Catalunya surely on the road to Independence

The Economist reports on last week’s Catalan elections. Barca v Madrid.

There is now a clear majority of “sovereignists” and separatists in the Catalan parliament. A ruling by Spain’s constitutional court in the summer to water down a new autonomy statute—the results of a PP legal challenge—has raised the temperature. Polls at the time showed support for independence briefly rising to 50%, before slipping back in the autumn (one in ten voters backed openly separatist parties yesterday).
In the end, Spain’s economic troubles and Catalan nationalist aspirations are closely related. Catalans’ age-old complaint that their taxes support poorer, less hard-working areas of Spain has become louder as they suffer economic crisis at home. Sunday’s vote did nothing to diminish the historic tensions between Barcelona and Madrid.

and Wiki gives the results. With 62 seats out of 135 Convergència i Unió (a sort of Christian Democrat Nationalist party) seem now to have become the natural party of Catalunya in a way comparable (electorally) with the CSU in Bavaria.
Here’s the wiki of Artur Mas, the party’ s leader. A coherent and interesting philosophy:

Since 2007 Artur Mas has put special emphasis on initiating a process, known as the Refoundation of Catalanism (in Catalan, Refundació del catalanisme), to build upon the principles and values of the Catalanist movement, in order to enlarge the majority of society in Catalonia that expresses a nationalist feeling, and not merely inside his own party, Convergència. The ‘Refoundation of Catalanism’ that Mas is actively leading calls for Catalonia to obtain the so-called ‘Right to decide’ on matters that affect it. This implicitly includes the possibility of putting independence from Spain to a hypothetical referendum. This point is significantly closer to the traditionally more separatist positions of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and has gained momentum since the issue of the verdict on the Catalan Statute—the Estatut—in July 2010 by the Spanish Constitutional Court, which invalidates certain parts of this law although they were backed by a large majority of Catalan voters by referendum back in 2006.

And here’s a wonderful Lipdub…Via syniadau.

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.