Catalonia to defy court, proceed on independence poll
As Spain continues to stagger under double-digit unemployment and a slow economic recovery, one of the country's richest regions is in full-on mutiny with plans Sunday to defy the country's constitutional court by holding an independence poll.
The president of Catalonia, a region of 7.5 million people that includes the city of Barcelona, says the regional government plans to push forward with an informal, non-binding ballot on whether to secede from Spain and become an independent country.
"(Catalonia is) absolutely determined and decided. Everything depends on us to carry out the process and everything is ready," Catalan President Artur Mas said Wednesday in a breakfast speech at an economic forum in Spain.
"We should not be afraid because we are defending the basic fundamental rights of an entire people," he said.
The Spanish government contends the vote is illegal and that any such referendum would have to include all Spanish citizens. Spain's constitutional court on Tuesday agreed to hear the Spanish government's case and suspended the poll.
"The government's position is very clear," Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said last month after the constitutional court's initial ruling. "We are prepared to talk whenever this is within a lawful framework. What neither the government nor anyone else can do, either in Spain or in any other civilized democracy, is try to sidestep the law and violate the wishes of the majority of the people of Spain.."
Spanish Ambassador Ramon Gil-Casares, in a wide-ranging interview with USA TODAY on Tuesday about Spain's economy, says the fervor for independence, coming on the heels of Scotland's independence vote in September, is fueled in part by Europe's struggle to emerge from one of the worst recessions ever to hit the continent.
The Spanish government in 2012 instituted a tough fiscal program to turn the economy around. The measures — which Gil-Casares characterized as "harsh on a population" contending with nearly 24% unemployment — prompted two general strikes in protest, the recent formation of a new leftist political party called "Podemos" or "Yes, We Can," and energized the independence movement.
Podemos, founded in January and led by political science professor Pablo Iglesias, won 8% of the vote and five of 54 seats in Spain's May 25 European Parliament elections. A public opinion poll released early this month by Spain's Center for Sociological Study found 18% of likely Spanish voters favored Podemos compared with 12% for Rajoy's People's Party.
Catalonia, Spain's fourth richest region, says it's paying more into the country's coffers than it gets in return. But the balance had been in Catalonia's favor before 2007, Gil-Casares said.
Independence, Gil-Casares said, is not the best solution to the economic imbalance. "Catalonia is a part of Spain," he added.
Meanwhile, Spain is seeing signs of recovery. After nine quarters of negative growth, the country has shown a year of positive, though modest, economic growth, he said.
The European Commission in its economic forecast Tuesday said it expected Spain's economic growth in the next year to outpace growth in the eurozone as a whole.
The financial crisis and a lack of buying power at home also prodded Spanish companies to seek out new markets elsewhere in Europe, Latin America and Africa, Gil-Casares said. Spain is now exporting Ford cars to the U.S., he added.
All of Spain's banks recently passed a European Central Bank review of their capitalization, indicating the nation's banking sector is stable.
"We are creating jobs," he said. "We think we're clearly on the path to recovery."