For the second time within the last 12 months the electorate in Catalonia has traipsed off to the polling stations to decide whether their region, with a population of over 7.5 million and considerable autonomous powers, should opt for secession from Spain and go it alone as a separate nation and state. Independence from Spain has been an issue in Catalonia on and off for centuries including in the new post Franco democracy. Locally pressure has increased as the conservative party that has governed the region, the Converjencia I Unió (CiU) has been losing support partly due to a mixture of spending cuts and alleged corruption of its leaders. Jordi Pujol who as the leader of the CiU and in Government for 23 years, has retired and is accused of corrupt practice when in Government, as is the new CiU party leader Artur Mas. On November 9th last year, the CiU, with Artur Mas prominent in the role of leader for independence, called for a “consultation” for voters to decide on whether Catalonia should be secede from Spain. The Spanish Government claimed that any such consultation would be illegal and therefore the results would be irrelevant. It was Act 1 of the 2014/15 “Independence Show”.
As the results of the “consultation” came in, Artur Mas and fellow secessionists claimed that the region had voted for independence. In reality the results were impossible to verify, not because of their so-called illegal nature, but because there was no agreed statistical base for the numbers entitled to vote and voting was allowed to continue for several days after the results were announced. Unsubstantiated claims were made that 80% of Catalans had voted for independence. In fact 80% of those who actually went to the polls and voted, had given their vote for independence. Much of the international press picked up the 80% figure, hailing independence as now inevitable: an incorrect interpretation of the figures.
