On September 29, the normally sluggish Spanish legal system had an attack of extreme speed. Its Usain Bolt-like behaviour was sparked by the regional government of Catalonia formally decreeing the long-awaited November 9 non-binding consultation of Catalan opinion [referendum] on the future political status of the region.
Just three days after the Catalan parliament adopted the consultation law and two days after Catalan premier Artur Mas signed the decree, the Spanish Constitutional Court ordered their suspension while it was considering its opinion: the national Spanish People’s Party (PP) government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy had immediately petitioned the court to declare the law and the decree unconstitutional.
Nobody is expecting that this body, composed of appointees of the PP and the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and notorious for overturning key parts of the 2006 Catalan statute of autonomy, will do anything other than eventually overturn both law and decree.
The court’s ruling immediately put the minority Catalan Convergence and Union (CiU) government on the spot: would it suspend the November 9 referendum or would it defy the court? Its immediate response was to announce that it was “suspending” its campaign for the consultation (for example, by freezing updating of the consultation web site). However, it continued with practical preparations, announcing at the same time that the consultation would still go ahead if there were “sufficient democratic guarantees”.
On October 1, the Catalan parliament nominated the independent seven-person commission to oversee the consultation, provoking a further appeal to the Constitutional Court from the Rajoy administration.
On October 3, the four Catalan parties in favour of the consultation—CiU, the centre-left nationalist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Initiative for Catalonia-Greens and its partner the United and Alternative Left (ICV-EUiA) and the Popular Unity Candidacies (CUP)—agreed after a tense seven-hour meeting to keep working together to overcome the Madrid-imposed barriers to the consultation.
As a result, preparations for November 9 resumed, with foreign residents eligible to vote and Catalans living abroad again able to register on the voting roll for the consultation.
On October 9, the pro-consultation parties had a further, supposedly private, meeting which considered all the administrative and legal roadblocks confronting November 9. According to media reports, the representatives of ERC, ICV-EUiA and CUP urged Artur Mas to get directly involved in preparing the consultation and to counteract the timidity, hesitations and back-pedalling of the ministers responsible for it.
Catalan national struggle enters critical stage
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