The rule of law and the Catalan referendum

The case of Catalonia’s Referendum is curious. Not even the time to recover (I cannot foresee any relief) from the Terrorist attacks of the last month and it is again in struggle, seeking for an impossible expression of an awkward, different, extraordinary form of (sub)nationalism.

If questioning about the origins of this obstinate demand, one should appeal at History. Indeed, History reminds us that Catalonia had always been a thorny Spanish region, posing an odd accent on their inner-pressurising mass cultural differentiation arising from the concept of Spanish regionalism through the hallucination of getting independent from the central state, regardless of all the concessions and-or the conceptions that both Madrid both its constitutional document had always been giving in the attempt to prevent an open conflict both with Catalonia and its subculture both within Spain as a state.

The set of events of the last few weeks has brought to another period of an anxious, uneasy demand for expression of the Catalan separation from the Spanish state. However, the (fragile) Rajoy’s government has intervened with the use of both soft power both hard power: concerning soft power, the Spanish Constitutional Court, convoked for a super partes formal judgement, has given reason to the Moncloa, declaring the Catalan Referendum as unconstitutional. Conversely, on the hard power side, Rajoy’s government has stopped the political unrest upon the Catalonian folks by ordering the occupation of all the hypothetical voting stations.

Overall, this case is unique. On Madrid’s side, to avoid (pre-emptively) a possible disorder, not to say disruption of the status quo, it can be considered as justified by the old-but-gold notion of the reason of state, by which each State’s action for the sake of its common good is acceptable and legitimate a priori. Conversely, if embracing the Catalans perspective, the scope of this massive mobilisation against the state has been defeated by the overwhelming and incommensurable Rule of Law, particularly of the Supreme Law of each state (e.g. its constitution). There is no doubt then: Mariano Rajoy and its government got it right: Catalonia cannot (and is not meant to be) independent.

By Manfredi Morello