Providing the keys to a new state

How will elec­toral dis­tricts be de­fined in an in­de­pen­dent Cat­alo­nia? Will the coun­try need its own army? Should we leave the Eu­ro­zone? Who would be Cat­alo­nia's clos­est for­eign al­lies? What would hap­pen to the prop­erty of Cata­lan cit­i­zens in Spain? Would dri­ving li­censes still be valid? Would the coun­try have its own wel­fare state? Would Span­ish con­tinue to be a co-of­fi­cial lan­guage? Would in­fra­struc­ture im­prove? What would be the coun­try's re­la­tion­ship be with Spain? Would Cat­alo­nia com­pete in the Olympic Games?

These are some of the ques­tions an­swered by El Clauer (wwww.​elclauer.​cat), an ini­tia­tive of 14 as­so­ci­a­tions in favour of Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence. The pro­ject aims to show the vi­a­bil­ity of a Cata­lan state. El Clauer's con­clu­sions re­volve around 12 spe­cific is­sues that ad­dress the main doubts raised by the self-de­ter­mi­na­tion process.

Òmnium Cul­tural is the main or­gan­i­sa­tion be­hind the idea, which in­cludes the As­sem­blea Na­cional Cata­lana, the As­so­ciació Cata­lana de Pro­fes­sion­als, the As­so­ciació de Mu­nicipis per la In­de­pendència, the Cer­cle Català de Ne­go­cis, Ciemen, the Col·lec­tiu Emma, the Ens de la co­mu­ni­cació as­so­cia­tiva, the Fun­dació Catalunya Estat, La Fàbrica, the Plataforma per la Llen­gua, the Plataforma pro se­lec­cions es­portives cata­lanes, So­bi­ra­nia i Justícia, and So­bi­ra­nia i Progrés. All of whom are work­ing to in­clude civil so­ci­ety in this his­toric mo­ment.

The group's main aim is to re­fute the hy­pothe­ses of fear em­a­nat­ing from the Span­ish na­tion­al­ist camp. How­ever, it is also to pro­vide se­ri­ous an­swers, even when the is­sues ad­dressed have lit­tle or no sub­stance (such as the un­founded pre­dic­tion by the Span­ish min­is­ter of for­eign af­fairs, José Manuel García Mar­gallo, which con­demned an in­de­pen­dent Cat­alo­nia to an eter­nal ex­is­tence on the side­lines with no recog­ni­tion). Thus, the is­sues raised are dealt with in a man­ner that avoids pro­pa­ganda and ex­ag­ger­a­tion and puts for­ward the most ra­tio­nal and vi­able view given the cur­rent cir­cum­stances of un­cer­tainty.

The or­gan­i­sa­tions be­hind the ini­tia­tive are keen to re­mind peo­ple that the final word on the fu­ture of an in­de­pen­dent state will be de­cided in par­lia­ment and that El Clauer is not pro­vid­ing a blue­print for a con­sti­tu­tion. That, of course, does not pre­vent the ra­tio­nal de­bate and ex­plo­ration of the most im­por­tant ques­tions cur­rently on the table.