Breaking at the seams

While close to fifty years of transition from dictatorship to democracy, Spain is suffering from internal dissent exposing regional ruptures. España se rompe (Spain breaks up) has recently re-emerged as a right-wing and far-right slogan insinuating the need to mobilize defence. L’Espill investigates the implications of such antagonism.

The self-fulfilling prophecy

Historian Antoni Simon associates this right-wing call to action as a pushback against Catalan’s independence movement. In both historic and contemporary contexts, the Spanish government has depicted Catalonia as ‘the internal enemy’. 

Rhetoric marks the region’s ambitions as divisive. Simon identifies how ‘ethnotypes’ are used to construct an internal enemy. This political and psychological tactic of defining an ‘outgroup’ to reinforce the cohesion of the ‘ingroup’ perpetuates fear designed to frame Catalans as adversaries – the spiral of the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. 

The politicization of law

Law and separatism coalesce in Jorge Cagaio’s critique of ‘juridical nationalism’. The state’s bid to protect its hegemony and legitimize its opposition to Basque sovereignty and Catalan independence often leads to controversial Constitutional Court rulings and hostile prosecutions. Cagaio argues that if the judicial system can be co-opted to serve nationalist schemes, the law becomes a vehicle for political repression. 

‘The crown jewel is undoubtedly the interpretation of Article 92 of the Constitution regarding the use of consultative referendums,’ writes Cagaio, referencing the 103/2008 decision ‘in which the Constitutional Court declared the Basque referendum law unconstitutional’. Had the Spanish legal academy performed its duties correctly, it would have found means to invalidate the Basque law on legally logical grounds, argues Cagaio. The referendum, which could not ‘materially violate or affect the constitutional order’, has been defiled. And this ruling has set a precedent.

El Procés for Catalan independence is a case in point. Parliamentary resolutions recently declared the process unconstitutional, ‘even when there were no legal effects to annul’, writes Cagaio. Independence leaders placed in preventive detention were prosecuted for sedition: charges constructed on feats of interpretation ‘with the legal academy applauding the nonsense put forward by the country’s top courts’.

The Valencian problem

Ximo Puig, the former president of the Valencian government, appeals for ‘a rethink of what is called Spain’. His justification includes: ‘the unsuccessful, fifteen-years-long “process” for independence; the growing tendency in Madrid to politically, economically and journalistically separate the capital from the rest of Spain; failure to renew the financial system; the realization of imbalances; and the lack of territorial cooperation with an outdated Senate’. 

While short-lived, the Draft Constitution of 1873 introduced Spain to the notion of federalism: a structure of governance that departed radically from the centralized model, which Puig proposes could be revived. While Spain established its autonomous system post-Franco, the adopted method of decentralizing power favours economically developed regions.

The current system is showing its age and anachronistic quality, leaving regions such as Valencia at grave disadvantage – an issue made visible through unitat, the moral and social call of unity from the region, for the region, writes Puig. A reform would need to uphold three ethical and fundamental principles: ‘sufficiency, equity and solidarity’ … ‘with a sense of responsibility’ … ‘to establish a new autonomous financial system’.

Review by Alèxia Ruiz