Dialogue on Catalan Independence



The Right to Decide






















Catalonia’s Political Status







TONI: How so?




TONI: Come on.










TONI: If Podemos won the next election…

GEMMA: …Which won’t happen.


GEMMA: Now you’re dreaming.










GEMMA: But most do.


Catalonia’s Economic Status




























TONI: That’s just speculation.





The Declaration of Independence



















GEMMA: We shall have to see, won’t we?

TONI: Unfortunately, yes.


TONI: Are you counting on French intervention too?


TONI: As you said, we shall have to see.

(*) I’m not counting here either the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus or Umberto Bossi’s symbolic declaration of the independence of Padania in 1996.

11 thoughts on “Dialogue on Catalan Independence

  1. The “law” doesn’t actually declare the Independence of Catalonia!


    The proposition part of the law QUOTES an unofficial document “Declaration of the Catalan Representatives” signed by some of the MPs on the 10th October. This is the part that includes the words “Catalan Republic”.

    The resolution or executive part of the bill does NOT in fact declare independence.  It merely REQUESTS the Catalan government to take all necessary action to implement the  Transition Law passed on 6th September and annulled a few weeks later by the Constitutional Tribunal.

    So, all of the political effects of a declaration of independence, but using weasel words and subterfuge to allow those voting the law to escape the action of the law courts.

  2. Overly long and didactic, Prof. Sorens. Comparing, and contrasting the arguments on each side would be far more effective and illuminating. Shorter too. But kudos to you for the effort, definitely well-constructed and well-intentioned. Just too long and intricate.

  3. I think Tony is giving up way too easily here. He fails to mention 1) the abysmal treatment of the Spanish-speaking majority in the Catalan educational system, with 60% of children denied the right to be schooled in their mother’s tongue. Sure this mistreatment will only get worse under independence. 2) by the Catalan laws, to change the Estatut de Autonomia de Catalunya, the parliament is required to vote with a 75% majority. The independence referendum law, which overrides the Estatut as well as many other Spanish and Catalan was passed with a 50% majority

    1. I wanted to use the best arguments for this dialogue.

      1) There are a lot of Trumpian half-truths being circulated about the Catalan immersion system. The vast majority of Catalans support it, and so do experts. Knowledge of Catalan is essential in the business world, and the immersion method gets Spanish-speaking kids up to speed quickly. Catalan children also learn Spanish, and in fact score above the Spanish average in tests of Spanish language ability. Denouncing Catalan-medium education isn’t going to persuade anyone who isn’t already a Spanish nationalist, quite the opposite – it will persuade them that unionism is actually anti-Catalan and anti-autonomy.

      2) It’s actually a two-thirds majority. Otherwise, I take your point here. This is a significant piece of evidence for those who think the legality of the move is important.

    1. On the education, is it not true that the vehicular language for education in ALL state schools is Catalan? Or that it is virtually impossible for parents to get more than 3 hours of Spanish per week for their children, short of waging a costly legal battle all the way to the High Court?

      I am not aware of any other precedents in Europe of a multimillion compactly living ethnic majority (!) being denied the right to be educated in their mother’s tongue. EU put a lot of pressure on the Baltic states to improve the treatment of their Russian minority in this respect and their situation was actually better to start with than it is now in Catalonia. At least on this issue, Catalan nationalists are currently far more oppressive than the Spanish government. At least in the short term, giving more power to the current oppressors is unlikely to reduce the overall level of oppression. I think that this argument should have some merit for anyone who cares about human rights, not just for Spanish nationalists.

      As the pragmatic justifications go, support of some unnamed “experts” does not mean much with this degree of nationalistic fervour. Average regional Spanish test results are pretty meaningless in a country with Spanish level of cross-sectional disparity. Spanish regions span a factor of 2 range of GDP per capita and have even larger differences in unemployment rate and level of immigration. Adjusted for that, one would expect Catalonia to score much higher on any educational measure.

      1. Catalonia likely has such language policies precisely because it is politically dependent and sees the language as highly vulnerable. Estonia is independent and does not see the same existential threat from Russian speakers. By the way, Quebec’s language policies in public schools are arguably more “restrictive” than Catalonia’s, and as for Catalan-medium education in Madrid, say, it does not exist at all.

        The real solution is to abolish public schools and let parents use a tax-funded voucher to purchase education. Then you can depoliticize these language issues. But if it’s a gross violation of human rights for Catalonia to have only three hours of Spanish a week, then it’s a gross violation of human rights for California to have English-medium education for Spanish-speaking pupils, and so on. As long as private education is available, it’s hard for me to see public school language policies as a freedom or rights issue, as opposed to a practical, utilitarian one.

        Still, whatever one’s position on the language issue, the current policies are widely supported in Catalonia. I was attempting to construct a dialogue with arguments that could appeal to those on the other side. No Catalanist is going to be persuaded that independence is a bad idea because the Catalan language should be less encouraged.

  4. 1) I do not see why Quebec educational policies could be considered more restrictive than the Catalonian ones. It is true that their policies restrict English language public education for francophone families, but they also specifically exclude anglophone families from these restrictions. There are plenty of public/subsidised English language schools in Montreal. This is much less oppressive than the current Catalan laws.

    2) I am afraid governments of all three Baltic countries would disagree with you regarding the lack of existential threat to them, with depopulation rates in double digits and the recent aggressive Russian stance on the borders.

    3) Catalan-medium education in Madrid is beside the point here as there is no large compact Catalan-speaking minority there, nothing like millions of people at 60%+ concentrations

    4) You are certainly entitled to our own opinion on whether public mother’s tongue education is a question of human rights. UN, UNESCO, and EU all seem to disagree with you.

    5) If indeed no Catalanist is going to be persuaded by an appeal to someone else’s human rights, it is even more likely that giving these people more power will lead to more oppression rather than less.

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