September 27th 2012 – Mas Predicts The Catalan Consultation Within Four Years With Or Without Permission From Madrid

On the second day of the General Political debate on Sep 27th 2012, Mas set the timescale for the final Catalan consultation. A lot of ifs are required but if early elections are held in Feb/March and they succeed in working as a proxy referendum or plebiscitary elections as they have become known, if the pro-independence parties win then Artur Mas’s plan is for the interim government to last 18 months. At the end of that time, he plans to hold a definitive legal referendum on Catalan independence. It will be September 2016 – exactly four years later than the statement made in September 2012. No one can say he didn’t have it planned out. Isn’t it time certain political parties started depositing a little faith in him?

Mas Predicts The Catalan Consultation Within Four Years With Or Without Permission From Madrid

Neither Spanish laws nor prohibition by the Spanish government should be an impediment for the Government of the Generalitat to be able to organise a sovereignist consultation in which the Catalans can decide the relationship they want to have with the Spanish state. This at least is the conviction expressed yesterday by Catalan president Artur Mas in response to the socialist leader in Parliament Xavier Sabaté on the second day of the transcendental general political debate.

The President will do everything in his power to be able to fulfill his political objectives of sovereignty and a Catalan state within the law, but if the Spanish state doesn’t leave an opening by which the Catalans can express themselves freely and democratically, the process will be run under Catalan law. “What would be normal,” said Mas “would first to try it according to the law, and that’s not possible, do it anyway. The consultation has to be held whatever happens. If can happen as a referendum because the Spanish government has authorised it, so much the better. If the Spanish government turns its back and doesn’t allow any kind of referendum or consultation, it has to be held anyway.”

The intention of the pro-sovereignty parties is that the new Parliament, if the majority is big enough, finishes drafting the Catalan Law of Consultations that has been dropped because of the elections and to use this in order to ballot the Catalans. It is probable that central government will impugn the law and that the Constitutional Court will suspend it but in this case the Government of the Generalitat could act autonomously alleging an unresolvable conflict of democratic legitimacy.

Today Parliament will make the anticipated declaration of sovereignty as a resolution that will be passed by a comfortable majority. Convergència i Unió and Esquerra Republicana have agreed on the joint presentation of a text that will also receive the support of Iniciativa per Catalunya and other pro-sovereignty deputies. The text points out that “Catalonia’s fit within the Spanish state today is a cul-de-sac, Catalonia has to begin its process of national transition based on the right to decide.” Because of this “Parliament expresses the need for Catalonia to make its own way, stating the need of the Catalan people to decide their collective future freely and democratically, as the only way of guaranteeing social progress, economic strength and the stimulation of the culture and the Catalan language.”

The resolution calls for consensus in order to complete the process through dialogue and by setting a route map “with the international community and the Spanish government” and in its last paragraph states “the necessity of the Catalan people to decide freely and democratically its collective future and urges the Catalan government to organise a consultation ideally within the next legislature.”

In the last intervention of the debate, Artur Mas proposed that the pro-sovereignty parties use this agreement as a “matrix” for a common sovereignty policy. This way each party would have its own political proposals as well as an unmistakable commitment to the sovereignty of Catalonia which once the results were out would precisely show the balance between those in favour of Spanish sovereignty and those in favour of Catalan sovereignty. Mas asked those present to think about the convenience of giving a plebiscitary quality to these elections, not regarding his own personality, but rather regarding the sovereignty of Catalonia.

ICV is reticent on this question because although part of the sovereignist block, their electoral priority would be attacking the government because of the cuts. For this reason, they have presented a separate resolution that would mean a second declaration by Parliament, which would also receive the support of CiU and ERC in the main. The ICV text also calls for a consultation in the next legislature and refers to the convenience of “international observers” following the process. This means that the sovereignty declarations are certain of a majority of two-thirds of the chamber and could be more if some of the socialist deputies are prepared to support it, like Ernest Maragall did on the fiscal pact. Nervousness reigned in the socialist group yesterday because they are aware of the need to distinguish themselves from the Spanish sovereignist group made up of PP and Cs but they disagree on how to do so.

So much so that the PSC has suffered a sudden mysterious conversion to sovereignism and will be draft a resolution in favour of the right to self-determination but only on condition that they reform the Spanish Constitution. This is of course impossible because a qualified majority of two-thirds is needed in both Congress and Senate, which would mean that both PSOE and PP would have to vote in favour. They would also have to dissolve Parliament, call constituent elections and then vote again on the reform. The referendum would then be called for all Spaniards and if they voted in favour then the Catalans could hold their referendum.

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