Politics

On Catalonia's National Day, the 11^th of September, as in 2012 and 2013, pro-independence supporters have once again created a colossal demonstration, which is unique at a European level. According to Barcelona local police, 1.8 million participants of all ages and social origins formed a V-shaped mosaic displaying the Catalan flag along the city's two main avenues to show support for the 9^th of November consultation vote that has been agreed upon by a two-third majority in the Catalan Parliament. In the vertex of the V-shaped rally, fully organised by civil society organisations, a stage decorated with columns of ballot boxes had been set up. At 17.14pm, commemorating the year Catalonia lost its sovereignty and freedoms, a girl who will turn 16 on the voting day has symbolically cast her vote into a ballot box. However, the Spanish Government has announced it will do whatever is necessary to stop the vote from happening. Meanwhile, the Catalan President, Artur Mas, emphasised that "everything is ready" for such a vote. Mas asked the Spanish authorities not to see the demonstration as "a provocation or a challenge", but as "a demand to vote".

In 1714, Catalonia was defeated and loss its sovereignty, its self-government, its Constitution and its freedoms to an absolute king who imposed a harsh political, economic, social and cultural repression that was prolonged until the 1970s, only interrupted during a few isolated and short periods. Barcelona was one of the last cities to fall, but it was ultimately defeated on the 11^th of September 1714, after a 14-month military siege. A few days after, all of Catalonia succumbed to the authority of the new dynasty, the Bourbons, who founded a Unitarian Spain, centralist and with an implacable homogenisation plan. Catalonia's National Day pays tribute to those defending Barcelona until the last day and aims to make citizens remember the loss of sovereignty and freedom. On the 300^th anniversary of the defeat, and in the middle of the current self-determination process, the institutional celebrations were particularly symbolical and unique.

In the institutional speech that the President of the Catalan Government makes each year the evening before Catalonia's National Day, Artur Mas asked the Spanish authorities to "listen to the peaceful and democratic claim" represented by Thursday's massive pro-independence rally. "Silencing the voice of a people that want to speak out is a mistake; denying the vote to those who see ballot boxes as the solution and not the problem is a double mistake", stated Mas. Before the institutional speech was broadcasted on TV, Mas attended the flower offering made to the mass graveyard where those who died defending Barcelona in the 14-month military siege were buried 300 years ago. In September 1714, Catalonia was defeated and lost its sovereignty, self-government institutions and its Constitution, and a long, harsh repression started. After the flower offering, a second ceremony started nearby, with music and poetry as the only ingredients.

The day before the massive pro-independence demonstration in Barcelona, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, once again rejected Catalonia's right to self-determination. Furthemore, Rajoy stated that a self-determination consultation vote or a unilateral declaration of independence would generate "a political problem and difficulties in the markets". Rajoy was answering to an MP from the centre-right pro-Catalan State coalition CiU, Josep Sánchez-Llibre. The Catalan MP stated that "what really threatens the [economic] recovery is that, in front of Catalonia's demands, [the Spanish Government] has not even issued half of a political answer that can allow the markets to believe in an agreement and not in it being on a collision course".

The President of the left-wing Catalan independence party ERC, Oriol Junqueras, stated on Tuesday that "the greatest expression of civil disobedience is voting when they prevent you from voting", referring to the ban that the Spanish Constitutional Court is likely to issue on the self-determination consultation vote scheduled on the 9^th of November. Furthermore, Junqueras also stated that he is convinced that the Catalan President will call for the vote and "will put out the ballot boxes". He also added that the ERC could sit at the Catalan Executive if this action were to "fully protect the consultation vote". The Spanish Government is totally opposed to such a vote and has already announced that it will appeal to the Constitutional Court, which has a majority of its members directly appointed by the People's Party (PP). The Court already lost most of its legitimacy in 2010 when it trimmed the Catalan Statute of Autonomy.

In 2015 the employees of the Catalan Government and related institutions and public companies will receive their full salary once again after having suffered a 7.5% reduction over the last 3 years. The Spokesperson for the Catalan Government and Minister for the Presidency, Francesc Homs, announced the measure on Tuesday, after the weekly Cabinet meeting. Furthermore, the Executive will also stop the 15% reduction of working hours and salary of temporary workers in the public sector. Those austerity measures were approved in the 2012 budget as a drastic way to cut public spending in order to reduce the public deficit. The Spanish Government has been unilaterally imposing strict deficit targets on the Catalan Executive while it maintained an unfair inter-territorial fiscal scheme with Catalonia and reduced its resources. In fact, the Spanish Government and most of the other Autonomous Communities did not reduce public salaries in the worst years of economic crisis, while the Catalan Government was the first one to launch the ambitious austerity plan.

Two days before the massive pro-independence demonstration will take place in Barcelona on Catalonia's National Day, more than 500,000 citizens have already signed up for participating in it. This year's pro-independence rally is likely to break all records, even though in last year's event demonstrators managed to form a 400km-long human chain spanning from north to south along all of Catalonia, attracting the world's attention. In 2013, more than 1.6 million people participated in the demonstration that was imitating the 1989 Baltic Way, according to the Catalan Police. Back then, 455,000 people had previously registered to participate in one of the human chain's 788 stretches. Now, as for last year's event, registration is not obligatory but recommended in order to guarantee that all the rally stretches will be full and a gigantic Catalan flag will be formed along the 11km itinerary. The demonstration will take place along Barcelona's two main avenues, forming a colossal V-shape to symbolise 'Vote', 'Victory' and 'Will', all three which start with a 'V' in Catalan.

Spain's Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, told the Executive Board of the governing People's Party(PP) that he has "all the measures ready" to stop the Catalan self-determination vote from happening. However, Rajoy avoided giving details about such measures and disclosing specific plans. The Spanish PM emphasised that his stance on Catalonia's right to self-determination and the organisation of an independence vote has remained unchangeable for the last two years. Rajoy took pride in not having made any concession to the demands coming from Catalonia and not having sat around a negotiation table. In fact, the PP and the Spanish authorities are totally opposed to such a vote, imposing a restrictive interpretation of the Constitution to reject a demand that is shared by some 80% of the Catalan population. Furthermore, Rajoy has also confirmed that the Spanish Government will immediately appeal the Catalan Law on Consultation Votes, despite such a law having not yet been approved.

The judge has not accepted the complaint filed by the extreme-right and Spanish nationalist trade union Manos Limpias against Carme Forcadell, President of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), the main civil society association supporting independence. Barcelona's first-circuit court number 14 does not see evidence or hints pointing towards any offence and therefore it has decided not to launch a judicial investigation and instead it rejected the complaint. On the 21^st of August, Manos Limpias – which has nothing to do with the Italian homonym organisation from the 1990s – announced the complaint against Forcadell, accusing her of promoting "the subversion of the constitutional order" and therefore "provoking sedition".

The European Union will adopt a "pragmatic approach" and employ "common sense" in the case of an independent Catalonia or Scotland and would not work to expel them, according to experts gathered at a conference on self-determination on Friday at the prestigious Sciences Po University in Paris. At the conference, which was organised with the support of the Catalan public-private soft diplomacy council Diplocat, experts highlighted the importance of "international recognition" for the process of acceptance of an independent Catalonia within the EU. Graham Avery, member of the Brussels-based think tank European Policy Centre (EPC) and Honorary Director General of the European Commission, said that the EU "has no problem in accepting changes in the borders of states", but that it has never experienced a secession which would create "two new member states".

On Friday, in Badalona (Greater Barcelona), the Secretary General of the PP, María Dolores de Cospedal, launched the idea to form a wide-spectrum coalition against secession in the next Catalan elections, which should unite all of the parties opposing independence from Spain. However, it has been rejected by the main parties which were targeted, and only the Spanish nationalist UPyD, which gets marginal results in Catalonia, has welcomed the initiative. According to Cospedal, this united list should bring together the PP (running the Spanish Government), UPyD, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), the anti-Catalan nationalism and populist C's, and the Christian-Democrat UDC, which is part of the two-party centre-right pro-Catalan state coalition CiU, which runs the Catalan Government. The PSC and UDC – which recognise Catalonia's right to self-determination - have totally rejected the idea. Even so, the PP's leader stated that "in Catalonia there is an undercover dictatorship", pushing for "a single way of thinking".

The Instituto Cervantes in Utrecht was obliged to cancel the presentation of 'Victus', a novel by Catalan author Albert Sánchez Piñol on the Spanish Succession War and Barcelona's military siege of 1714, after which Catalonia lost its self-government institutions and political, social and cultural repression started. According to the author, his Dutch editorial house Signatuur and the Communication Director of the Cervantes Institute, the Spanish Embassy in The Netherlands obliged them to cancel the event the day before it was supposed to happen for political reasons. However, the Spanish Government is denying any political veto and states the cancellation was due to "diary problems". The scandal has been covered by Dutch media and Juliette Van Wersh, Publisher at Signatuur, stated they are "shocked" for a decision against "freedom of expression". The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, stated that this veto is "in line with the international boycott" which Spanish authorities are carrying out against self-determination.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, stated once again that the self-determination consultation vote will take place on the 9^th of November but he also added that "things have to be done in the right way". In front of businesspeople at an event of Barcelona's Chamber of Commerce, Mas stressed that "both things have to come together", meaning voting and doing things right. He underlined that "this means always respecting an existing legal framework". After the controversies on whether the vote should take place if the Constitutional Court bans it, Mas insisted that the call will be based on Catalan legislation and that the Court might not ban it in the end. Besides, he admitted that Catalonia's "freedom" would come with some economic costs, but that those of continuing in the current situation would be much higher. Mas also said that Pujol's scandal "will not affect" him or the Catalan Government.

The new Secretary General of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), Pedro Sánchez, met on Wednesday in Barcelona with the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, to talk about the self-determination consultation vote scheduled on the 9^th of November. Sánchez told Mas that he considers such a vote to be "illegal" and therefore it cannot take place. In addition, he stressed that the PSOE is totally opposed to Catalonia's right to self-determination and underlined that "national sovereignty" belonged to the Spanish people as a whole. However, he said he was proposing "a solution" to the current conflict between Catalonia and the rest of Spain: a reform of the Constitution to transform Spain into a true federal state. Despite this reform, Catalonia would not be considered "a nation". Sánchez underlined that once the agreement on this reform would be reached, Catalans would have the opportunity "to vote" on it. Therefore, for Sánchez, Catalans would only have the choice to vote for the current status quo, or for staying in Spain with greater self-rule but without being considered as a nation.

As it was announced on Tuesday, all the opposition parties except the Catalan Socialists (PSC) have filed requests to create investigation committees at the Catalan Parliament as a result of the fiscal fraud confessed by the former President of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, and other offenses he or his entourage could have allegedly committed. Two requests were filed separately on Wednesday morning, one presented by left-wing parties supporting self-determination (ERC, ICV-EUiA and CUP) and the other presented by the two Spanish nationalist parties (PP and C's). The first one aims to check whether there have been cases of "fraud, fiscal evasion and political corruption […] in the context of Pujol's case" and "in the context of public-private contracts […] during the last decades". The second one aims to scrutinise "the existence of bank accounts in fiscal paradises owned by current or former officials of the Catalan Government, their illicit gain and/or the earning of illegal commissions".