[TamilNet, Friday, 25 January 2013, 11:09 GMT]The Parliament of Catalonia on Wednesday adopted a resolution
declaring the Catalan people, largely inhabiting the Catalonian
North-eastern region of Spain, as a sovereign entity with the rights to
self-determination. "The people of Catalonia have - by reason of
democratic legitimacy - the character of a sovereign political and legal
entity," the declaration read, with many claiming that this was the
first step towards a referendum to be possibly held on 2014. Eezham
Tamils should take note of the political terminology used by the Catalan
leaders, especially the use of terms like ‘sovereignty’ and ‘nation’ as
different from ‘nationality’, in effectively articulating the demands
of their people and securing their rights, young generation Tamil
political observers in the island said.
The resolution was passed with the approval of 85 votes in the 135
member Parliament, backed mainly by the ruling nationalist CiU party and
the leftist ERC.
The Catalan regional government headed by Artur
Mas, leader of the Convergence and Union (CiU) party, views the
successful passing of this declaration as a shot in the arm for their
plans of holding a referendum by 2014.
The declaration states
that the Catalonian parliament has begun “the process to bring about the
exercising of the right to decide so that the citizens of Catalonia can
choose their political, collective future”.
Mr Mas described the
vote as historic, adding that it “will lead the country to where the
majority of us want to go”, the Irish Times reported on Thursday.
While
the declaration was backed by Republican Left Party the ERC and other
left political groups like ICV and CUP, it was opposed by the Catalan
Socialist Party, who have been demanding for autonomy but not
independence, and the representatives of Spanish right-wing People’s
Party.
“Most Catalonian people do not want independence, they do
not want this division. What you are doing today is applying pressure
in defiance of the Spanish government,” Euronews cited Alicia Sanchez,
leader of the People’s Party of Catalonia.
In September 2012,
over 1.5 million Catalans, roughly 20% of Catalonia’s population,
rallied on the streets of Catalonian capital Barcelona demanding
independence.
The rise of modern Catalan nationalism and the
desire for sovereign self-governance can be traced to the 19th Century.
With the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, Catalonia
was able to gain considerable provisions for self-rule under a Statute
of Autonomy in 1932.
These gains were reversed after the victory
of General Franco’s fascist forces over the Republicans at the end of
the Spanish Civil War in 1939. Under Franco’s dictatorship, which lasted
till 1975, Catalonia’s autonomous status was annulled and the Catalan
language was prohibited from public usage with the imposition of Spanish
as the sole national language. Likewise, Barcelona, which was a major
site of anti-fascist resistance, faced severe repression.
After
the restoration of democracy in Spain in 1978, Catalonia regained its
autonomous status. Catalan nationalism, which is based on language
rather than ethnicity, had grown stronger in the last years of the
Franco regime. After democratization and the granting of autonomy,
Catalan nationalist parties have dominated the regional government.
The usage of the term ‘nation’ by Catalan leaders to describe the Catalan people has irked many Spanish nationalists.
The Spanish constitution of 1978 recognizes Catalonians as a ‘nationality’ with the ‘right to self-government’.
Article
2 states “The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the
Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; it
recognizes and guarantees the right to self-government of the
nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the solidarity
among them all.”
However, the 2006 Statute of Autonomy of
Catalonia states “In reflection of the feelings and the wishes of the
citizens of Catalonia, the Parliament of Catalonia has defined Catalonia
as a nation by an ample majority. The Spanish Constitution, in its
second Article, recognises the national reality of Catalonia as a
nationality.”
The recently passed declaration by the Catalonian
parliament that claimed that the Catalan people have “the character of a
sovereign political and legal entity” has at its heart the
understanding that the Catalan people constitute a nation, with
historical sovereignty over their territory, as different from
nationality.
The arguments for a referendum in the future also stem from this conceptual understanding.
In
the case of the Eezham Tamils, the argument for a just and sustainable
political solution based on the recognition of Eezham Tamils as a nation
was succinctly made in the Tamil Sovereignty Cognition (TSC)declaration
which was based on the premise that the Eezham Tamils are entitled to
historical, earned and remedial aspects of sovereignty.
The TSC
declaration, formulated after interactions with a wide-spectrum of
like-minded people, across the globe, was released on November 2011 by
youth activists based in Tamil Nadu, Canada, Switzerland and the USA.
The
basic principles of the TSC declaration were adopted as a working
programme by several youth, grassroots and democratically elected
diaspora organizations last year.
Keeping the recent
developments in Catalonia in mind and observing the manoeuvres by world
powers to lead the Eezham Tamils into a blind alley by abstract and
misleading terms like ‘internal self-determination’, ‘self-rule’,
‘nationality’ and others, it is imperative that Tamil political
organizations begin to take up the concrete points outlined in the TSC
declaration in all their political interactions with external
organizations, young generation Tamil politicians from the island told
TamilNet.
The concrete manner in which the Catalan politicians
have been using the terms ‘nation’ as different from ‘nationality’,
‘sovereignty’ as a premise for ‘self-determination’, can be taken as
positive examples, they added.
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