Them's Fighting Words

There has been wordplay in this movement for a long time. Catalans were initially cautious about their President Artur Mas' rather sudden about-face after 1.5 million took to the streets in September 2012 demanding independence and it was not lost on them that though he spoke of "creating our own state" he adamantly refused to utter the word "independence". Mas was constantly asked if he meant "a state like Denmark, Puerto Rico, or Massachusetts?", and when on occasion he did say "independence", it made the news. His explanation that true independence no longer exists in our highly connected world was unconvincing. Indeed, his calculated ambiguity resulted in a punishing loss of 12 MPs in the November 2012 elections, despite the fact that pro-independence parties as a whole gained strength. The power of words.

Mistrustful, Catalans have put their shoulders behind the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), a non-partisan, grassroots, civic group, wholly funded with membership fees and merchandising: t-shirts and key chains for independence! The ANC organized the two massive demonstrations on Catalonia's National Day in September, including the 250-mile long human chain from one end of Catalonia to the other. They also just published the most recent draft of their road map—to be ratified in their official congress on April 5—in which they anticipate a Declaration of Independence on or around April 23, 2015 and the taking of control of major infrastructures like harbors and airports to secure their borders.

It was probably this last that triggered the ABC, a conservative Madrid paper, to write a blistering editorial on Friday demanding that the Spanish Government "dissolve the ANC" claiming that the group is planning a "seditious coup, now without nuances or euphemisms" and wants to "subvert the constitutional order". The editorial also went so far as to criticize those who had said the ABC was "alarmist" for "using the word 'sedition'". Them's fighting words.

On a Friday night TV talk show, José Carlos Girauta, the anti-independence Ciutadans' party's candidate for the EU parliamentary elections, said ANC's president, Carme Forcadell, was a "golpista" [coup leader]. He repeated the accusation in an column in ABC on Sunday in which he said the ANC was preparing a "golpe de estado" [coup d'état]. It was actually not the first time he had written an editorial titled "Golpistas", as he had accused Catalan Republican Left of the same crime in February.

Tuesday brought two more vocabulary-related events. First, that the Royal Spanish Academy has changed the definitions in the official Dictionary of the Spanish Language—often used in legal proceedings—for sovereignty, nationalism, self-determination, state, and also state of siege, among others. Second, with the terrain now properly prepared, we hear that the ruling PP party is looking to illegalize the ANC on the grounds that it is planning a coup d'état. 

Is there any lawful, legitimate way to demand independence? Does an independence movement by definition seek a coup d'état? Does demanding secession mean you wish to overthrow the government? Does it matter that the Catalan Government's National Transition Advisory Council has outlined five legal ways to hold a referendum on Catalan independence that the Spanish Government has rejected out of hand?

By using such loaded, legally devastating, and indeed Orwellian vocabulary, ABC, Girauta, and the ruling PP demonstrate that they have no confidence in democracy itself, or in the basic concept that people have a democratic right to choose their own future. For surely, every change in government is not a coup. A coup d'état is a violent overthrow of a government, not a peaceful, widespread, even joyous, democratic movement, like the one defended by the Catalan people.

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No sooner had I published this article, I found that El País, ostensibly Spain's most mainstream newspaper, had joined the party, with an editorial titled "Un golpe de mano", a new, insidious play on words: if 'golpe de estado' means 'coup d'état', 'golpe de mano' means a 'hand coup'. Curiously, in Catalan, the literal translation 'cop de ma' means to 'give someone a hand, to help', perhaps El País is implying that the ANC is helping Mas? Who knows. What is clear is that El País dispatches the ANC by saying that its president is a member of ERC, and that it is broadly supported by the President's party (CiU) as well—without disclosing that it is also broadly supported by an important segment of the Catalan population, having mobilized upwards of 20% of the people not once but twice in the last 18 months. Its representation of the ANC is outrageously skewed, focusing exclusively on Plans B (plebescitary elections) and C (unilateral declaration of independence)—while once again disregarding the ANC's primary goal: a legal referendum, which so far Spain has refused to consider.

Liz Castro is coordinator of VilaWeb's English edition.

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Is there any lawful, legitimate way to demand independence?

For surely, every change in government is not a coup.