Junts fears that Catalonia’s single funding will be a new ‘coffee for all’ - Top Buzz Times This contribution describes how a Catalan bid for more autonomy and for national recognition miscarried in 2010 after long negotiations. In this process, the major part of Catalan nationalism turned towards independence. We follow the different steps that led to the show-down in October 2017, with the failed declaration of independence and the temporary suspension of Catalan autonomy. New elections in Catalonia and in Spain have been of no use to get out of the quandary. While federal solutions if combined with a constitutional recognition of Spain’s plurinational character might be highly advisable to accommodate minority nations like Catalonia and to combine democracy and constitutionalism, fragmented party systems and minority governments on both sides make the necessary constitutional amendments even more improbable than ever.
At the time of writing (November 2019), Catalonia may be compared to a bus. The vehicle moves round and round at changing, sometimes vertiginous speed, in a constitutional roundabout which it cannot leave (Nagel 2018). It arrived at this roundabout via the road of autonomy, but it now insistently indicates toward the exit marked sovereignty, by a referendum that might lead to independence. At the moment of writing, in the driver’s seat, we find Quim Torra, the head of the Catalan government; former drivers have been removed by Spanish “police” (the Spanish state institutions) or have fled the vehicle to avoid high sanctions (some former and possible alternative drivers have received prison sentences after asking the people in the bus which way to go).
Torra’s driving style is contested by the frontbenchers of the bus, even those that in the end want to take the same direction. But in the bus, about half of the passengers are against taking this exit. The bus has already got some heavy bumps when it tried to take this narrow way in October 2017 (referendum, declaration of independence, suspension and reestablishment of autonomy). On this occasion, the Spanish institutions and the parties from the right and (most) from the left, had worked together to block this road at all cost, and as the vehicle drove nearer, former bystanders (the EU, foreign governments) rallied to help Spain to reinforce the road block. The bus struck the road block with force, but, also to the relief of many of its passengers, it did not pass and was driven back into the roundabout, some of the passengers getting clubbed by police. Since then, debate among passengers remains as whether to insist on driving against the road block while denouncing its illegitimate construction and hoping that steady insistence may take the bus through one day, notwithstanding the threat of further punishment. Others prefer to pursue the same route
