The separatist movement gathering momentum in Spain's north-eastern Catalonia is threatening the country with growing instability just as it is struggling to cope with a deepening economic crisis. "The time has come" for the region of 7.6 million to apply its "right to self-determination," regional Prime Minister Artur Mas said in a key speech to the regional parliament.
Mas has called early regional elections for November 25 to launch a process which would allow the Catalans to "choose their collective future." The premier, who shuns the word "independence," announced Wednesday that if he wins the elections, Catalonia will stage a referendum on "self-determination" during the coming legislature. "If the Spanish government authorizes it, so much the better. If the government turns its back it has to be done anyway," Mas said.
The Catalan leader was "taking a very dangerous road," warned the Madrid daily El Mundo, which is close to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's Party (PP). A referendum on independence would violate the Spanish constitution, the daily pointed out.
The growing separatist strivings in Catalonia are a major headache for Rajoy's government, already occupied with fighting the country's worst economic crisis in decades. Gross domestic product is expected to shrink by about 2 percent this year, while unemployment has soared to nearly 25 percent. The government and even King Juan Carlos have kept appealing to Mas' Catalan nationalist party CiU to focus on solving economic problems, instead of "adding a new crisis to the crisis," as Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said.
Catalonia, which has traditionally been the powerhouse of the Spanish economy, has also been hit hard by the crisis. Crumbling under debt, Mas' government has been forced to adopt unpopular spending cuts in health, education and public sector salaries. It has even applied for a financial rescue worth more than 5 billion euros (6.5 billion dollars) from the Spanish state.
Mas' critics say he has mounted a campaign for independence in an attempt to divert attention from his poor economic management. But there is also a real interest in independence in the region with its own language, where 51 percent of the population would like to see Catalonia become a sovereign state, according to opinion polls. Catalonia already enjoys a wide self-government, including its own police force and the right to promote the Catalan language alongside Spanish.
Spain's economic crisis has further encouraged separatism in the region, where many people feel Catalonia would have coped better if it had not transferred part of its tax revenue to poorer Spanish regions. A pro-independence rally drew up to two million people in Barcelona recently. Mas then met with Rajoy, who refused to allow Catalonia to handle its own taxes.
Rajoy's snub prompted Mas to call early elections, which he hopes will give separatist-minded parties a sufficient majority for the new regional government to embark on the road towards a sovereign state. However, such a majority is far from certain, Catalan commentators warned on Wednesday. Mas currently heads a minority government which gets occasional support from the Catalan branch of Rajoy's PP.
"Seeking independence - very complicated in the constitutional, economic and European framework - is too adventurous," commentator Joan Tapia wrote in the daily Periodico de Catalunya. The Spanish government, which also faces a separatist movement in the Basque region, does not even want to consider the option of Catalan independence. It was expected to try to calm the Catalans by offering them more financial powers within a general reform in that area among all of Spain's 17 semi-autonomous regions. For separatist-minded Catalans - analysts said - such offers would almost certainly not be enough.
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