25.01.2014 - 10:41
The People’s Party—which holds a majority in the Spanish Congress but only 19 out of 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament—is holding a convention in Barcelona in order to put the brakes on Catalonia’s independence movement. It began with harsh rhetoric from some of the most important leaders of the party and it will close today with a speech by Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy. Yesterday’s presentations—with María Dolores de Cospedal, Secretary-General of the party, Alícia Sánchez-Camacho, president of the Catalan branch of the party, Crístobal Montoro, Spain’s Minister of Finance and Public Administrations, and Jorge Fernández Díaz, Spain’s Minister of the Interior, among others—were laced even more threats and verbal violence than is usual in these leaders when speaking about the Catalan ‘process’.
María Dolores de Cospedal, the Secretary-General of the PP, focused a large part of her speech on denying that ‘Spanish sovereignty can be divided, measured in pieces, or in percentages’. ‘There’s only one piece, the piece that is 100%,’ she said. And she warned the sovereigntists that ‘with our laws at hand and the Spanish reality, you just can’t take a bite out of the country’ in order to separate Catalonia from Spain. Cospedal also attacked both the Catalan Government and Esquerra, who she said were liars, ‘They don’t want to explain that an independent catalonia would be born bankrupt.’
Cospedal insisted that Spain needs Catalonia and that Catalonia needs Spain. ‘Whoever says that Catalonia is something different and set apart and that it is something that should be separated with a machete doesn’t know anything about Spain or Catalonia,’ she said. And further: ‘As much as some may like, you can’t take a bite out of the country, out of Spain, just because, and for the partisan interest of a political leader who doesn’t know what to do about his disastrous management.’
Local PP leader compares democratic Catalan process with Basque violence
‘Mas is going to tell us to vote on what he wants to vote on in order to divide the Catalan people? That’s not democracy, that’s imposition,’ said Alícia Sánchez-Camacho, the president of the Catalan branch of the People’s Party.
And she goes even farther, ending up comparnig the Catalan process with the years of violence in the Basque Country: ‘We are a country that has suffered a lot in the Basque Country, and I see María del Mar Blanco [president of the Association of Victims of Terrorism]. We are suffering now too, in another way, but with exclusion and social rejection, in Catalonia. We suffer because some want to give us lessons about how a Catalan should feel, about how we should live our lives, about how we should educate our children and how we should govern. Or your with them, or you’re not Catalan. And that’s something we’ve already gone through in other parts of Spain.’
Listen to the original audio in Spanish here:
Sánchez-Camacho dedicated her talk at the PP convention to attacking the referendum and promising that her party is the only one that can keep it from happening, with reference to the electoral jurisdiction that C’s has in this respect. The PP leader spoke of a Catalonia ‘without freedom, in which only the independentists have a right to their opinions’.
According to Sánchez-Camacho, ‘Catalonia is not pro-independence; there is no separatist majority in Catalonia.’ It’s for this reason that she considers what Artur Mas as doing with the referendum, ‘not democracy, but an imposition’, because he wants to vote on what he wants. ‘Don’t let them give us lessons on democracy, because Catalans already vote every ten months,’ she complained.
In this respect, she hoped that the PP convention would be a ‘turning point’ and that it would offer a ‘message that would calm and assure those who are very worried about the uncertainty and Mas’ delusions and his obsession with separatism.’ ‘This party, as it will demonstrate and as it has always demonstrated, is the guarantee that we will continue to be what we are: Catalans, Spanish, and Europe. This party will keep anyone from taking us out of Spain and no one is going to take us out of Europe,’ she proclaimed.
And it was at that moment that she made an implicit reference to C’s [the other unionist party in Catalonia], underscoring that there are parties that only run for election in Catalonia and ‘only make speeches’ against independence. ‘Making speeches is all right, but you have to decide, govern, you have to make decisions,’ she argued. And about separatism, she continued, ‘only a serious party can stand up to it, one that is governing, which will stop independence in the Congress with its MPs and which will also do so in the European Parliament with its MEPs.’ ‘The others won’t stop independentism, that can only be achieved by a strong, solid, serious party like the PP,’ she said.
Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz says debate ‘affects him emotionally’
For his part, the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz compared the ‘non-adherence to the laws’ that he says is implied by the convocation of a referendum in Catalonia about its political future, with what would have happened if Spain didn’t comply with the recent ruling of the European Court of Huma Rights with regard to the ‘Parot Doctrine’, which said that it was illegal for Spain to retroactively extend prison terms. The minister considers the fact that the date set for the referendum coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall a ‘historical contradiction’. Fernández Díaz also recognized that Catalonia’s national debate is ‘affecting him emotionally’ and that ‘he never thought he would be living through something like this’.
Galician President’s appeals to ‘the intelligent and the cautious’ to stop self-determination
The President of Galicia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, was also present at the convention. Before arriving, he said in a radio interview that ‘in any European country this discussion [Catalonia’s self-determination] would not last more than 20 minutes’ since ‘it is clearly illegal’. He accused the Catalan parties of ‘blackmailing’ the Spanish Government and Spaniards with the self-determination claims. During the convention, the Feijóo stated that the self-determination claims ‘had been made up by a group of politicians’ who are ‘unable to manage’ public finances. Feijóo asked ‘the intelligent and cautious’ part of Catalonia to stop the self-determination process and to vote for the PP, the only party able to do so, according to him.
