The Spanish left can’t afford Catalonian independence
The right learn that they, too, can protest
When the composer Puccini set up house in Madrid to oversee Edgar’s Spanish run, he lived at 7 Ferraz Street. The PSOE, Spain’s hegemonic left, has its headquarters further down the street, at Number 70. It is in front of this temple of social democracy that Spanish right-wingers, incensed at Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s confidence and supply agreement with Catalan separatists, have rallied for four weeks. They have protested in a relatively orderly, albeit comical, fashion, with the mayor estimating damages at €27,000.
A pantomime imitation of the Civil War’s nationalist camp has emerged: centre-right pensioners march alongside Carlists donning red berets and fascists of Latin American extraction. The centrist pensioners undoubtedly look askance at their companions — with good reason, too, since they are single-handedly responsible for the others’ impoverishment — but the protests’ tutti frutti cocktail remains helpful, if ultimately ill-fated.
The apple of discord, termed the ‘investiture agreement’ by the Spanish press, is eminently illegal, which is irrelevant. Its most prominent provision, the general amnesty for the leaders of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, is ostensibly prohibited by a constitutional ban on general pardons. None of this matters because Sánchez controls the courts; the president of the Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, is his appointee and worked under former PSOE prime minister Zapatero, whose negotiations with Basque terrorist group ETA he lauded. The right of pardon ostensibly belongs to the King, who lukewarmly called for a ‘solid and united Spain’ at the State Opening of Parliament, but this does not mean he will refuse to sign the amnesty bill once it reaches his desk. To do so would be tantamount to destroying the PSOE’s enervated monarchism, endangering Felipe’s exalted role at the head of a crowned republic. Yet signing the law would do away with the enthusiastic support of the right, for whom the King is a patriot who entertains leftists only out of a concern for tact, the Constitution and royal etiquette.
At any rate, conservatives have fortunately been disabused of their police worship, and this is perhaps the most valuable effect of the current political moment. For the past few years, Spanish boomers have imitated Americans in their reverence towards the ‘security forces of the State’; the lack of a significant veteran population has transferred this admiration towards the police — the same police that enforced lockdown restrictions. Videos of tearful upper-middle class girls lamenting the police’s violence have done more for the right-wing than any election debate. It was formerly assumed that only subversives, separatists and tattered hippies could be on the receiving end of police batons, but now that posh lawyers and management consultants — in Spain, these types are not metropolitan liberals — have been beaten, some have come to realise that policemen are faceless bureaucrats at the government’s service. Amusingly, the protestors have coined a refreshing, if uninventive, cry: ‘Send that milk float to the border’ (it rhymes in Spanish). Milk float is slang for a police van.
The Spanish right have realised that they, too, can apply pressure beyond the ballot box: PSOE MPs have been called traitors and accosted at restaurants; Sánchez, now confirmed as prime minister, cannot afford to be seen in public, lest he suffer some humiliation. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, was caught in the mix a few weeks ago, when protesters in Malaga learnt he was meeting the prime minister and a coterie of European social democrats at a convention centre. This is a noteworthy shift. In 2016, Podemos, a now irrelevant leftist party, surrounded Congress and camped outside the homes of PP MPs. It is hardly necessary to note that PP MPs, the Spanish clones of home counties Tory politicians, did not merit the honour of being called fascists.
This is not to say that the Spanish right did not organise protests. They’re fond of enormous weekend demonstrations in Madrid or Barcelona’s main avenues, but these all had the feeling of a pleasant Sunday stroll. Flag-clad protesters arrived and promenaded about, allowing ABC, Spain’s version of The Telegraph, to snap an impressive aerial shot. These protests were significant in their era, removing the pseudo-German embarrassment surrounding patriotism, the flag, and national symbols. Today, however, they merely serve to release pressure and do not in any way constrain the left-wing government’s actions.
It would be naïve, and idiotic, to expect the current protests to force Sánchez to change course. In fact, he has already shown that this will not occur: the protests began when the agreement with the separatists was announced; continued PSOE rule has since been approved in Parliament, evidently with the support of Catalan separatist MPs. What the protests provide is a more muscular way of countering the left-wing government, one that produces genuine irritation, rather than the quaint amusement of weekend rallies. The right are learning how to apply pressure in the streets, lowering the spirits of what is, in effect, a minority government hanging on to power only because the opposition failed to secure an extra 20,000 votes.
This can all be understood as part of a political transformation Spain has undergone since October 2017, when Catalan separatism peaked and seemed to pose a serious risk to the nation’s unity. Nearly half of the Catalan population supported independence at the time; it has since fallen below 30 percent, with support being slightly higher amongst older generations. That October was, in any case, the month of the unauthorised independence referendum, where, with a turnout of 43.03 per cent, 92.01 per cent supported secession. Tanks did not drive down Barcelona’s thoroughfares, but regional autonomy was suspended pursuant to Article 155 of the Constitution; police beat quite a few separatists, hence the right’s support for them. In any case, Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, the same man who sealed the recent agreement, humoured his supporters and declared an eight-second republic. Puigdemont and his associates were then tried for rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds.
Most of the ringleaders fled to other European countries and have not served their terms. Oriol Junqueras, leader of the much-diminished Republican Left of Catalonia, stayed behind and is now free, but his martyrdom of sorts has failed to restore his party’s political fortunes. Puigdemont, for his part, famously settled in Waterloo (the one in Belgium, not London), a place of defeat from where he seems to have procured a temporary victory.
The events in October permitted a re-emergence of Spanish patriotism. Policemen and Civil Guards from across the entire country were deployed to Catalonia in the lead-up to the referendum, and entire towns were present to send their boys off to the faraway region of traitors and flea-ridden communists. The King addressed the nation to unanimous acclaim; for the first and only time in his reign, he showed virility and decision, being favourably compared to his father during the 1981 coup attempt, a topic that ought to be addressed on another occasion.
Vox, until then a minor party, owes its political rise to the Catalans; indeed, Spain is a special country where the hard right rose not in response to immigration, but in response to separatism (though it cares for both, obviously). Nationalistic tics have since taken hold, and patriotic symbols have become acceptable, even necessary, even outside football contexts; for example, it is now a toff trait to wear a bracelet bearing the Spanish flag’s colours.
The forces that arose at that moment vanquished separatism. Catalan banks and industries, favoured by the central government (including Franco’s regime) since the 19th century, deserted Barcelona for Madrid, Valencia, or Malaga; culturally, Barcelona lost its place as the capital of Spanish-language literature and the publishing industry. Far from creating martyrs, the trial and imprisonment of Catalan separatist leaders led to infighting, which the sublime goal of independence had temporarily suspended. Out of a combination of exhaustion and a lack of enthusiasm, all Catalan regional elections since 2015 have placed a unionist party in first place, although separatists have held on to the regional presidency. This being Catalonia, the vast majority of unionist voters side with the PSC, the national Socialists’ local branch; many of them formerly voted for Ciudadanos, a centrist party that briefly appeared to be on the verge of dethroning PP, only to consume itself and disappear.
The Spanish right has a minor presence in Catalonia, although the few right-wing MPs returned by the region tend to be much more ideologically committed than those from other parts of the country. That is to say, Catalan Vox figures are genuinely far-right in the descriptive, rather than pejorative, sense of the term; they are generally harsher on immigration and would ideally like to ban separatist parties. PP, for its part, enjoys some support; demographic voter profiles suggest it is particularly strong in some high-income neighbourhoods.
The defeat of Catalan independence movement closely echoes that of Basque nationalism, which evidently acted in a more virulent, violent manner. PNV, the Basque nationalist party, has effectively renounced independence, contenting itself with a special fiscal agreement that allows the Basque Country to retain most of its taxes. From time to time, Basque authorities will dust off the Ibarretxe Plan, which called for a sort of confederation between Madrid and Vitoria. This will never happen, not only because it is politically unfeasible for the Spanish government, but because there is no real appetite for it in the Basque Country. In sum, the Basques have settled for a more dignified version of devo-max. They are a Spanish South Tyrol, except atheistic and ageing.
Amidst all this, the temporary prominence of Catalan pro-independence parties, above all Puigdemont’s Junts, should not be misinterpreted as a separatist resurgence. They exercise political power at the PSOE’s pleasure, and many of their voters resent the investiture agreement, seeing it as an unacceptable compromise by personally-interested politicians, anxious to secure a pardon. It must be said that the PSOE can agree to more or less anything, save for independence. The Socialists cannot rule without Catalonia and the Basque Country; if not for these regions, Spain would have perpetual right-wing governments. The difference is slight, with the right obtaining perhaps 55 percent in the rest of the country, but it is growing, especially as the older PSOE-voting generations, who are right-wing on most counts but will never shift allegiances, die off.
In view of the Machiavellian agreement, it is tempting, as many Spanish right-wingers have done, to conceive of the PSOE as an omnipotent, omniscient party incapable of alienating its voters; a party destined to win. This is partly true. The party has promised the Catalans many things, including a debt jubilee on €15 billion of Catalonia’s debt, which currently stands at around €84 billion. This promise, a welcome relief for a region with a budget deficit nearing 10 per cent, will likely be kept, but others — like negotiating a referendum — probably will not. The Socialists, as said before, give the illusion of strength, but all it has done is secure a minority government by the skin of its teeth. Its coalition is weak and will likely end in a snap election. It is practically impossible for Sánchez to lose a no-confidence vote: Spanish law only accepts ‘positive’ no-confidence votes with an agreed-upon successor to the prime minister, something dissident left-wing voices will never manage to do. However, Sánchez may find his separatist backers unwilling to approve next year’s budget.
Ultimately, the fate of Spain is beyond Catalonia’s control; for that matter, it’s beyond the north’s control. One of the most neglected demographic facts is that the country’s south, including even Andalusia, is gaining in both relative influence and wealth, hence its rightward shift. Malaga’s partial usurping of Barcelona’s role is proof of this. The north, including its loyal regions, is turning into a care home that will have to be subsidised by the much-maligned south. Fate, it seems, does not smile on Spain, where demographic circumstances appear to dictate a South Korean-style reckoning in the future: TFR in 2022 reached a new low of 1.16. There nonetheless remain reasons for cautious hope in the political realm.
Image credits: Diego Delso, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
This article was written by Pseudo Eyzaguirre, a Pimlico Journal contributor from Spain. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing. If you are already subscribed, why not upgrade to a paid subscription?