For a decade now the figure of referendum It has become one of the central axes of the debate in Catalan politics. On Monday, the ‘president’ of the Generalitat announced his intention to return to the fray to achieve an independence referendum “agreed” with the State. The next step, he explained, is to commission a report that establishes the “legal paths” to do so. It is a diplomatic way of saying that what you want is to find ways to convince the Government of the day that it would be a vote like this would have a legal fit.
Preparing a document like this has a double difficulty: the first, finding a way that can eventually endorse the state. The second, to find at this point a way that someone has not already formulated before in vain. Since 2013, the Generalitat has received up to four reports -2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019- on the legality of holding a referendum that contained at least seven different proposals. Furthermore, three of them have been signed by Institute of Autogovernance Studies (IEA) -dependent on the Generalitat- which is the body that, once again, has been commissioned to do so.
These are the routes that have been proposed to date:
One of the ways already tried by the independence movement is to appeal to article 150.2 of the Constitution, which establishes that the State may “transfer or delegate” matters of its ownership to the autonomies. For example, it is defended from Catalonia, to call a referendum. In 2013 the Parliament He has already brought to Congress the request to the Government to cede the power to “authorize, convene and hold a referendum on the political future of Catalonia.” Nobody challenged him, but he received a slam: 299 votes against, 47 in favor and 1 abstention. Could it be tried again looking for a different majority? It could, although later it would be necessary to overcome the probable resistance of the constitutional Court and from PP and Vox. This is a way that Aragonese He already mentioned in 2021 shortly after being inaugurated and after meeting for the first time as ‘president’ with the acting head of the Government, Pedro Sanchez.
Another way cited by previous IEA reports is to appeal to article 92 of the Constitution, which provides that referendums can be held on “political decisions of special significance.” An article later developed by an organic law of 1980 with which it was convened in 2006 the vote on the Statute. It is an option that the ‘former president’ recently cited. Carles Puigdemont at the conference where he explained Junts’ conditions for the investiture. The problem is that the Constitutional Court has already warned that it cannot be used to ask about secession. That will also be one of the keys from the new IEA report. The question will not only be finding the way, but also the object of the question. It is not the same to ask about independence, as about the “political future”, as about the Statute.
This is an option that he himself has pointed out as possible. Constitutional Court in its jurisprudence regarding the ‘procés’: undertaking a reform of the Magna Carta to accommodate the referendum on independence that has been proposed since the Generalitat. Despite this, it is a reform of such significance that not even the independence movement has ever shown itself willing to undertake. Furthermore, some sectors of this movement – the IEA also pointed out in a 2019 document – consider that opening the Constitution could have the opposite effect. A risk of “recentralization” of the autonomous state and “the closure of the territorial model.”
The Catalan law of popular consultations
This is the law that made the Parliament thinking about the consultation of November 9, 2014, which in the end was not organized with this rule and which ended with its top officials convicted by justice. This would not be, strictly speaking, the referendum format requested by the ‘president’. It has been used in some cases, such as to decide whether to create the Moianès region. Also was proposed as the instrument to ask citizens if they agreed with the Winter Olympic Games -As there were no games, there was no vote-. He Constitutional He already warned that it was useless to ask about independence.
The Catalan law on referendum consultations
In 2010, in the final stretch of the tripartite and even without the ‘procés’ in progress, the Parliament drafted a Catalan law referendum consultations. The Generalitat and the Parliament were given the power to promote and organize them, although the need for prior authorization from the State was established. Although the debate on independence was practically non-existent at the time, it was challenged by the then government of the PSOE. It was proposed at the time as a mechanism to carry out the 2014 consultation, but in 2017 the Constitutional unanimously annulled the most substantial part of that law.
An organic law only for Catalonia
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In March 2019, when the Supreme Court had not yet commented on the independence leaders imprisoned by 1-O, the IEA presented a new report with “two unexplored avenues” for holding a referendum. The first was the presentation by the Parliament to Congress of an organic law that in a “singular way” would propose the celebration in Catalonia. In short, to develop from Catalonia a norm of state level that would allow a consultation to be carried out in the Catalan territory, for example regarding “the degree of self-government.” As a derivative, it was proposed to reform the organic law of 1980. This proposal was signed, among others, by the political scientist Marc Sanjaume, who has led the academic report on the clarity agreement.
An additional provision in the Constitution
In that same report, a second proposal was pointed out that involved a constitutional reform, but in this case surgically. Specifically, it advocated adding a “additional provision” in the Magna Carta for the “celebration of a referendum consultation in Catalonia”. The virtue of the movement, it was defended then, is that it is precisely in the additional provisions where territorial singularities are collected, such as “the historical rights” of the “foral territories” -Navarra and Euskadi-. That same report documented 79 independence referendums held between 1945 and 2019 around the world. Now, the ‘president’ wants to add Catalonia to the list.