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Catalonia's Bill Comes Due for Madrid: It's More Autonomy
By Alan Riding
New York Times
March 10, 1994After losing its parliamentary majority in elections last summer, Spain's Socialist Party was still able to form a new, minority Government thanks to the support of Catalonia's main nationalist party. Now the price of this support is becoming apparent. Last month, the Catalan leader, Jordi Pujol, who also heads the regional government, told Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez that he had until the summer to grant greater self-government to Catalonia or face the risk of being voted out of his job during the crucial budget debate this fall.
The Socialists, of course, cannot claim to be surprised. Since taking office in 1980, Mr. Pujol has never missed a chance to boost Catalonia's status as a separate nation within Spain. And his party's 17 swing votes in Parliament have given him a splendid new opportunity to press his case. But his latest initiative has had more impact than previous campaigns for greater autonomy, not only because there is a weak Government in Madrid, but also because the conflict in the former Yugoslavia has raised fears of a surge of divisive nationalism here. Tensions Are Mounting.
Further, more than at any time since Spain returned to democracy in the late 1970's, politicians, business executives and intellectuals outside Catalonia are now asking: how far does Mr. Pujol want to go toward full independence? And because the answer is unclear, tensions between Catalonia and the rest of Spain are mounting. In truth, the answer has never been clear. For the record, Mr. Pujol, a 64-year-old former banker, said as recently as last month that he only wanted Spain to recognize that "Catalonia is a nation, with its language, culture, historical identity and traditional institutions." While saying that Catalonia is no less a nation than, say, Slovenia, one of the republics that broke away from the Yugoslav federation, he also noted that "the solution to our problems does not come through secession, but through restructuring Spain so that the country's multi-ethnic character is respected."
Yet last month, the newspaper El Pais also published excerpts from a document prepared by the Catalan government that suggests that the region's relationship with the monarchy should be direct and not through the central Government. Put differently, it proposed a commonwealth structure for Spain. Mr. Pujol denied that the document was official and said he had specifically ignored the reference to the monarchy. And when he presented his new autonomy demands to Mr. Gonzalez on Feb. 10, he dealt with more mundane issues, like strengthening the region's police. But while Mr. Pujol told Mr. Gonzalez that he also wanted other government functions, including health, to be transferred to Catalonia, the document quoted by El Pais said the Catalan government should aim to assume control of railroads, airports, seaports and highways in the region.
Language Is an Issue
Although Spain is divided into 17 autonomous regions and separatist terrorists are still active in the Basque country, Spaniards seem aware that only Catalonia has the economic strength and population -- six million -- to stand alone. In recent months, this polarization has been fed by a controversy over Catalonia's campaign to turn Catalan into the dominant language of the region. Mr. Pujol responded that his government was merely trying to revive a traditional language that was banned during the long Franco dictatorship. But conservatives in Madrid and many independent newspapers have jumped on the language issue as another sign of Catalonia's separatist ambitions.
Thrown onto the defensive, Mr. Pujol charged that Catalonia was being "provoked," but some Catalans went even further. "The anti-Catalan offensive has fed ethnic hatred toward Catalonia and the Catalans among a good many Spaniards," complained Angel Colom, the leader of the Catalan Republican Left party, which favors independence for the region. In practice, with Mr. Colom's party winning only around 8 percent of votes in Catalonia, election results and polls indicate that most Catalans do not want independence from Spain, but do support greater autonomy.
Increasingly, the Catalan question is raising questions about the structure of Spain. When the country's Autonomy Statute was drawn up in 1979, it granted special rights to the Basque country, Galicia and Andalusia, as well as to Catalonia. Any additional privileges given to one must therefore be given to the other three. In recent years, though, nationalist movements have also grown in the Canary Islands, Aragon, the Balearic Islands and Valencia. And if the "traditional communities" are given greater autonomy, the rest of Spain seems certain to make similar demands.
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