Hello everyone! Most of you are probably aware of the difficult situation that Spain is been going thru the last few months; the attempt of independence of Catalonia, one of the wealthiest regions of Spain.
I´ve been reading international press to see how the world sees the conflict and opinions from outside of my country, and I found a vast number of articles that, without enough knowledge about the history of the issue, defend the “freedom” of Catalonia and accused the Spanish government of being “oppressive” and “anti-democratic”. My intention in this post is not convincing you to support the unity of Spain, but I want to clarify some of the lies that are told about this issue lately because Catalonia leaders have been doing an excellent marketing job with their cause and the Spanish government has not handled the information appropriately (in my opinion).
Before the illegal referendum that took place last October, leaders of the independent movement told their citizens that when Catalonia achieves independence the EU would support it. A year ago in Brussels, vice-president of the region (Oriol Junqueras) stated: “we are members of the European Union, we are European citizens and this process to incorporate Catalonia in EU institutions has to be automatic”. Unfortunately for them, European leaders have been supporting the Spanish government and declared that in the case Catalonia achieves independence it would not be a part of the Union, it would need to follow the same process as any other country that wants to join the EU. In other words, Catalonia would never become a part of the European Union because neither Spain nor the other members would recognize Catalonia as a separate state.
Another lie that was told to Catalonian citizens in order to get their sympathy concerned economy. Junqueras and Puigdemont (ex-president of Catalonia) defended in different occasions that the economy would not be affected by the separation process, contrarily, it would come up stronger. But again, these statements have been proved wrong: two months after the illegal referendum, more than 2,700 companies had moved its headquarters from Barcelona to other Spanish cities. Even though this changes are just administrative, it reveals the uncertainty that independence is creating in small and big businesses such as Caixabank or Sabadell bank.
A lot of lies were told to the citizens before October 2017, but the biggest lie was the referendum itself. As I already mentioned, I´ve read different articles about it and a lot of them gave wrong or confusing information to the international readers. Most of the headlines stated that 90% of Catalans backed independence, but this is far from the truth: the result of it was 90% voted YES to independence, but its legal basis and credibility were a joke for several reasons. First of all, each person could vote as many times as they wanted in different polling stations, as they didn´t use a valid census; there was no electoral board; there were not official ballots, so people could print them at home; no envelopes were required; and there was no counting system specified, names were written down by hand instead of checking them on a printed list. According to Catalonia leaders, 90% voted YES, but the vast majority of anti-independence Catalonian citizens didn´t want to invest their times in an illegal referendum held by those against their values.
Due to these lies and many more, a lot of people, such as Julian Assange or even Pamela Anderson, have been denouncing the Spanish government and supporting the independence movement. The ex-playmate even said: “The Spanish government have been totally idiotic and have actually fueled this situation” and “it is not a bad idea to have an independent Catalonia”, well taking into account that Catalonia tourism slumped 15% in November or the exodus of companies´headquarters maybe it is a bad idea…
Again, I am not trying to change anyone´s mind, but in order to have a good opinion concerning this topic I really suggest to not trust the international public opinion because the issues within a nation are very complex to understand specially if you don´t know a lot about its history.