Rebellious Catalan vote rocks Spanish establishment

On November 9, 2.305 million residents of Catalonia defied a November 4 Spanish Constitutional Court ban and voted on what future political status they wanted for their country, which is presently one of the 17 “autonomous communities” (regional governments) within the Spanish state.

This “participatory process” presented voters with the same ballot paper as the original non-binding consultation that had been adopted by the Catalan parliament on September 26. That too had been suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court on appeal by the national government of People’s Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

After this first legal veto the Catalan minority government of right-nationalist party Convergence and Union (CiU) adopted a substitute ballot for November 9, one that had more the status of a mass survey of public opinion than a formal plebiscite.

Yet the double-barreled question asked was still the same:

(1) Do you want Catalonia to become a state?

(2) If yes, do you want that state to be independent?

The near-final results of the poll were 1.86 million (80.76% of voters) for independence, 232,000 (10.07%) for Catalan statehood but not independence, 105,000 (4.54%) for no change in Catalonia’s status and 107,000 (4.62%) either offering other suggestions or spoiling the voting paper.

Participation exceeded the most optimistic expectations of the organisers, who had informally set 1.5 million as a respectable target. Initiative for Catalonia-Greens (ICV) co-coordinator Joan Herrera called it “the biggest demonstration in the history of this country”. The unprecedented turnout was one more powerful act of Catalan mass protest, defying not only the Constitutional Court’s ban but Spanish state intimidation.

This included the refusal of the national Post Office to deliver material related to November 9, requests from the national prosecutor’s office for the names and addresses of school principals and others charged with opening their workplaces as voting centres, heavy hints that the national prosecutor might require the Catalan regional police to close the centres down and intimidatory letters to national civil servants warning them not to act as volunteers in any “illegal activity”.

Rebellious Catalan vote rocks Spanish establishment