The Catalan Crisis: A lesson for Ireland’s future?

While Brexit dominates the news-cycle in Ireland and the UK, the TV screens of the 300,000 Brex-pats currently residing in Spain have spent the last month beaming images of an equally chaotic and acrimonious secessionist struggle. October on the streets of Barcelona saw levels of disorder that even John Bercow would struggle to contain. The sentencing on October 14 of nine Catalan politicians for their role in organising the highly contentious 2017 ‘referendum’ for Catalan independence was always likely to reignite tensions in both Catalonia and Madrid, however the draconian nature of the sentences handed down has led to huge protests across the region. The vast majority of these have been peaceful, with more than 500,000 people taking part in a general strike, however it is the violent skirmishes that have broken out between pro-independence protesters, small pockets of Spanish far-right nationalists and police that have dominated headlines. Burning barricades sell newspapers, after all.

It is timely that the Catalan question has pushed itself back into the spotlight at a time that may prove momentous in another of Europe’s enduring questions of national identity. It has long become clear that for the Brexit impasse to be broken, a concession has to be made on Northern Ireland. We will never know how close major European countries may have come to forcing Ireland’s hand on the issue of the hard border, but in agreeing to a hypothetical customs border down the Irish Sea, Boris Johnson and the Conservative party turned the knife into their coalition partners in the DUP. Should Boris Johnson’s deal pass, and with an election to come the permutations are numerous, we may well be seeing the first step on a regulatory path that leads to a united Ireland. Combined with shifting demographics that predict a Catholic majority by 2021, a 32 county republic is quietly shifting from the ‘if’ column to the ‘when.’ The question of the North and reunification has dominated politics in an independent Ireland, but policy-makers must now start to consider it from a new perspective. The challenge is no longer how do we support people who identify as Irish in another jurisdiction. We now need to consider how do we support people who don’t identify as Irish in our own jurisdiction. And here, we can turn to the events in Spain for guidance.

Viewed from abroad, the prison sentences ranging from nine to thirteen years handed down to the leaders of the Catalan independence movement were the latest in a series of terribly judged missteps from the Spanish establishment. Given that the nine defendants were cleared of the more serious crime of violent rebellion, it is very hard to view the punishments handed out as anything other than disproportionate. This is especially true when compared to the 15 year sentence served by Lieutenant Antonio Tejero for leading a failed coup in 1981. That Tejero, who marched into the Spanish parliament with 200 armed supporters from the Guardia Civil and held the House hostage for over 20 hours should only serve two more years than politicians whose major crime was to organise a vote, legal or not, is difficult to fathom. Yet the decision of the judiciary was consistent with the hardline approach first adopted by Mariano Rajoy’s government in shutting down the referendum in 2017, an approach that saw baton-wielding police officers from other parts of Spain deployed to Catalonia to forcefully prevent citizens from registering their vote. This hard-handed approach has shifted the narrative away from a debate on the frankly questionable merits of Catalan independence to one of repressive central government utilising force to silence a significant ethnic minority. So why would the country that gave us Tiki-Taka commit what looks like such a strategic own goal?

Spend some time in Madrid or any of the Spanish heartlands of Castile, Andalusia and Extremadura and the answer soon becomes apparent. Big swathes of the Spanish population do not like the concept of Catalan independence. In fact, many Spaniards have an issue with Catalonia in general. A commitment to a more hardline stance on Catalan independence has been one of the key factors in the emergence of the far-right Vox party, while footage of Guardia Civil riot police being cheered on with chants of ‘A Por Ellos’ (basically ‘go and get them’) and ‘Viva España’ as they left Andalucia for Catalonia was one of the more discomforting images of the initial referendum in 2017. The sheer number of Spanish flags that now adorn balconies across the country are a direct response to the events of 2017 — an act of defiance in support of territorial integrity and in response to the Catalan flags to be found in Barcelona.

Sport often provides us with a relatively unfiltered lens into public opinion, and here too we can find multiple expressions of Spain’s simmering tensions. While some hoped that Spain’s 2010 World Cup win in South Africa would foster in a new sense of national unity, the effects soon petered out much like the host country’s own triumph in the ‘Invictus’ Rugby World Cup of 1995. Of the several Barcelona players in the starting line-up for the final against the Netherlands, it was Andres Iniesta who would be adopted as a national hero. While his winning goal, likeable nature and ability to glide majestically across the pitch undoubtedly contributed to this, the fact he was from a small village in Castilla La Mancha made him a far more natural poster boy for Middle Spain than Pique, Puyol, Busquets and Xavi, his equally influential Catalan colleagues. In the following seasons, while Iniesta would be routinely applauded at opposition stadiums, Barcelona continued to be greeted by anti-Catalan, pro-Nationalist chanting (though it has to be stated that chants of a similar nature await plenty of teams who travel to an increasingly politicised Nou Camp). At an anecdotal level, as I sat in a bar in Asturias watching Spain’s recent World Basketball Championship semi-final victory against Australia, locals speculated that Marc Gasol would intentionally miss a free-throw as he was a ‘Puto Catalan.’ Similar sentiments popped up on my screen in a WhatsApp group, and no doubt in WhatsApp groups across the country.

Unpacking the reasons behind this acrimony is complex and would require several articles to do it justice. However it is clear that tensions are now higher than they have been since the death of Franco. Spanish governmental policy over the last 40 years could be broadly described as a balance of granting concessions on regional autonomy while simultaneously reinforcing red lines around constitutional integrity. However Spanish resentment for the former, Catalan anger at the draconian implementation of the latter and some long-held cultural and economic differences have driven a wedge down society. The state has flip-flopped between two divergent approaches and allowed emotion, both political and social, to play too big a part in how the Catalan question has been handled.

It is this managing of emotions that will be so crucial to any future Dublin government tasked with navigating Irish reunification. Socially, some deep-rooted ideas on Unionism need to be redefined. The tendency of people in the Republic to equate Unionism with its most aggressive, Paisleyite incarnation needs to be shifted. Attempts need to be made, most crucially in schools, to empathise and understand the Unionist position. Concessions may need to be made in areas as complex as our constitution, our national anthem and even potentially our flag. None of that will be popular or straightforward, but to expect a Loyalist from the Shankill Road to line out for a unified Irish national team and belt out Amhran na bhFiann is both unrealistic and antagonistic. Even if extreme measures of this nature are taken, we have to accept that a significant minority will continue to renounce their Irish nationality. This may take expression in the form of violent protests and terrorism, and it will be in these most emotionally charged of moments that Ireland will need to demonstrate its maturity as a parliamentary democracy in adopting a measured, moderate response.

Where the Catalan crisis goes from here is difficult to predict. It is easy to see why Madrid is so opposed to entertaining the concept of independence. Economically, it would be a serious blow to the country and the government has a duty of care to the majority, albeit a thin one, of people in Catalonia who wish to remain a part of Spain. Psychologically, Catalan secession would be devastating to a country that once ruled over large chunks of the globe and indeed a parallel can be drawn between the anti-Catalan sentiment of post-colonial Spain and the anti-European, anti-immigrant sentiment that fuelled the post-colonial hangover that is Brexit.

Britain’s attachment to Northern Ireland appears to be far less entrenched. The North is a drain on a creaky British economy while the increasingly sparse media coverage violence in Ulster receives in the British press hints at a general ‘Troubles fatigue’ among the wider public. For sure, any notion of a surrender to the IRA would be intolerable, but a legislative decoupling that would pass the burden of responsibility for the province to Dublin would probably have a level of support both in parliament and public to seriously discomfort the DUP. Whether this is a burden any Irish government would like to inherit is a different story, but the historical context and popular support for a United Ireland — a poll in February had 63% of respondents south of the border stating they would like to see a united Ireland in their lifetime — may well force their hand in the event of a Border Poll. Should that come to pass, it is crucial that reconciliation and compromise are at the forefront of reunification negotiations so that we can avoid having our very own Catalonia in the North-East of the country.