Catalonia wants out; Spain says no

Manuel Valls has warned that the Catalan independence movement’s “failed” attempts to bring about a sovereign republic have left the region frustrated and divided, hindering efforts to develop Barcelona as “a great European capital”.

The former French prime minister, who is hoping to become Barcelona’s mayor in next year’s municipal elections, said the push for independence had caused deep divisions and left Catalonia looking inwards rather than outwards.

“What has changed most in the past year is that the process to bring about independence has failed,” he said. “First, because half the Catalans and more than half the people in Barcelona don’t want it, second the rest of Spain doesn’t either and nor does Europe. This has led to a lot of frustration.”

Valls said the time had come to heal the wounds and that he was ideally placed to help.

“The problem is now we are divided,” he said. “I want to see respect and moderation. As the most Catalan Frenchman and the most French of the Catalans, plus the fact that I speak Catalan, I believe I can convince people that this is what they want too.”

Valls – who was born in Barcelona when his Catalan father and Swiss mother were there on holiday – said that the people of the Catalan capital needed to ask themselves what kind of city they wanted: “A city that looks to Europe or a city that corrals itself within its own identity, which is the secessionists’ message?

“We need a mayor who says that Barcelona isn’t the capital of the Catalan republic but is a great European capital.”

A third of Barcelona residents were not born in Spain and about a third of them are EU citizens. Barred from voting for the Catalan or Spanish governments, the city election is the one occasion when these residents can make their voice heard, something Valls is well aware of.

The 56-year-old has been accused of being the candidate of the elite and seeking to run a city in which he has never lived. Others have questioned how his vociferous opposition to Catalan independence will go down with those who favour a break with Spain.

“I’m not going to lie,” he said. “I was born here and as a child I spent many months here but I haven’t been here every day over the past 10 years. But you have to ask, have the people who know the city better than me done a good job of running it?”

Although originally touted as the candidate of the centre-right Citizens party , Valls insists he is his own man, standing as an independent “from the left and with the values of the French republic”.

He is highly critical of Ada Colau, the incumbent mayor, both for her management and what he says is her non-committal stance on independence.

Such equidistancia – a willingness to see both sides – has become a pejorative term in Catalonia’s highly polarised atmosphere.

“I don’t believe in equidistancia,” says Valls. “You’re either for or against independence. I believe there is a political space for someone like me, who is clearly not in favour of independence but who can bring people together [..] with a commitment to constitutional values and principles.”

Although he criticises Colau on law and order issues, such as the upsurge in hard drugs, street crime and, above all, the proliferation of street-hawkers, or manteros, he is short on solutions.

The manteros – so called because they sell their wares from blankets laid out on the pavement – are stateless vendors who are considered a growing problem, mainly because of the space they occupy.

“They’re human beings, they’re victims of human traffickers but this doesn’t mean that the people of Barcelona have to be victims as well,” said Valls. “The public space belongs to everyone. The police need to have clear orders. These people can’t occupy the main tourist areas, where they are persona non grata.”

However, where this has been attempted, the vendors return to the same spots because that’s where the tourists – their principal market – are.

As for the increasingly problematic issue of tourism, Valls claims it is a question of management, not numbers. While his predecessors have at least made a pretence of calling for quality over quantity, he espouses a come-all-ye approach.

“We want them all, people who want to go to the beach, to watch Barça, to have a good time going out dancing or to stag and hen parties,” he said. “But we also need quality tourism.”

In an echo of the image promoted 15 years ago by then mayor, Joan Clos, Valls believes Barcelona should be “a great European and Mediterranean capital; an open and global city”.

Valls is a former socialist, who has since moved to the right. He shrugs off suggestions that he is out of touch, claiming that his outsider status could prove to be an asset.

“The Catalans, such as [former Catalan president] Carles Puigdemont, who said it’s great that France has a Catalan prime minister, are the same ones who now call me an outsider,” Valls said.

“And the same people who say Catalonia has to split from Spain … in order to be a part of Europe don’t want a Catalan who made his career in France. I am an anti-populist candidate, and by populism I mean a political movement that excludes people and seeks enemies.”

Like Dany Cohn-Bendit doing politics on both sides if the Rhine. I believe the next step for European politics is the creation of pan-European parties with platforms going beyond one nation.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s Supreme Court on Thursday said it had ended its investigation against 18 Catalan independence leaders who will now face trial, likely at the beginning of next year.
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A year after threatening the unity of Spain with an attempt to declare independence, the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont launched a new party on Saturday, as part of a new bid to rally separatists from his base in Belgium.

he new group, named Crida Nacional (National Call), held a founding congress on Saturday evening, marking the one-year anniversary of the secession push, but it has struggled to attract a groundswell of support, with some allies being held in Spanish jails and others choosing a more moderate political path.

The meeting of Puigdemont’s new party was held in the pro-independence town of Manresa, in the centre of Catalonia, near the prison where independence leaders are being held.
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MADRID
Spanish prosecutors have called for former Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras to be imprisoned for 25 years on charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds, the highest prison term being sought for separatist leaders who pushed for Catalan independence last year.

The formal bill of indictment issued Friday by Spain's Public Prosecutor seeks fines or imprisonment for 22 politicians, activists and civil servants accused of organizing the push to break away from Spain, including holding a banned referendum.

But state attorneys, who represent the central government's interest in the case, called for rebellion to be dropped in favor of the lesser charge of sedition, which under Spanish law doesn't imply that violence was used to subvert the state or the country's constitution.

The different criteria could have limited effect in the trial, but the lesser charge request is seen as a sign of how the center-left government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez needs support in parliament from separatist parties to pass the national budget and remain in power.

Two Catalan separatist leaders on Saturday began an indefinite hunger strike in a Spanish jail as they await trial for their involvement in an outlawed independence referendum, according to their lawyer Jordi Pina.

"I did not recommend this action," said Pina. "It is a decision of my clients and they have my full support."

The two men are Jordi Sanchez, who once led the grassroots Catalan National Assembly (ANC) separatist movement, and Jordi Turull, an ex-minister in the Catalan government and failed regional president candidate.

Sanchez and Turull accused Spain's top court of preventing their appeals from making it to the European Court of Human Rights, they said in a statement read by their lawyer.

"We will never give up on our right to a fair trail," the duo said.

But the Spanish government affirmed that Sanchez and Turull would be treated no differently than other citizens.

"Like all citizens who are subject to and protected by the rule of law, the separatist leaders will receive a fair trial," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

The Spanish prime minister and the separatist leader of Catalonia are to meet in Barcelona as demonstrators prepare to take to the streets to mark the first anniversary of the snap regional election.

Pedro Sánchez, whose Socialist administration has taken a more conciliatory approach to the independence issue than its conservative predecessor, will meet Quim Torra late on Thursday afternoon.

Sánchez and his ministers are holding a meeting in the Catalan capital the following day, a decision that has angered hardline independence campaigners.

Secessionists claim the cabinet’s choice of meeting in Barcelona, exactly a year after the vote called by the previous Spanish government, which seized control of the region following a unilateral independence referendum and subsequent independence declaration, is deliberate and provocative.

Protesters have promised a day of demonstrations against the central government’s presence in the city on Friday.

Groups of activists, whose blockades of roads and railways have previously been praised by Torra, have said they will take to the streets to “defend the right to self-determination … and to confront the oppressive state”.

A picture posted on Twitter by the Committees for the Defence of the Republic showed a burning photograph of King Felipe, accompanied by the caption: “On 21 December, we’ll be ungovernable.”

A massive police operation will aim to ensure the cabinet meeting goes ahead with minimal disruption, but senior officers will be keen to avoid any repetition of the police violence that marred the independence referendum 14 months ago.

Jordi Turull, one of the jailed Catalan leaders facing trial next year over his role in the push for independence, said the cabinet meeting should not be held in Catalonia a year after the regional election.

“Over 10% of lawmakers elected that day are in jail or in exile,” Turull told Agence France-Presse earlier this week. “To come on that day is a provocation.”

But Turull, a former regional government spokesman who is on hunger strike along with three colleagues, warned violent protests would not help the independence cause.

“I would not like it if people, with their faces covered, demanded my freedom,” he said. “We have to do as we have always done, which is to protest peacefully.”

The first anniversary of the referendum – which was held in defiance of the central government and ruled illegal by Spain’s constitutional court – saw angry pro-independence activists blocking roads and railway lines and jostling with police outside the Catalan parliament.

Torra was widely criticised for encouraging the protesters by urging them to “keep up the pressure”.

The president, who has a history of bombastic and anti-Spanish pronouncements, came under further pressure earlier this month when he called on Catalans to emulate Slovenia’s path to independence.

Slovenia’s declaration of independence in 1991 led to a 10-day war against the Yugoslav army in which dozens of people were killed.

Torra’s exhortation prompted an angry rebuke from the Slovenian prime minister, Marjan Šarec, who said he saw “no parallels” between his country and Slovenia.

Sánchez, meanwhile, said comparisons with Slovenia or Kosovo demonstrated “a lack of historical knowledge, an unacceptable manipulation and the desperation of someone who’s run out of arguments to support his political ideas and has resorted to lies”.

The Spanish prime minister has offered to increase Catalonia’s powers of self-government but flatly refused to discuss independence, saying any negotiations must respect the constitution, which is founded on the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”.

Sánchez also recently warned the Catalan government that any breach of the law would be met with a “calm but firm, proportionate and robust response”.

Torra’s push for independence, which follows that of his predecessor, Carles Puigdemont, remains deeply divisive within Catalonia. Polls suggest the region is roughly evenly split on whether to leave Spain.

While a majority of Catalans favour an independence referendum if it is jointly agreed by Madrid and Barcelona, separatist parties have never managed to take 50% of the vote in the regional parliament.

Last year, the three separatist parties won 47% of the vote and a total of 70 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament.

But the centre-right, pro-unionist Citizens party was the single biggest winner, taking 37 seats and 25% of the vote.

Thousands are in central Madrid for a protest by centre-right parties opposed to a plan by the Spanish government to ease tension in the Catalonia region.

The Popular Party (PP) and Ciudadanos (Citizens) called the protest after PM Pedro Sánchez said he would appoint a rapporteur for talks with separatists.

They consider the appointment a betrayal and surrender to separatist pressure, and want early elections.

Like the right, the ruling Socialists also oppose Catalan independence.

Far-right groups including the Vox party are also present at the protest, held under the slogan "For a united Spain. Elections now!"
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In a speech to the crowds, PP leader Pablo Casado denounced Mr Sánchez's policies as "Socialist surrender" and "deals under the table", Efe news agency reported.

"Sánchez's time is over," Mr Casado said, adding that the protests were a turning point and the beginning of a return to "harmony and legality" in Spain.

Catalan nationalists regained power in Barcelona in May, after a seven-month period of direct rule by Madrid.

Tensions remain high, as many Catalans resent Madrid's show of force last year, when it charged pro-independence leaders with sedition.

Mr Sánchez heads a minority government that depends on nationalists - including Catalans - to stay in power, but he has ruled out any new Catalan referendum on independence.

Protesters denounce what they see as PM’s overly conciliatory stance on Catalan issue

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Madrid on Sunday to protest against the government’s handling of the Catalan question, as the country braced for the landmark trial of 12 separatist leaders this week.

About 45,000 people joined the rally in Colón square to vent their fury at what they see as the overly conciliatory stance adopted by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and to demand a snap general election.

The demonstration was called by the conservative People’s party and the centre-right Citizens party, and backed by the far-right Vox party. It also attracted supporters of small fascist and extreme-right groups.

The protest came two days before the beginning of the trial of separatist leaders behind the failed bid for regional independence – an event that provoked Spain’s worst political crisis since it returned to democracy after the death of Franco.

The public proceedings at Spain’s supreme court, which are expected to last three months and which will be broadcast on television, will focus on the independence referendum held in October 2017 and the regional parliament’s subsequent unilateral declaration of independence.

Nine of the defendants - who include the former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras, the former speaker of the Catalan parliament Carme Forcadell and two influential grassroots activists, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez – are accused of rebellion, which carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years. Other charges include sedition and misuse of public funds.

At the heart of the case will be the then Catalan government’s decision to hold the referendum despite repeated warnings that it would violate the constitution, which stresses the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”.

Although Catalan pro-independence parties have never managed to win 50% of the vote in the regional parliament, and although polls consistently show Catalonia is roughly evenly split over the independence issue, the government of the then Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, chose to press ahead with the vote.

In early September 2017, pro-independence parties managed to get a law paving the way for the referendum passed in the regional parliament, despite furious objections from opposition MPs who complained that usual procedures had been disregarded.

Three weeks later, on 1 October, the Catalan government held the referendum, which was marred by violence from Spanish police officers who raided polling stations, charged crowds with batons and fired rubber bullets as they tried to stop the vote.

According to the Catalan government, about 2.3 million of Catalonia’s 5.3 million registered voters – 43% – took part in the referendum, and around 90% of participants backed independence. The vote was largely boycotted by unionist Catalans.

On 27 October, shortly after secessionist Catalan MPs voted to declare independence, the Spanish government of the then prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, won senate backing to sack Puigdemont and his cabinet and assume direct control of Catalonia.

Days later, Puigdemont fled into exile in Belgium while Junqueras and seven other former Catalan ministers were remanded in custody.

The president of the supreme court, Carlos Lesmes, has described the proceedings as “the most important trial that we’ve held since democracy [returned]”.

Hundreds of witnesses are to be called, among them Rajoy, his former deputy prime minister Soraya Sáez de Santamaría, the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, the former Catalan president Artur Mas and the current speaker of the Catalan parliament, Roger Torrent.

The court has ruled that Puigdemont himself will not be allowed to testify via videolink from Belgium. Other witnesses will include some of the Catalan voters and Spanish police officers injured on the day of the referendum.

Both the Spanish and Catalan governments are acutely aware of the publicity and scrutiny the trial will bring. Catalan independence leaders are keen for their day in court as a means to mobilise their grassroots supporters after months of inertia and amid growing fractures within the movement.

They have repeatedly sought to accuse the Spanish justice system of institutional bias and to claim that the accused are being punished for defending the right to self-determination.

In a recent interview, Puigdemont told the Associated Press that the trial would be “not an act of justice but rather one of vengeance”, while his handpicked successor, Quim Torra, has argued that “no crime has been committed”.

Sánchez’s socialist government has been embarking on its own PR campaign to counter the claims of the pro-independence faction. The prime minister has consistently argued that a clear separation of powers exists in Spain and that the judiciary is wholly independent of the government. The prime minister visited the European court of human rights in Strasbourg last Thursday to stress Spain’s commitment to the rule of law.

The Sánchez administration has pointed to a series of high-profile court cases as further evidence of a fully functioning and impartial legal system. In February 2017 the former deputy prime minister Rodrigo Rato was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for misusing corporate credit cards while in charge of two leading Spanish banks at the height of the country’s financial crisis.

The brother-in-law of King Felipe is serving a six-year prison sentence after being found guilty of charges including embezzlement, fraud and tax evasion. The king’s sister, Princess Cristina, was cleared of helping her husband evade taxes at the end of the same trial two years ago.

But by far the most dramatic court case of recent years was the so-called Gürtel trial. In May last year, Spain’s highest criminal court ruled that the People’s party, which was then in government, had profited from an illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme. The judges expressed doubts over the credibility of the testimony offered by Rajoy the previous July, when he became the first serving Spanish prime minister to give evidence in a criminal trial.

The Gürtel verdict prompted Sánchez to bring a motion of no-confidence against Rajoy and his government. The vote that removed Rajoy from office and installed the socialist party as a minority government was successful only because it won the backing of the Basque Nationalist party – and the Catalan pro-independence parties of Puigdemont and Junqueras.

Spanish ambassador to London speaks out in effort to convince world trial is not political

The trial of 12 Catalan separatist leaders in Madrid is of “paramount importance to Spain’s reputation as a modern democracy”, the Spanish ambassador to London, Carlos Bastarreche, has said in a rare public intervention intended to convince the world the trial is not political.

The ambassador, acting as part of a Europe-wide effort by the Madrid government, accused the pro-independence Catalan regional government of “a massive campaign of disinformation” and said the best way to fight back was with transparency.

The trial of the 12, nine of whom are accused of rebellion, begins on Tuesday. Those accused of the most serious charges could face up to 25 years in jail.

The intervention shows that the Spanish government is nervous the high-profile trial could turn the European public against it by seeking to use judicial methods to repress Catalan demands for independence.

Officials from the highly active Catalan foreign ministry have already been to the UK to speak to MPs and claim that the proceedings, which could last as long as three months, amount to a political show trial.

The Madrid government has launched a campaign entitled This is the Real Spain, highlighting the country’s diversity, to counter the Catalan independence movement’s claim that a politicised judiciary is repressing political opinion.

Bastarreche said: “There is a real concern of the Spanish government because the image of Spain can be negatively effected by the campaign of disinformation, and it has been decided to put in place a response.

“We are facing a very organised information campaign that is based on spreading fake news. The principal underlying message of our opponents is that Spain is not a democracy.”

The government is ensuring the trial is streamed live and is publishing factsheets about the independence of the Spanish judicial system to try to counter the Catalan narrative.

Bastarreche acknowledged Spain had a unique challenge in explaining its case in the UK, where the Westminster parliament had permitted Scotland to hold an independence referendum. No such referendum has been granted by the Spanish parliament.

He said: “There is a special difficulty to understand in this country what is happening in Spain. Britain is different and does not have a written constitution and no enshrinement of the unity of the country. That is a product of our history. The indissolubility of our country is one of the main principles of our country.”

He pointed to the demonstration in Madrid on Sunday objecting to the government’s handling of the Catalan crisis as proof that diversity flourished in his country, just as Brexit had shown the range of opinion in the UK.

“Spain is one of the most solid democracies in the world, including one of the most protective judicial system as far as the defendants’ rights are concerned,” he said.

A Catalan separatist narrative – pointing to lengthy detentions without trial, the heavy potential sentences, and the quality of the evidence that any of the accused agitated for violence – has largely shaped European opinion over the last year.

Alfred Bosch, the Catalan foreign minister, said the Spanish government campaign showed that Madrid “feels fragile and uneasy. These trials will not defuse a crisis that needs to be defused by politics.

“If the sentences are heavy – and the charges are heavy – it will create uproar in Catalonia, Spain and Europe. We are not acting on disinformation.

“It is quite obvious in the 21st century in Europe either people decide on their own future, or there will be no permanent solution. The only violence that occurred during the referendum on 1 October was committed by the Spanish police, or Guardia Civil, and not by the Catalan government.”

Bosch claimed the lead judge in this case was a nationalist, and pointed to the way European courts have rejected Spanish government extradition requests for the Catalan leaders who fled the country after the Spanish government ruled the referendum unlawful.

“The accused are not charged with stealing. They are charged as an autonomous government with holding an illegal referendum. This will affect the reputation of Spain for years to come. Ideas cannot be prosecuted,” he said.

The pro-independence government of the then Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, pressed ahead with the unilateral referendum in autumn 2017 even though polls consistently show Catalonia is evenly split over the independence issue, and pro-independence parties have never managed to win 50% of the vote in the regional parliament.

According to the Catalan government, about 2.3 million of Catalonia’s 5.3 million registered voters – 43% – took part in the referendum, and about 90% of participants backed independence. The vote was largely boycotted by unionist Catalans.