07.02.2014 - 09:37
The Executive Councilor for the Catalan Government, Frances Homs, tried to calm down representatives of ERC and the CUP for his declarations yesterday to Cope radio, in which he said he anticipated that the whole of the citizens of the Spanish State might vote on Catalonia’s political future. In declarations to Catalunya Ràdio today, Homs explained that in the event that Catalans vote in favor of independence but the Spanish end up voting against in a [second] referendum, ‘that would not invalidate [the Catalan vote], because the people of Catalonia are a sovereign body and thus can decide their own future’.
Homs, who also spoke with private radio station RAC-1, insisted that after the referendum, if the Spanish Government is amenable, there will be a negotiation. ‘And if the process ends up leading to a reform of the [Spanish] Constitution, we know how that is done, with the vote of the whole of the Spanish citizenry’. But Homs wanted to make it very clear: ‘It’s not about giving the capacity of decision of the Catalan people in the hands of others. If the people of Catalonia vote for independence, conditions—but not the decision—can be negotiated.’
Response from ERC and CUP
Via Twitter, Alfred Bosch, Catalan Republican Left (ERC) spokesperson to the Spanish Congress showed his surprise at the ‘other-determination’ defended by the Executive Councilor in his declarations to Cope radio. ‘That others decide for you? And what universal right inspired him to say that?’ Bosch tweeted. As for the CUP, MP Quim Arrufat made it clear that he was worried and he reminded the councilor that the negotiation must take place once independence is recognized and not before.
ERC and the CUP remarked that the right to decide implies that Catalans exercise their sovereignty, and therefore, the sovereign decision of the Catalan people should not need the approval of the rest of the Spanish citizenry.
In a public release, Arrufat added that the reform of the Spanish Constitution forms part of ‘the pile of paperwork that the Spanish State should go through for itself once we’ve won our independence’. According to him, ‘it’s not, in any case, a stop on our path toward the referendum, nor toward independence’.
