The second round of the
Catalan non-official referendum on independence is over. As of now, it appears that there are
three more to come; two small ones in February and April, respecitively, and then a larger one. The last one is to include
Barcelona and it seem that the date has been postponed for organization purposes. During the past week we have seen v
ery different conclusions from
what happened here on 13/12. The only thing they have in common is that they all affect what will happen next.
That there would be
conflicts after the referendum could be felt in advance, but at least I was surprised by
how quickly and intensely they bubbled up. When, on Monday evening December 14, some of its leaders reached
Agora - a debate program on
Catalan TV3 - they had already begun to asserting their own positions and to
accuse each other of trying to
use the event for personal benefit.
No matter how right these people might have been in their allegations, they should not have been spread to the media; that was
an insult to the thousands of volunteers who had been crucial to the process. These leaders have
subsequently realized that their
infighting jeopardized the
whole movement, but by then some
damage had already been done.
The problem with the outcome is that it was so
unclear: It is true that
94.9% voted in favour of a sovereign Catalonia but the
voter turnout was only 27.4%. While the
coordinating group for the referendum stubbornly maintains that this was a success, the Madrid based press has called it all a failure.
To claim that the figures reveal that Catalonia wants to be independent, as some have done, is not honest. What the yes side would be more right in celebrating is the fact that, in the municipalities which have voted, the
share of independentistas in the population
extends far beyond the voters of ERC – the so far the only party in the Catalan parliament which advocates an independent state.
Even more important to remember is how we humans
evaluate performance based on our expectations and that the
hope for a high turnout increased substantially during the last few days before the referendum. From having been a matter covered in detail only by the openly
Catalan nationalist press like
Avui and
El Punt, the initiative suddenly made it to the front page of
LaVanguardia –
Barcelona based but
written in Spanish – and at the same time
international media intensified their coverage. Partly this was because
Joan Laporta - who is likely to enter into politics when his term as the
president of FC Barcelona is over – made a tour from
Tarrega to
Vic, calling on his fellow countrymen to
vote yes. It was in this late boost of attention the coordinating group revealed that they hoped for a
voter turnout of 40%. They were probably fooled by the hype.
On the
local level in
Vilanova i la Geltrú the same thing happened. As late as
Thursday December 10, the public notice boards of the town were
dominated by VNG Decideix's neutral reminders about the referendum while
CUP was the only party which had
put up posters for a yes. Then, on the
Friday, our local newspaper
Diari de Vilanova dedicated
its first three pages to
VNG Decideix and at the same time the
JNC (
CDC's youth organisation),
ERC,
Reagrupament (the
new party for an independent Catalonia which Joan Laporta might possibly lead) and some smaller groups started to encourage people to
vote yes. At least I was mislead and interpreted the
explosion of activity as a sign of a growing interest. Having said that, let me stress that the
no-side was never tempted to campaign but
kept with their strategy not to legitimize the referendum.
To evaluate the local platforms in a fair way, I would
turn back the expectations to the levels we saw a few weeks earlier. If I remember it correctly, one representative of
VNG Decideix once said that
anything above 7.000 voters was an
acceptable result for a non-official referendum. In the end,
8.515 Vilanova inhabitants went to the polling stations. Even more successful was the platform of
Sant Cugat del Vallès which estimated that
10% of the population would vote, but reached an
actual turnout of 25.5%.
All in all, my conclusion is that
those Catalans who had hoped for a majority for independence, now have to admit to themselves that
most of their neighbours did not see this referendum as a historic opportunity.
Nor did this day become
a serious warning to the Catalan political class from citizens fed up with
corruption scandals; a historic reaction which I – naïve as I am – was hoping for.
Having said that, December 13 was undeniably a day when the
world had its eyes on Catalonia and followed an
independence movement which, in a
peaceful manner, challenged the state. No matter how democratic the process was when the Spanish constitution came about, in a modern open society the Catalans can, at least,
count on international media support if, one day, they would agree to go their own way. To me that is a
historical experience,
not only for Catalonia but for
geographically based minorities all around the globe.
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As a detail, I would like to add that I am convinced that the discrepancies now exposed among the leaders of the referendum movement do not depend on the outcome – a higher or a lower turnout could have lead to the same or even stronger reactions. From a perspective of
organization dynamics you can -
if you want to generalize – say that
Swedes and
Catalans are each other’s
opposites:
Swedes prefer to
reconcile and reach
consensus, while
Catalans rather
split into factions than
compromise with their principles.
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Technorati tags: Catalonia, Independence, Spain, Vilanova
Var och en som har besökt en katalansk julmarknad (den mest kända är väl Santa Llúcia på Avinguda de la Catedral i Barcelona) måste ha lagt märke till de söta utklädda trästockarna. De som säljs är oftast standardiserade; ett runt vedträ framtill som lyfts upp på två små fötter, med målat ansikte och utstående näsa. Och så en barretina (en röd katalansk bondemössa) på huvudet och en liten filt över "ryggen" för att inte frysa.
