” High treason. » “Pact with the Devil. » “End of democracy. » “Slide towards dictatorship. »
Several times last week, demonstrators from the Spanish right and far right demonstrated with incredible verbal violence, and sometimes exchanged blows with the police, to protest against the agreement concluded in Brussels between the Socialist Party of Pedro Sánchez and the Junts independence party of Carles Puigdemont, officially announced on November 10.
Under the “Brussels Agreement”, the latter obtains amnesty for the independence leaders of 2017 (responsible for the aborted secession attempt), in exchange for the support of Junts (“Together”) for a new mandate for Pedro Sánchez… who absolutely needed their seven little voices to survive.
Six months ago, the Spanish Prime Minister declared himself against any general amnesty. However, on Friday, his party precisely announced that it would have such an amnesty adopted in Parliament for independence leaders, for all the events occurring since 2012 in Catalonia, the year when their movement became the majority in Barcelona, until 2017 – this famous 1er October, date of the unilateral referendum, declared illegal and fought by Madrid, which Puigdemont had insisted on organizing against all odds.
This consultation, for the record, was marked by physical repression by the Spanish Guardia Civil in the streets of Barcelona. Its result: 90% “yes”… but with only 42% participation, the pro-union (pro-Madrid) having massively boycotted the vote – whose representativeness was, as a result, weakened.
It is ironic that the electoral arithmetic gave such power to Puigdemont in the summer of 2023 with his seven deputies in Madrid: a deputation inferior to those of the past, and which only represents a fraction of Catalan independence.
For several years, the national question in Catalonia has been relegated to the background… Even if it still governs in Barcelona, the nationalist camp is tired, disoriented and divided, after several years of strong popular mobilization. The polls, which between 2012 and 2020 remained within 50% of support for an independent Catalan state (even after the massive blow of 2017), have now fallen closer to 40%.
After hitting the “wall” of 2017, the Republican Left (ERC), under the leadership of Oriol Junqueras (who, importantly, was detained for three and a half years, unlike Puigdemont in exile), put water in his wine.
Today, the ERC advocates patience and gradualism (in the manner of René Lévesque’s “beautiful risk”) and supports the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez… while Junts, remotely guided by his “king in exile”, kept until ‘very recently a frontal and “heroic” approach to the Madrid enemy, hoping to “remake 2017” until it passes.
But the coincidences of electoral arithmetic, plus the legitimate desire to return to the country and escape the abusive legal proceedings of the Spanish state, have today made this man who refused dialogue… the partner of a “historic” pact (that’s his word) with the hated central power. Puigdemont agrees – and this is entirely new – to sit down at the table with Madrid to discuss… a reform of Spain!
Not only is there this transaction “parliamentary support against general amnesty”, which today scandalizes and inflames the right, but the agreement also establishes a permanent “negotiating table” on subjects such as “the recognition of Catalonia as nation”, or even a possible right to self-determination.
The separatists continue to demand the organization of a legal referendum agreed between the parties. Like in Scotland in 2014… where there was a prior agreement between London and Edinburgh.
But despite this “Brussels agreement”, we remain very far from the score. Sánchez, although less dogmatically centralizing than the Spanish nationalist right, cannot grant, as it stands, the right to self-determination to Spanish nationalities: that would be an explosion in Madrid.
The Spanish right is fiercely against any concession to the Catalan nationalists, but so is part of the left… Only the extreme left of the Sumar party would be ready to accept a full right to self-determination, with a referendum to boot. But one of Sánchez’s problems, apart from his own indisposed allies… is the strong mobilization of the right and the far right provoked by this agreement.
The virulence of the latest demonstrations shows in Spain, as in other Western democracies, starting with the United States, the rise of an apocalyptic and intolerant discourse, which equates the political adversary with an “enemy” who leads the country to its ruin, and against which all means would be permitted.
In the sustained harassment, for a week, of the headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Party, we see anonymous citizens encouraged by members of Vox (radical nationalist party, to the right of the Popular Party) and small neofascist groups who provoke altercations between demonstrators and law enforcement.
In a concerned editorial published on Saturday, the newspaper El País — which, however, during the events of 2017, had not restrained its own gall towards the separatists — today seems to be changing its tone, perhaps because the secessionist “threat” has subsided. He writes: “The Popular Party has opted for a rhetorical radicalization which presents [ce pacte] as a fundamental attack on our democracy. When criticism and freedom of expression [colportent] of such apocalyptic narratives, the function they are called upon to perform as rational critics […] is invalidated. »
François Brousseau is an international affairs columnist at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]