Is Catalonia Testing the Resiliency of Spanish Democracy?
The country has had a highly decentralized government for more than 40 years. The question now is whether it can stay that way.
For many, the police violence that engulfed last week’s referendum for Catalan independence, which left some 800 people injured, did not suggest a strong, modern European democracy capable of dealing with dissent. In fact, for some, the scenes of Spain’s national police confiscating voter ballots and attacking protesters with batons and rubber bullets recalled images of a bygone era—the military rule of dictator Francisco Franco.
Among Spaniards, the days of fascist rule are not some distant chapter of history. Anyone over the age of 50can likely recallfoster Spanish national homogeneityby placing all regional and national traditions, including the Catalan language, under strict public censorship.
