Catalonia

Thursday

Jeremy Norman

Catalonia deserves independence as much as any other state

Few, if any, commentators have seen fit to discuss the wider issue and the underlying morality from first principles. The instant reaction in all quarters has been to back Spain over the plucky little Catalans. The principle of national self-determination was laid down by Woodrow Wilson after the First World War and accepted by the colonial powers who unwound their empires, if somewhat reluctantly, over the next half-century. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations were founded partly to advocate for this principal. In the case of Kosovo we actually attacked Serbia for refusing the Kosovans this basic human right. What is so different about Catalonia and the

Monday

Diego Zuluaga

The conservative case against Catalonia’s separatist narrative

Daniel Hannan has written, compellingly and eloquently as usual, about the constitutional crisis taking place in my country, Spain. In his piece, he invokes the celebrated Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno who, as Spain plunged into civil war in 1936, admonished the anti-intellectual, anti-liberal nationalist rebels that they would ‘vanquish, but not convince’. Unamuno was of course right: after three years of bloodshed, Spain endured nearly four decades of dictatorship, punctured by the deprivations from autarky and international isolation well into the 1950s. But today’s Spain is a much different place. Following Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, the country underwent a peaceful democratic transition which elicited admiration the world over.

Thursday

Daniel Hannan

Spanish practices

In October 1936, on the anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World, a ceremony was held at Salamanca University, in the heart of the nationalist Spain, to celebrate the ‘Day of the Race’. The Bishop of Salamanca, who had recently offered up his episcopal palace to be Franco’s headquarters, stood in the great hall next to the founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion, General José Millán Astray, a one-armed and one-eyed thug of a man. Also present was the university rector, Miguel de Unamuno, an eminent Basque philosopher who had supported the nationalist coup when it was launched four months earlier, but had since become disillusioned with its viciousness.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 5 October 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told her audience at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to continue, like them, to ‘do our duty by Britain’. She said the government planned to make it easier for local authorities to build council houses. On the eve of the conference, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, in an interview with the Sun sketched out four ‘red lines’ that he said should apply to Brexit. These included a transition period that must not last ‘a second more’ than two years. His stipulations went beyond anything agreed by the government, but Mrs May sidestepped questions about whether he was ‘unsackable’. Later she said: ‘I

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Fear and loathing

On this week’s episode, we discuss the tragic events in Las Vegas and wonder if there’s anything we can do, or should be doing, to stop it happening again. We also be look at the contentious Catalan referendum, and ponder what makes the perfect pub quiz. First up: This week, a deranged gunman opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 and injuring more than 500. This has reopened age old debates about American gun control, but are we in danger of doing more harm than good with this gawping? That’s what Lionel Shriver writes in this week’s magazine and she joins the podcast along with

Thursday

William Cook

Sadness and dismay: how Spain views the Catalan independence vote

In Barcelona civilians have been giving red carnations to policemen (a symbolic echo of the 1974 revolution in Portugal) but here in Extremadura today’s Catalan Independence vote has been greeted with a mixture of sadness and dismay. In the historic city of Caceres, balconies are festooned with Spanish flags – part of a nationwide demonstration of national unity (local newspapers are reporting that more Spanish flags have been sold here in the last few days than when Spain won the World Cup). In stark contrast to prosperous Catalonia, Extremadura has always been one of the poorest parts of Spain. A parched wilderness of scrub and stunted oaks and gnarled old

The Spectator

Will Spain learn?

One of the unforeseen consequences of the reunification of Europe after the Cold War has been a resurgence of independence movements in western Europe. Emboldened by a greater sense of security and influenced by the rebirth of independent nations to the east, separatist parties have begun to challenge the boundaries of nation states which a quarter of a century ago we took for granted. Scotland’s near miss — a 45 per cent vote for ‘yes’ — inspired the leader of Spain’s Catalonia region, Artur Mas, to launch his own vote on secession. This week, forbidden by Madrid from calling a referendum, he called regional elections in which pro-independence parties formed

Thursday

Mark Nayler

The Catalonian independence battle is one of rising hostility

As the Catalonian independence battle continues to escalate ahead of the proposed October 1st referendum, Mariano Rajoy’s government is going all-out to thwart the secessionist efforts of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. As he does so, it is becoming harder to see when or how this increasingly unpleasant conflict will be resolved. Following the orders of a judge on Wednesday morning, national police raided 42 premises in Barcelona – including several governmental offices – in search of referendum-related materials such as ballot papers and pro-independence pamphlets. They arrested 14 people, amongst them the Economy Secretary General Josep Maria Jové and an advertising professional whose firm is believed to be in possession

Tuesday

Mark Nayler

Catalonia’s fight for independence is turning nasty

As if the issue of Catalonian secession wasn’t fraught enough, some of its most committed advocates are now arguing that the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last week demonstrate the region’s readiness for independence. Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, for his part, has suggested that the vehicle attacks that left 15 dead require regional differences to be cast aside in the battle against jihadism. The debate about Catalonian independence has always been a heated, complex one in Spain. Now that the tragic events of last week are being introduced into the discussion, it will become even more so. Some of the more fervent supporters of Catalonian secession have been particularly active on social media

Wednesday

Mark Nayler

Catalonia’s quest for independence takes another surreal turn

In Spain, the fight over Catalonian independence has just taken a surreal new turn. Catalonian president Carles Puigdemont – a passionate secessionist who has said he is prepared to go to prison for his cause – recently announced that there will be an independence referendum in his region on October 1st. His pledge prompted the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, to declare, in full crusader-for-democracy mode, that “the government of Spain is going to defend the law” and prevent the vote from happening.    Would that be the same government currently implicated in one of the biggest corruption cases in recent Spanish history? Yes, it would. The so-called Gürtel case

Thursday

Mark Nayler

Can Brexit inspire Catalan independence?

The increasingly radical Catalonian independence project has been dealt its latest blow this week: on Tuesday, Spain’s constitutional court ruled that a projected September referendum on secession would be illegal. This means any plebiscite is effectively banned. But whether Catalonia’s pro-independence president Carles Puigdemont goes ahead anyway remains to be seen. A similarly defiant course of action was pursued by his predecessor Artur Mas, who held a vote in 2014 (in which eighty per cent of people backed independence), and is currently on trial. The latest setback in the quest for Catalonian secessionism is particularly ill-timed. Just last month, Puigdemont and his Vice President Oriol Junqueras addressed MEPs in Brussels in a bid to

Nigel Planer

Diary – 16 February 2017

I’m boning up on conversational Spanish for a trip to the Primera Persona festival in Barcelona with Alexei Sayle. We’re due to talk about The Young Ones — the comedy series we made together 35 years ago. For some reason the show is huge in Catalonia — perhaps it’s scatological: one of their regional symbols is a pooping peasant. The Catalan-dubbed version is still playing on TV, so, as well as Spanish, I am refreshing my catchphrases in Catalan. When I visited Barcelona last year to make a travel programme called Catalunya Experience for Catalan TV3, people asked for selfies and threw peace signs at me in the street, because

Thursday

Mark Nayler

It’s no surprise Spain has already blocked Nicola Sturgeon’s half-baked Brexit plan

It should come as no surprise that the Spanish government has so swiftly rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s proposal of a bespoke Brexit deal for Scotland. Although Spain might have finally ended its ten month political freeze a couple of months ago, the febrile issue of Catalonian independence remains unresolved. Far from quietening down or going away, the secessionist movement in Barcelona is becoming more aggressive and radical. As it does so, the central government in Madrid adopts tougher measures to try and suppress it including, last week, another ruling by its constitutional court against a referendum on the region’s independence. Mariano Rajoy’s administration was never going to agree to a deal for Scotland that

Thursday

Simon Courtauld

Bullfighting

Looking at the programme for the feria of San Isidro in Madrid this month (bullfights are being held on 31 consecutive days), it may be hard to believe that there is any threat to the future of the spectacle — it is not a sport — of what in Spain is called la corrida (the running of the bulls). But its popularity has undeniably been declining in recent years, due to two factors: growing opposition, in the sometimes spurious name of animal welfare, and Spain’s economic crisis. The decision taken in 2010 to ban bullfighting in Catalonia had considerably less to do with the welfare of bulls than with the

Sunday

Mark Nayler

As Catalonia turns up the heat, Madrid’s politicians are ever more divided

Almost a month on from an unprecedentedly divisive general election, Spain seems further away from forming a new government than ever. In Madrid’s grandiose Palacio de las Cortes on Wednesday, the Spanish parliament convened for the first time since the December 20 vote, and it proved an eventful session – but not because some combination of the four main parties managed to move towards a coalition government. Division, not unity, was the order of the day. Oaths were taken in Catalan, Basque and Galician as well as Castilian; Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias tweeted bitchy remarks about other parties during proceedings in which his political secretary vowed to rewrite the Spanish

Tuesday

Mark Nayler

Spain’s hunger for political change may be just what Catalonia needs

Some unjustified assumptions inform the Spanish government’s anti-Catalonian rhetoric: that it will be in power long enough to prevent Catalonia leaving Spain; that it can disallow the region’s continued or renewed membership of the EU as an independent state; or, at the very least, that it can ban a referendum on the matter. On 20 December, Spaniards head to the polls in a general election that will see the country’s two main parties – the governing, conservative Popular Party and the socialist PSOE – challenged, for the first time in the country’s democratic history, by newcomers such as leftist Podemos (‘We Can’) and centre-right Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’). The makeup of the next Spanish government is at present an

Thursday

Andrew Marr

Diary – 20 August 2015

This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at my own semi-trade — the political commentariat, the natterati, the salaried yacketting classes. Who among us, really, predicted that Jeremy Corbyn would be romping ahead like this? Where were the post-election columns pointing out that David Cameron’s victory would lead to a resurgent quasi-Marxist left? And that’s just the beginning: how many of the well-connected, sophisticated, numerate political writers expected Labour to be slaughtered in the general election? Not me, that’s for sure. Going further back, how many people in 1992 told us John Major was an election winner? That Parris,

Thursday

Matthew Parris

The power of collective grievance

When last Sunday Pope Francis took the brave step of acknowledging the Armenian tragedy as the ‘first genocide of the 20th century’, he knew he was entering a minefield. On 24 April Armenians will commemorate the 100th anniversary of their genocide. There can be no single date for a genocide but that was the day the entire leadership of the Armenian people was arrested by the Ottoman government in Constantinople, now Istanbul, whose successors are the modern Turkish state. The Ottomans had never trusted Armenians, who were Christians, and had long suspected them of being a fifth column within the empire. There had already been pogroms. But now began a

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Where ‘poop’ came from

Danny Alexander recounted in the Diary last week his daughter’s efforts in making unicorn poop. This is something of a historic marker. Most members of the cabinet in previous generations have been unforthcoming on faecal matters, particularly when it comes to comestibles. In other countries there is less reticence. In Catalonia, Christmas isn’t Christmas without the Caga Tió, a log that is encouraged to defecate sweetmeats by being hit with a stick during the singing of a traditional song. ‘Shit, log, shit turrón, hazelnuts and cream cheese,’ it goes. ‘If you don’t shit well, I’ll give you a whack with the stick.’ This seems a good metaphor for Treasury attitudes

Wednesday

Henry Jeffreys

I’ve finally found a point for St George’s Day

We (the English that is) share our patron saint’s day with the Catalans. On Sant Jordi’s day Barcelona fills up with bookstalls and flower sellers. The men give their women flowers and the women their men books. I lived in Barcelona a few years ago and found the whole thing charming but also a bit sexist. How typically Latin, I thought, that the men would receive something cerebral whereas the women would get something decorative. Recently though, I’ve revised my opinion. Far from being an example of old-fashioned chauvinism, the Catalans are actually indulging in some progressive social engineering. A report by the Reading Agency commissioned for World Book Night states