The Crazy World Of Arthur Mas

Included in the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in the early eighteenth century were those which allowed Navarre and the Basque Country to keep their charters. Both were given special privileges because they had supported Philip during the War of the Spanish Succession. Catalonia lost its charter because it had backed the wrong horse.

These special privileges still exist. Navarre and the Basque Country operate financial pacts with the Spanish state. These mean that they have tax-raising powers, a privilege that is not shared by Catalonia which wants greater powers as well as more of the financial pot and to stop having to pay for other regions to the extent that it has been. The president of Catalonia, Arthur Mas (who we should call Artur), has been told by Mariano Rajoy that he can't have such powers. As a result, Artur is considering not so much taking his bat home but pulling the whole team off the Spanish park.

Mas is saying that Catalonia needs its own structures as a state and that it is now its turn for transition (Spain having had its). The spokesperson for the Catalonian government, Francesc Homs, is saying that a referendum on independence is possible within four years. The King is telling the Catalonians to stop chasing rainbows. Rubalcaba, for the opposition PSOE, is telling Mas to back off. Rajoy is doing his best Charles de Gaulle ("non, "non") and is defending the Constitution. The European Union is getting into a bit of a flap about the whole thing.

When the 600,000, or one and a half million or two million (take your pick from the different sources) took to the streets of Barcelona on Catalonia's National Day (and the Catalonians celebrate a day when they were given a sound kicking by Philip V), Mas would have taken this as a signal to suggest he has a mandate for embarking on an independentist route. He doesn't officially have such a mandate, only one to negotiate a better financial deal for Catalonia, but this isn't stopping him from playing the independent card for his own political advantage (always assuming it is in fact an advantage).

Rajoy and Mas are not unalike. Both have the air of the cold fish about them. Mas has suggested in the past that he is more a technocrat than politician, so his movement towards separatism might appear strange. But technocrats can do their sums. Catalonia may be in debt up to its neck and may be needing a massive bailout from Madrid, but it would be argued that it wouldn't be in so much debt if it hadn't been made to hand over money to pay for mad projects in regions of Spain which don't have a euro to urinate into.

What Mas isn't is a raving loony. He is basically a conservative politician when he's not being a technocrat. There may in fact be method in his madness if it were to result in a redefinition of Spain's regions, one that is more federal. Yet this comes at a time when there are arguments aplenty to get rid of the regions because they have been so financially promiscuous. Mas can't be accused of this when he has been introducing austerity measures in Catalonia that have made him unpopular. The independence thing might, therefore, be purely a political gambit to re-establish this lost popularity.

It is, though, a dangerous game, and the danger goes deeper than just a threat to declare independence. It shouldn't be forgotten that in 2006 the army general José Mena was put under house arrest for suggesting that the military might intervene were Catalonia to be granted greater autonomy. Unlike Mena, an army colonel, Francisco Alamán Castro, appears to have avoided any sanction for stating the case for military intervention in the event of independence. This was in an interview with a far-right publication at the end of last month. Catalonia, separatism, independence conjure up memories and worrying scenarios that make the claim for independence a very different beast to that of Scotland's.

Mas may well call an election in November and hope that he gets a popular mandate for independence. It's not out of the question that he would, though any move towards independence would be blocked by Rajoy raising the defence of the Constitution which doesn't permit a region's independence. Mas argues that this is a clause that reflected the time when it was written, three years after Franco's death. Be this as it may, Rajoy has said he will uphold the Constitution if necessary. The question is how he is prepared to uphold it.


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