain might won­der why the ac­tions ini­ti­ated against Poland have not been ap­plied in Spain, since in re­cent years in Cat­alo­nia there have been the worst mass human rights vi­o­la­tions in the last decades in West­ern Eu­rope.

Human rights vi­o­la­tions have been de­nounced by in­ter­na­tional or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Coun­cil of Eu­rope, which com­pared the way in which Spain and Turkey use law­fare against Cata­lan and Kur­dish politi­cians, re­spec­tively. Also, the rap­por­teur of the United Na­tions for na­tional mi­nori­ties crit­i­cised Spain. The MEP Jun­queras, de­spite the rul­ing of the ECJ on his im­mu­nity, has not been able to take up his seat in the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment due to the op­po­si­tion of Spain. Like­wise, the ex­iled MEP Puigde­mont has been told that if he re­turned to Spain he would be ar­rested be­cause Span­ish law pre­vails over Eu­ro­pean law.

Spain is mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from the rule of law. The de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected pres­i­dent of Cat­alo­nia Torra was dis­missed by the Span­ish state for hav­ing hung a ban­ner call­ing for the re­lease of po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and ex­iles! On the other hand, the re­cent in­quisi­to­r­ial ac­tion of the Tri­bunal de Cuen­tas re­calls the times of Franco’s re­pres­sion.

Along with this ju­di­cial cru­sade against the Cata­lan pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment there is the global dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign to dis­guise Spain as a “full democ­racy”. Among the count­less lies that have been told are Rus­sia’s al­leged in­volve­ment in the Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence process. It was even re­ported in the New York Times in a Sep­tem­ber 2021 ar­ti­cle based on a re­port by the Eu­ro­pean Union’s in­tel­li­gence ser­vices. How­ever, on De­cem­ber 2, 2021, the High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Eu­ro­pean Union for For­eign Af­fairs had to admit that this re­port did not exist.

In this con­text, in­ter­na­tional po­lit­i­cal ob­servers have been aware of what is hap­pen­ing in Cat­alo­nia since the Span­ish po­lice at­tacked vot­ers on Oc­to­ber 1, 2017 and the re­pres­sion of the Cata­lan Re­pub­lic pro­claimed on Oc­to­ber 27 of the same year. Thus, when the Eu­ro­pean Union rightly crit­i­cised au­thor­i­tar­ian states such as China, Rus­sia or Turkey for fla­grant vi­o­la­tions of human rights, it had to hear ac­cu­sa­tions of ap­ply­ing “dou­ble stan­dards”, as it does not avoid se­ri­ous human rights vi­o­la­tions against the Cata­lan na­tional mi­nor­ity in Spain. This is dam­ag­ing the EU’s rep­u­ta­tion and if it per­sists, will lead to its dis­in­te­gra­tion.

For­mer US Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton said in Barcelona 20 years ago that “the fu­ture will be ei­ther Cata­lan or Tal­iban”, mean­ing that democ­racy or bar­barism would win. In 2021 un­for­tu­nately the Tal­iban re­gained power while the op­pres­sion of the Cata­lan peo­ple wors­ened. Is it the end of his­tory? Not at all, but democ­racy must be strongly de­fended. The Cata­lan peo­ple have been fight­ing for three cen­turies to re­cover their free­dom, they chose self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in 2017 and the path to in­de­pen­dence lays open be­fore them.