The Spanish police detained more than a dozen people in the region of Catalonia on Wednesday, drastically escalating tensions between the national government and Catalan separatists. The episode occurred less than two weeks before a highly contentious referendum on independence that the government in Madrid has vowed to block.
With the backing of the constitutional court, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been stepping up efforts to prevent the referendum, scheduled for Oct. 1.
There is no one factor to explain the rising independence movement in the region. But experts say the fall-out of the global financial crash in 2008 played an important role.
The financial crisis led to rising unemployment and debt in the country, which irked independence supporters who believed Madrid was responsible for the crisis and that Catalonia was paying more taxes to bolster Spain's poorer regions than it was getting in return. The region pays $12 billion more taxes to Madrid each year it gets back, according to Reuters, while Andalusia, Spain's poorest region, receives around $9.5 billion more than it pays in.
No one knows yet. Catalan separatists are certain that the illegal plebiscite will happen on Oct. 1, and are playing a cat and mouse game with the police. Local activists told Bloomberg that more than 6,000 ballot boxes have been stashed away in secret locations, which they aim to deploy for this Sunday's vote.
Even if the vote goes ahead, few experts believe the region could achieve independence as a unilateral decision, as it won't be recognized by Spain or the E.U. What a 'yes' vote could do is destabilize Rajoy's minority conservative government, which is reliant on the support of lawmakers from Ciudadanos— which was initially started in Catalonia is opposition to secessionists.
The ideal situation, writes the European Council on Foreign Relations, is for "substantial reform of the Spanish Constitution, including a further strengthening of Catalonia’s self-rule, including an explicit recognition of their character as a Nation, could be entertained. It would require elections, qualified majorities and a nation-wide referendum, perhaps followed by a specific referendum in Catalonia."
Reference: New York Time, Time, Bloomberg
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