Catalonia - the Spanish government sets the record straight.

The Spanish government has reacted (belatedly it must be said, but well nevertheless) to the activities of the Catalan government in the independence process. España Global, the public diplomacy wing of the Spanish Foreign Ministry, has published a 73-page document, in English as well as Spanish, refuting the  claims made by the secessionists. It can be downloaded here. In particular it lists 45 examples of Fake and Fact, including:

Spain doesn’t let Catalonia vote

It is not true that the Catalans cannot exercise their right to vote under the same conditions as the rest of the Spanish people. Indeed, since 1977 the Catalans have voted at

• 10 municipal elections
• 12 regional elections
• 13 general elections to the Spanish Parliament
• 7 European elections
• 2 referendums on their autonomy
• 4 national referendums

The right to vote is exercised by universal suffrage and is guaranteed for the whole of the nation’s citizens. In the referendum to approve the Statute of Catalonia, the participation was 48.85. In the referendum to ratify the European Constitution in 2005 only 26% of the Catalans voted “no”. There are legal channels at Congress to reform the Constitution.

The independence movement is a peaceful movement

As with all movements, there are sections and politicians favouring secession who stick to peaceful means. There have been sectors that have taken on a radical form and have been involved in violent actions. An example of this was the disorderly siege of the Department of Economy of the Generalitat de Cataluña in Barcelona on 20^th September 2017 when a crowd obstructed the movement of the judicial commission and of the members of the State Security Forces and Corps, damaging police vehicles and resorting to insults and obscene language. These facts are pending assessment and consequently it will be the judges who will be in charge of assessing whether or not there was sedition or rebellion.

The secessionist prisoners are political prisoners

This is false. Obviously, there are no political prisoners in Spain. No Catalan politicians have been prosecuted for their ideas. Every day, pro-independence leaders – including the President of the Government of Catalonia – express themselves freely in the media, some even from jail.

The accused are being prosecuted for crimes that are defined in Spain’s Criminal Code and they are being tried with all of the guarantees offered by a democratic State under the rule of law. No intergovernmental organization in the sphere of human rights, and no NGO active in this same sphere (such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch) have recognized these persons as political prisoners or prisoners of conscience, despite having criticized their lengthy provisional detention pending their trial.

The UN recognises the right of peoples to self-determination

The UN and International Law recognises the right to self-determination of people when these have been oppressed peoples or colonies, which is not this case Catalonia forms part of Spain, it is recognised as one of its regions, it has its own institutions, it is a bilingual society and it forms part of a Rule of Law as is the Spanish one, which ranks among the 20 full democracies in the world.

The United Nations Secretary General declared, in an interview with the newspaper El Mundo 30 10 2015 that Catalonia was not included in the type of territories to which the UN could guarantee the right of self-determination. Besides, the UN does not admit the right of self-determination in democratic states such as the Spanish one, notwithstanding the so called internal self-determination in language rights, culture, education, etc.

We independents represent the majority

The surveys vary from month to month one of the most recent was conducted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (at the end of 2018 and gave  46.1% to the supporters of independence,  46.2% to those who would prefer to continue being a part of Spain. Election results have shown that 45%-47% of voters are in favour of Independence (39% in a recent general election).

During the day on which the (illegal) referendum on self-determination took place, police action resulted in injuries to more than a thousand people

Without going into the subject of how many people suffered contusions of some kind during that day, it must be highlighted that only three people were hospitalized with injuries directly resulting from police charges. 48 hours later, only one of these people was still in hospital.

The 1 October ‘referendum’ resulted in a democratic mandate in favour of Catalonia’s independence

Turnout in the “referendum” which was annulled by Spain’s Constitutional Court, was of 38% according to data provided by its organizers (the Generalitat or Catalan regional government). This was subsequently corrected upwards by five points, placing it at 43% (by the Generalitat which provided no explanations), and the percentage of “Yes” votes was 90.18%.

However, there is no reason to grant any credibility to these data, which are totally unverifiable, especially when the Catalan regional government – in the absence of an electoral board – made available, on the very day of the referendum, the possibility of an “open census”, so that anyone was able to vote repeatedly and at different locations. (Which was indeed the case, and can be verified from different sources, including audiovisual material.)