Beyond our borders

Xam­mar and Diplo­cat

The group con­tin­ues to do the same work, but since Sep­tem­ber 2012 the gov­ern­ment has been more in­volved in pro­mot­ing Cat­alo­nia abroad. First, there was the cre­ation of the Eu­geni Xam­mar pro­gramme, named after the 20th cen­tury Cata­lan cor­re­spon­dent. This ini­tia­tive aimed to cre­ate an in­ter­na­tional of­fice for media and pub­lic re­la­tions, though the pro­ject was left half done due to a lack of funds and has fo­cused on pro­vid­ing sup­port to the Gen­er­al­i­tat's for­eign of­fice. Then, at the start of 2013, the Pa­tronat Catalunya-Món was turned into the Con­sell de Diplomàcia Pública de Catalunya (Diplo­cat), a semi-pri­vate body that set about mak­ing con­tacts with for­eign or­gan­i­sa­tion and media out­lets.

Be­tween them, the ini­tia­tives have led to diplo­matic vis­its by for­eign pub­lic fig­ures and jour­nal­ists, who have seen the re­al­ity of the coun­try first-hand and spo­ken to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Also, a dozen or so con­fer­ences have been or­gan­ised to de­bate the sov­er­eignty process in dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­pean uni­ver­si­ties (in­clud­ing Span­ish ones) and, since 2013, two score opin­ion ar­ti­cles on the sub­ject have ap­peared in the for­eign media by high-pro­file fig­ures such as Artur Mas or the econ­omy min­is­ter, An­dreu Mas-Colell.

“It re­mains a minor issue for them, but in gen­eral we have found a good will­ing­ness to en­gage,” says Diplo­cat's Martí Es­truch, who stresses the suc­cess of vis­its by for­eign jour­nal­ists, de­spite ini­tial doubts. “They do not want to feel strong-armed, but it is a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery, not pro­pa­ganda,” he adds.

What is also true is that many ini­tia­tives have re­ceived a re­sponse from the Span­ish gov­ern­ment, which has ap­plied pres­sure to pre­vent events tak­ing place abroad. One ex­am­ple was the un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt in Lis­bon and an­other was the Utrecht event, where the gov­ern­ment pre­vented the pre­sen­ta­tion of the novel, Vic­tus. More­over, the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties have pro­moted ar­ti­cles from am­bas­sadors in places like Lon­don, Rome and Reyk­javik, where a re­cent ar­ti­cle openly crit­i­cised Mas writ­ing in the for­eign media. In fact, Diplo­cat re­ports that Span­ish am­bas­sadors put pres­sure on the media to ig­nore Cata­lan de­mands, some­times with suc­cess, es­pe­cially smaller out­lets.

That the rise in Cat­alo­nia's in­ter­na­tional pro­file has co­in­cided with the sov­er­eignty process and the Scot­tish ref­er­en­dum has helped cap­ture the at­ten­tion of the in­ter­na­tional press: “The Scot­tish de­bate did not reach its high point in the in­ter­na­tional press until a poll ap­peared fore­cast­ing a 'yes' vote, but here the con­flict is a per­ma­nent one and the cov­er­age has been more lin­ear,” says for­eign sec­re­tary, Roger Al­binyana. And so far there has been no falling away of in­ter­est, as can be seen from the likes of the pres­ti­gious US mag­a­zine, Newsweek, start­ing 2015 by in­clud­ing the Cata­lan sit­u­a­tion among its top ten world is­sues for the year.

Favourable ed­i­to­ri­als

Yet, over­all the gov­ern­ment is pos­i­tive about the coun­try's in­ter­na­tional pro­file, es­pe­cially with a num­ber of in­flu­en­tial for­eign media out­lets de­clar­ing in favour of the right to de­cide (though not in­de­pen­dence).

“In the past few months there have not only been news items eval­u­at­ing the sit­u­a­tion, but also ed­i­to­ri­als ex­plic­itly call­ing for ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Span­ish and Cata­lan gov­ern­ments to find a so­lu­tion that re­spects the will of the Cata­lan peo­ple,” says Al­binyana, who adds: “It is ex­tremely im­por­tant and un­de­ni­able progress.”

While the ma­jor­ity of these ar­ti­cles seem to sup­port a fed­eral model or one based on fis­cal agree­ment, they also ex­press con­fu­sion and crit­i­cism of the Rajoy gov­ern­ment's un­will­ing­ness to offer al­ter­na­tives, which in their eyes pro­vides more le­git­i­macy to the sov­er­eignty the­sis.

After a cou­ple of months of dead­lock, the agree­ment on Jan­u­ary 14 to call plebiscite elec­tions on Sep­tem­ber 27 and the set­ting of an 18-month road map to­wards in­de­pen­dence has re­turned the Cata­lan issue to the media front line. Out­lets such as the Fi­nan­cial Times, the Wall Street Jour­nal, the BBC, Eu­ronews, the US CNBC, Ger­many's Die Welt and even Vat­i­can Radio have all re­ported on the issue, along with news agen­cies such as the As­so­ci­ated Press, Reuters, France Press or Ansa, all used by many media out­lets around the world. All of this opens the way to a new analy­sis, in which party squab­bling is seen as an ob­sta­cle to the process and the rise of Podemos could rad­i­cally change ex­pec­ta­tions, both in Cat­alo­nia and in Spain as a whole.

What­ever hap­pens next, in­ter­na­tional media cov­er­age of the sit­u­a­tion is an im­por­tant el­e­ment in the process and, in the opin­ion of Es­truch “Cat­alo­nia has al­ready won the game.”