Why Catalan toffs are the most radical secessionists

CUP leader Dolors Sabater is worth €1.2 million

Curiously, the most radical backers of Catalan independence are the wealthiest members of society. At first sight this may seem counter-intuitive. However, there is a reason. They are an elite who see their privileged position in danger and will take extreme steps to safeguard it. This is not unprecedented; British history of the 20th century shows two examples: the Ulster Loyalists in 1912 and Ian Smith’s white Rhodesians in 1965.

Support for Catalan independence rises with wealth

In 1912 Irish Home Rule (autonomy) was becoming inevitable. The Ulster Protestants feared for their position of political dominance and even went to the lengths of importing arms from Germany with which to fight against the Crown if they were to be forced under what they referred to as “Rome Rule”. The officers of the British army in Dublin made it clear that they would not act against the Loyalists. In 1965 Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was scheduled for independence under a black majority government. The Prime Minister Ian Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) and made his country an independent republic.

Those two cases had considerable parallels and similarities. Catalonia is obviously very different, yet there is the common factor of the rich and powerful acting not only illegally but unconstitutionally to thwart the intention of the state. The Ulstermen and the white Rhodesians enjoyed the support of the conservative, imperialist establishment which included parliamentary representation, and of a good part of the media and popular opinion. Now in the 21st century, the Catalan bourgeoisie enjoy the support of the progressive establishment with its power in the Spanish Parliament, as well as support from the media and public opinion of a globalised world. The ethnic hatred of Irish Protestants and Catholics is notorious, and the racial differences in Rhodesia were plain to see. Less well known, but no less real for that, is the ethnic hatred of the Catalan ruling class, with its identifiable surnames, for Spanish “colonisers” with “flawed DNA” who have names that end in “-ez”.

Catalonia is often, and understandably, compared to Scotland. However, it is interesting to imagine that power in Yorkshire is in the firm grip of people called Arkwright, Oldroyd, Sutcliffe and Hardaker while the Joneses, Robertsons, Murphys and Patels are scarcely visible. And a knowledge of Yorkshire dialect is essential for employment. That is a true parallel.

The Catalans have been a pain in the neck for everybody since the Middle Ages, when the Church had to organise a special crusade to bring them to heel. They terrorised the eastern Mediterranean to such an extent that the word “Catalan” is still used in Greece and the Balkans as a bugbear with which to frighten children. In his history of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich describes their actions thus:

“In less than a single decade they had inflicted almost as much damage on the Byzantine Empire as the Turks had done in a century. And they had been paid by the Emperor to do it. In order to find their wages, Andronicus Palaeologus had been obliged to debase his coinage and to impose still heavier taxes on his already desperate subjects. The damage they had done in Thrace was to take generations to repair; the flood of refugees they had driven from their homes was to create near-famine in Constantinople. Had they kept to the terms of their agreement with Andronicus, concentrating on pushing back the Turks and renouncing all territorial ambitions for themselves, they might have turned back the Islamic tide and the whole future history of the Levant might have been changed. Alas, they did not; instead, almost exactly a century after the Fourth Crusade, they dealt the Empire that they had come to serve yet another paralysing blow, from which it would not recover.”

Source
El Catalán
La diputada abtisistema Dolors Sabater, dispone de propiedades por valor de 1,2 millones de euros
(The antisystem Catalan MP Dolors Sabater has property worth 1.2 million euros)