Gwynne Dyer: Silent majority backs Spanish unity

Out but not down: Sacked Catalonian president Carles Puigdemont smiles after a press conference in Brussels on Oct 31. Photo/AP

It's been going on for a while. "Recently in Catalonia we have been living through a kind of 'soft' totalitarianism ... the illusion of unanimity created by the fear of expressing dissent," wrote best-selling Catalan author Javier Cercas in the Spanish newspaper El Pais in 2014. Those who didn't want independence kept their heads down and their mouths shut, in other words.

Three years later, it has just gotten worse. Last July, leading Catalan film-maker Isabel Coixet told the Observer that "Madrid is deaf and mute and the government here (in Catalonia) is really happy about that. They never really look for dialogue at all." She added that Catalans are afraid of speaking out "for fear of being called fascists".

That about sums it up. Some opinion polls show that a majority of the people who live in Catalonia want it to remain part of Spain. The latest, published in El Pais on Saturday, showed that 55 per cent per cent of those polled opposed the declaration of independence in the Catalan parliament last week, with only 41 per cent in favour.

That's an even more decisive rejection of separation from Spain than a poll commissioned by the Catalan government and published just before the declaration of independence, which came out 49 per cent-41 per cent in favour of remaining in Spain. Yet the news coverage was all about flag-waving nationalist crowds demanding independence, because the silent majority was staying low.

Finally, on Sunday, a big pro-Spanish crowd came out in the streets of Barcelona: 300,000 people, according to the police. About the same size as the pro-independence crowds, therefore, but they left it rather late. The separatist strategy has worked well, and by now the fat is really in the fire.

The separatists' problem was this: no opinion poll has ever shown a majority for independence since the current upsurge in Catalan nationalism began about eight years ago. For the past few years the "yes" vote has been stuck around 40 per cent. You can hardly declare independence for the region without a vote of some kind, so what do you do?

A referendum is better than an election, because it's a single-issue vote that will really get the faithful out. But how do you prevent the more numerous sceptics from voting too? Well, the Spanish constitution is a great help there, because it says that a referendum on independence for any of Spain's regions would be illegal. So if you hold one, maybe the true nationalists will vote despite the law, while the rest obey the law and stay away.

They road-tested this model three years ago with an "advisory" referendum that the Madrid government sort of tolerated (though it said it was illegal), and it worked just fine. Only 37 per cent of the population voted, but 80 per cent of those who did show up voted "yes" to independence.

The independence referendum on October 1 was the real thing, not "advisory" at all. Rather late in the day, Spanish Prime Minister Maria Rajoy realised that the independentistas intended to use the result as a justification for a declaration of independence, so he got a court judgment confirming that the referendum was illegal and sent the police in to shut it down.

The Catalan nationalists had foreseen this, and welcomed it. Nothing could be better for the cause than images of Spanish police dragging women out of polling booths, and the uproar would keep even the hardiest "No" voters away. The turn-out this time was a bit higher, at 43 per cent, and so was the "Yes" vote - 90 per cent. Very gratifying.

With that result, the president of Catalonia's regional government, nationalist leader Carles Puigdemont, declared independence. The Spanish central government immediately dissolved the regional parliament, removed Puigedemont and his cabinet from office, and announced a fresh regional election for December 21.

Puigdemont is now a martyr in the eyes of his fellow separatists, and Spain says that he will be allowed to run in the December election, so he has lost nothing. Unless the silent majority find their voices, he may yet be the first president of the Catalan Republic.

Gwynne Dyer

■Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.