Catalan Independence Movement
Catalonia's independence movement became a mass one in 2010 when a court struck down parts of its autonomy statute. The statute had been negotiated with Madrid, passed by both parliaments and approved in a Catalan referendum in 2006. The Popular Party challenged it and the Constitutional Court ruled four years later that fourteen articles were unconstitutional and twenty-seven required restrictive interpretation, including the reference to Catalonia as a nation in the preamble and provisions on language and finance. A demonstration in Barcelona in July 2010 drew over a million people. The financial crisis supplied the rest. Catalonia produced about a fifth of Spanish output, paid substantially more in taxes than it received in spending, and was refused a fiscal arrangement of the kind the Basque Country has. The Diada, the national day on 11 September, became an annual demonstration of hundreds of thousands, and in 2013 a human chain some 400 kilometres long crossed the region. An unofficial consultation in 2014 and a referendum in October 2017 were both declared illegal by the courts; the second was held anyway, national police were sent to close polling stations and the images of officers dragging voters went round the world. The parliament declared independence on 27 October and Madrid imposed direct rule the same day. Nine leaders received prison sentences of nine to thirteen years and were pardoned in 2021. The question is unresolved and the movement is now divided about tactics. Support has consistently divided the region almost exactly in half, which is the fact that both sides find hardest. Neither a clear majority for independence nor a clear majority against it has ever been demonstrated in a vote everyone accepts.
- Year: 2010 CE
- Category: Political
