Spain: For Catalonia!

Abstract

When does the confrontation between the government in Barcelona and the government in Madrid stop being an intra-Spanish issue? When one realises that the task at hand is neither contempt for the constitution nor a backwards-oriented issue of sectionalism that Spain has to suppress. And if one realises that Europe's self-understanding is at stake here, the confrontation becomes an issue of the self-understanding of a European democracy. NB: This article was originally published in German in DIE ZEIT (Nr. 44/2017, October 26, 2017. https://www.zeit.de/2017/44/spanien-katalonien-unabhaengigkeit-demokratie-europa). Translation by Alexander Garcia Düttmann, Holger Briel and Michael High.

Keywords

• Catalonia
• democracy
• politics
• Catalan referendum
• Spain
• identity