It's the Real News Network I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.
Catalonia's independence leader and former President Carlos Puigdemont was arrested in
Germany on Sunday.
He was on his way back to Belgium from a conference in Finland when Spanish authorities alerted
the German government about Puigdemont's border crossing.
Puigdemont has had a warrant out for his arrest ever since he organized a referendum in Catalan
for its independence last October while he was president of Catalonia.
Puigdemont's supporters organized a spontaneous demonstration for his release in Barcelona.
Meanwhile, in Madrid last Friday, a Spanish Supreme Court judge ordered that five Catalan
independence politicians be held without bail who now face up to 30 years in jail on charges
of rebellion.
Joining me now to analyze the ongoing complicated situation in Catalonia is Sebastiaan Faber.
Sebastiaan is professor of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College and author of the book
"Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War."
Welcome back to the Real News, Sebastiaan.
Great to be back.
Sebastiaan, ever since Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy called for a snap election in
Catalonia last December there has been no regional government there, because the three
independence parties, which maintain a narrow majority, could not agree on a leader.
What effect does the Puigdemont's arrest in Germany have on political governance crises
in Catalonia?
There's been really two effects.
On the one hand there's been a wave a new wave of indignation and protest.
And in a way the reaction to his arrest has helped bring the three parties back together
after a period in which they've been drifting apart, disagreeing over what kind of government
should be put in place and what the nature and the aspirations of the government should
be.
Among the three, the smallest is the CUP, the Candidacy for Popular Unity, and the CUP
of the three has been the one that kept pressing for an independent republic, whereas the other
two have been trying to steer a more moderate route for now, hoping to regain Catalonia's
autonomous government back which has been revoked since late last year after the central
government in Madrid imposed Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution.
So the arrest of Puigdemont on Sunday has helped bring these three parties back together
and has steeled their resolve as they try to put a government back in place to at least
make Catalonia autonomous again, and perhaps make further steps, even though it's not clear
that that is actually possible, given the strong and strict legal restrictions put in
place at this point in Spain.
Right.
Now some analysts say that Prime Minister Rajoy is clearly avoiding a political settlement
to the conflict in Catalonia by pursuing legal and judicial measures against the independence
movement.
Now, would you agree with that assessment?
Or could these legal measures represent hopefully a bargaining chip in future negotiations with
the independence movement?
No, I completely agree with that Rajoy and his party, the Partido Popular in Spain, have
avoided to the extent possible any kind of actual political negotiation over this conflict.
It's really a territorial conflict, it's a territorial crisis where what's at stake is
Catalonia's place within the Spanish state and the kind of competencies it has as an
autonomous community in that state.
Even among the parties that say they've won a fight for independence it's not clear whether
they all actually want independence.
The fight for independence has been put in place as a bargaining chip with the government,
but the judicialization of the conflict via Madrid has not been a bargaining chip in part
because by handing the issue over to the courts to the judicial branch, in effect the executive
branch has let go of all control.
So there is, I think you can say that the Partido Popular very purposefully shoved this
into the hands of the judges, in this case the Spanish Supreme Court.
But now that it is in the hands of the judges the executive branch cannot now undo that.
So there is a way in which this is a case of The Wizard's Apprentice who's sort of let
things get out of control.
At this point everything is in the hands of the judiciary in Spain, where the Supreme
Court, as you said, has issued arrest warrants against the six Catalan politicians who are
at large in Europe, and which has put in jail another nine Catalan politicians.
And it's also in the hands of the judiciary in the rest of Europe.
Currently there are four countries, four regions that have Catalan politicians in them, Scotland,
Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany.
And it will be the courts in all those four places will have to decide whether to give
heed to the European arrest warrants issued by the Spanish Supreme Court, and under what
conditions.
So among the things that these courts will have to decide is whether they'll send these
politicians to Spain to be tried.
But also on the basis of what charges.
And that's really at this point what's the interesting thing.
That's not clear to what extent, for example, the German courts will be delivering Puigdemont
back to Spain facing charges of rebellion, or merely charges of misappropriation of funds.
Those are the two main charges that he's facing and if the German court decide to only extradite
him back to Spain on the basis of misappropriation of funds that means that he will not be able
to be judged or tried in Spain under the heavier charge of rebellion.
Now, getting back to Catalan, since the election last December the independence parties have
not been able to form a regional government.
Why is that happening?
What are the internal conflicts that they're dealing with?
Well, there's internal conflicts and there's external restrictions.
External restrictions have to do with the judicial part of the question that we just
covered in the sense that every time they put forth a candidate to be invested as President
of Catalonia, that candidate has been either put in jail or indicted or some other legal
restrictions have been put in their candidacy.
So that's been an external restriction.
Internally the disagreement is really over the direction that this government should
take, whether it should continue on the route to push for an independent republic, which
is, the smallest of the three independence party wants to do that, the CUP.
And the other two are at this point willing to moderate their aspirations and to strive
merely for restitution of Catalan's autonomous governments.
So the revocation of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution.
This disagreement over these different directions is so strong that the CUP has already in some
locations withdrawn its support for this hypothetical new Catalan government.
Now, all of this that's going on , what effect is it having on the central government of
Spain?
Rajoy is head of a minority government.
Is this sort of hard line posture he's demonstrating against the Catalan independence movement
strengthening or weakening his position in Spain as a whole?
Initially I would say it had strengthened it.
Generally speaking, in the big picture on both sides of the conflict, both on the Catalan
side and the Spanish side, there's been a weird mix of ideology and opportunism.
Ideologically there are right-wing parties involved in both sides.
And both those right-wing parties are taking half and have been champing either the case
for, the cause for independence, or the cause against independence, and have been championing
that cause as a way to shore up their electoral base.
So for Rajoy in Madrid the hard line, the, the no tolerance or zero tolerance approach
to the Catalan aspirations have served, in principle, to shore up a base that was getting
kind of sick and tired and distrustful of the them due to the many corruption scandals
that have been plaguing the party.
More recently, though, that support, what you could call the conservative Spanish base,
has been abandoning the Partido Popular regardless, and shifting toward the younger party on the
right, Ciudadanos, Citizens, which was a party founded in Catalonia and which went national
only a couple of years ago, which has taken an even harder zero tolerance line toward
Catalonia, which is where they're from, and has managed, at least in the polls, to siphon
away votes from the Partido Popular which, like I said, has been plagued with corruption
to their own party.
So what you see now in Spain is a new rivalry within the centralist right between Partido
Popular and Ciudadanos, in which they are now vying for the centralist conservative
vote.
Now, very strange in all of this is the Podemos party's lack of involvement in this debate
and discussion.
Now, why is that taking place?
Why is Podemos, although they have the city of Barcelona and we have a Podemos mayor in
Barcelona, and yet they seem to be clearly staying out of the debate.
Why?
For Podemos and generally for parties on the left this is a very difficult question, in
part because it has shifted the axis of the political debate.
Podemos's strength is a more traditional left-right axis where it can decry and denounce the corruption
of the right-wing political parties.
It can diagnose the, the tiredness of the old two political parties of the two party
system, and it can put the finger on all kinds of social problems in Spain that have to do
with cutbacks, the state of public health, the state of public education, the state of
politics altogether.
So in this traditional left-right division, Podemos is really strong because it has as
a strong progressive agenda.
What the conflict in Catalonia has done, it has shifted the axis to either centralist
Spaniard or you're a Catalan aspiring toward independence.
And like I said, both sides mix left and right.
Both sides, this axis cuts across transversely the left-right debate, which means for a party
like Podemos that every time they pay lip service in some way to the Catalan independence
movement or merely to the right of self-determination of the Catalans, they lose support in the
rest of Spain even among the left.
Every time they pay lip service to centralist ideologies or to the notion that, well, Spain
is better off if Catalonia stays within it, you're liable to lose support in Catalonia
among the pro-independence left.
So it's a very hard landscape to navigate, and you could really say that the right-wing
parties both in Madrid and in Barcelona have taken, have received a lot of advantage from
the shifting of the axis that has directly damaged the electoral prospects of the left,
especially of a party like Podemos.
Interesting predicament.
Sebastiaan, I thank you so much for joining us today.
Sure.
You've really explained quite a few things in the short time, so I thank so much, and
we'll look forward to having you back.
My pleasure.
And thank you for joining us here on the Real News Network.