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The Catalan government’s parliamentary spokesman, Jordi Turrull, even called on voters to download their own ballot papers from a government website. That means there’s a very high correlation between simply turning up to vote and voting “yes”.īallot papers were distributed widely in the week leading up to the vote and the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (Catalan National Assembly), the major pro-independence organisation, issued over 1m to its supporters. There was no serious public discussion or debate over the merits of “yes” or “no”, and the pro-independence side was always guaranteed a victory: pro-independence voters are not only the most committed to turning out, but they are the only ones committed to the legitimacy of a referendum. Opponents of independence simply did not campaign, instead boycotting the referendum or simply ignoring it. There was no referendum campaign in any real sense. The referendum legislation setting October 1 as the date was only formally passed by the Catalan parliament on September 6 2017, barely four weeks before the vote was due. The day of the vote itself saw a very heavy police presence, with high drama and tension giving way to outright violence: police forced polling stations to close, charged into crowds of protesters, and even fired rubber bullets.īut for all the Catalan government’s promises, the vote failed to be a true reflection of opinion, and its legitimacy is highly questionable. In the days leading up to the referendum, police confiscated millions of ballot papers, blocked websites related to the referendum, and warned a range of public officials of the danger of breaking the law.
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The Catalan elections of September 2015 gave an ambiguous result, and the referendum on independence was launched as the mechanism to break the deadlock.
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Since mass pro-independence protests of 2012, the dispute between Madrid and Barcelona has simmered along as a low-intensity political conflict. The events of October 1 mark a turning point in the ever-growing – but containable – dispute between the government in Madrid, led by the conservative Popular Party, and the pro-independence coalition of parties in Catalonia’s regional government. Still, this doesn’t mean the vote isn’t destabilising. Even for those who did turn out, anything approaching normal voting was prevented by a heavy and at times violent Spanish police presence. The reported 42.3% turnout and near-90% vote for independence do not carry any meaningful legitimacy. It was considered a referendum by the supporters of Catalan independence, but not their opponents – the Spanish government – who called it “illegal” – for the EU, or any known government in the world. As the UK found with the 2014 Scottish independence vote, even holding a referendum at all can be highly destabilising to the traditional political order and political party systems.īut something different happened in Catalonia on October 1 2017: a referendum that in practice wasn’t a referendum at all. Europe has had a rocky ride with referendums in recent years: think of Greece’s anti-austerity vote in 2015, or the Brexit shock and Italy’s failed constitutional referendum in December 2016.