BARCELONA, Spain — Spain’s future as a unified country is on the line as polarized regional elections in Catalonia this week pit closely matched pro- and anti-independence factions, with little prospect that any of the seven parties on the ballot are expected to secure a majority.
Catalans, who have been hastily convened to the polls by center-right Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, face a stark choice between sticking with a shaky separatist coalition whose leaders have been jailed and fled into exile, or embrace an alternative represented by parties in line with Mr. Rajoy’s unpopular central government.
Some polls suggest a lead for Catalonian secessionists who used their small majority in the last regional parliament to declare independence and spark a clash over sovereignty and popular rights that has reverberated far beyond Spain’s borders. Less than half the electorate voted in that ill-fated referendum.
Despite a crackdown by the federal government and the ouster of leading pro-independence officials following the vote, separatist elements remain defiant.
“We will continue building our own republic. No other option is on the table” said Marta Rovira, chief candidate of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) party, which with poll support at 23 percent is poised to claim the largest single share of Thursday’s vote.
ERC leader Oriol Junqueras, vice president of the dissolved Catalan government, is in prison along with about a dozen other officials facing charges of sedition and other high crimes for going ahead with the Oct. 1 referendum, which Madrid considered unconstitutional. Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, who heads another secessionist party, took refuge in Belgium to escape arrest.
Dispersal of the independence movement’s leadership has complicated separatist efforts to regroup, especially as Mr. Junqueras and Mr. Puigdemont have been sparring over the secessionist movement’s leadership.
Meanwhile, Spain’s new center-right party Ciudadanos, whose telegenic regional leader Ines Arrimadas has been making considerable gains in Catalonia, is in a dead heat with the ERC, according to opinion polls.
Mr. Rajoy has been counting on a newly mobilized vote of what had been a large group of apathetic Catalan voters who may be suddenly fearful of the consequences of a break with Spain. In the country’s richest and most productive region, over 3,000 firms, including major multinational corporations, have transferred their headquarters out of Catalonia since October.
But to form a government in Catalonia, Ciudadanos would have to get support from Spain’s opposition socialists, who have made overtures to separatists with promises of amnesty for jailed leaders.
If Catalonia breaks from Spain or dissolves into chaos, the fallout could spill over to the rest of the European Union, setting a precedent and providing inspiration for budding independence movements elsewhere on the Continent.
While EU institutions have shunned Mr. Puigdemont since his arrival in Brussels, he has received support from the Flemish Nationalist Movement. The party’s leader, Jan Penman, president of the Belgian parliament, attended a 45,000-strong Catalan independence rally last week.
Corsican nationalists of the FNLC, who have at times led violent campaigns against French rule, as well as delegates of Italy’s Northern League seeking greater autonomy for the wealthy region around Milan, were also present.
Mr. Puigdemont has called the EU a “club of decadent and obsolete governments” and even suggested that Catalonia should hold a referendum on remaining a member.
The ’end of Europe’
Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that an independent Catalonia would mean “the end of Europe.” In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo last week, he said the region could become a “breeding ground” for terrorism.
He cited intelligence reports on how a policy by successive Catalan governments to encourage immigration from Islamic countries in order to offset internal migration from Spain, had led to a concentration of Islamic communities in Catalonia vulnerable to radicalization. Barcelona was the site of Spain’s worst terrorist attack in decades, when locals belonging to a radical Islamic cell attacked the city’s center in August, killing almost 30 people.
Mr. Rajoy and his allies are stepping up their own rhetoric ahead of this week’s critical vote, accusing independence leaders of bad faith in promising ordinary Catalonians great benefits from separating from Spain.
“The secessionist process was the worst episode of disloyalty in the history of our democracy,” Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria told a Senate committee in Madrid on Monday.
“But the worst betrayal was to Catalans who genuinely believed in independence. They were the ones who were led to believe that [their dream] was about to come true, whereas in fact it was all a big show, a ’symbolic’ episode,” she added.
Catalonia could also breed its own brand of violent radicalism, if growing incidents of harassment and intimidation against opponents of independence are any indication. Arson attacks have targeted homes displaying the Spanish flag. Figures representing voters for Ciudadanos and the other anti-independence parties have been hung in effigy from highway bridges. Socialist Party campaign workers were severely beaten last week by hooded assailants in the separatist bastion of Gerona.
“There is a climate of growing social tension, which we see in the demonstrations, political language, attacks on political party offices [and] harassment of our candidates and mayors,” said Salvador Ilia, the Socialist Party organizational secretary in Catalonia.
The region could be a magnet for radical groups from other parts of the world, according to Spanish security officials. The extremist CUP party, whose six members in the Catalan parliament were key to Mr. Puigdemont’s separatist coalition, has links with the leftist Black Block group, which organizes violent protests at Group of Seven conferences and other international summits.
Security analysts say the conflict in Catalonia has entered the phase of “low-intensity violence,” which could easily spiral out of control.
Spain was shocked last week when a dual Chilean-Italian national linked to extremist left groups in Barcelona attacked a man with an iron bar for wearing suspenders with Spanish colors, killing him. Although the attacker was believed to have been acting on his own, a few dozen killers protected by outer rings of supporters or sympathizers are all it takes for a terrorist movement to thrive. Such structures may already exist in Catalonia, analysts say.
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