Federalism versus Nationalism: the Case of Catalonia

Domènec Ruiz Devesa
Member of the Executive Bureau of the UEF. Vice President of UEF-Spain

European (and global) federalism came into being, as a political force, in the aftermath of World War II in order to overcome nationalisms and unite in a common political project the beleaguered nation-states of the Old Continent, and, progressively, the entire humankind.

This is still the case today, and to some extent this political philosophy has scored one historically important success with the establishment of the European Union, even though it is not yet a fully federal polity.

However, nationalist tendencies have proved resilient in the West and around the world, and to some extent they have even been reinvigorated by an unbalanced globalization process, with its lack of a strong social and political dimension. Thus, nationalism has recently proved victorious, albeit by small margins, in the United Kingdom, with Brexit, and in the United States, with the election of Donald Trump, a media and business personality and vocal supporter of a strictly “America first” and anti-immigrant policy.

Simply put, nationalism as a doctrine believes that culturally homogeneous or dominant communities must have their own separate political organization in a state form, and that the exercise of sovereignty over the territory in which this community is politically organized must be absolute.

Both assumptions are problematic from the point of view of guaranteeing a peaceful international order. The first one requires either the multiplication of sovereign States in strict correspondence of the many identifiable cultural communities – in Europe this number could be as much as a hundred – , or the suppression of cultural minorities in cases in which one particular nationalism is dominant over others in a given geographical space.

This nationalist principle affects the stability of the currently established political states, while also complicating decision-making in inter-state affairs.

The second principle fosters wars, since the dogma of absolute sovereignty means that no superior power is recognized by the State, and the state of anarchy reigns among the States. The rule of force, instead of the rule of law, prevails.

Federalism on the contrary opposes both nationalist dogmas. Sovereignty is not absolute, except perhaps if it were exercised with humanity to one and all, while different cultural communities could belong to the same political organization provided that they share the same public values and principles. Federalism also recognizes the right of autonomy for distinct cultural communities, thus opposing dominant nationalisms within nation-states.

In any event, from a federalist point of view, even the notion of nation is quite problematic. Renan, in his famous conference, ended up concluding that it cannot be defined by language, culture or history, but by a considerable number of people believing to belong to one community^[1]. Albertini seemed to deny the concept altogether^[2].

This why federalism aims to unite not nations, but democratic States, which is an objective notion characterized by the existence of a political entity that has the monopoly of the use of force (power) within a given territory, and exercises it according to the rule of law. This is regardless of whether in the State there is one or more nations, assuming this concept as merely describing a cultural community. Indeed, it is more accurate to say that States created national identities through centralized education systems and military conscription, than the other way around.

The European Union is the concrete realization of this ideal: the old European nation-States, determined to avoid more wars in the continent, decided to pool their sovereignties in an increasing number of fields, effectively setting up a multilingual and multicultural political project, even if a common European cultural conscience is also acknowledged.

The Catalan independence movement, supported by no more than 48% of the electorate according to the outcome of the September 2015 regional poll, could be seen as yet another example of a nationalist backlash, fostered by the economic and financial crisis and the existence in a substantial part of the population of a strong identity feeling, seen as incompatible with Spanish citizenship.

The Catalan question, though quite complex and influenced by a diversity of variables, clearly revolves around the old questions of national identity and wealth redistribution^[3], some other conjunctional factors notwithstanding, such as the annulment by the Spanish Constitutional Court of a number of articles of the revised Statute of Autonomy in 2010, after having been approved by popular referendum in the region.

Catalan nationalism has created the notion of a Catalan nation mainly on the basis of the Catalan language^[4], which is a Latin language closely related to Italian, French and Spanish, since there has never been an independent Catalan state. Historically speaking, the old county of Barcelona joined the Kingdom of Aragon in the Middle Ages, which was then much larger than present-day Catalonia, including Aragon, Valencia, the Balearic islands and at some point, even Sardinia and Sicily. This Kingdom then entered in a dynastic union with Castile in the XV century, with the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand. Still, Catalan is not only spoken in Catalonia, but also in Valencia and the Balearic islands.

Since the passing of the Spanish Constitution in 1978, Spain is in fact a federal State, the fourth most decentralized of the OECD. Catalonia has enjoyed since then self-government, endowed with a regional parliament with quasi-exclusive legislative competencies in many fields, including education and culture.

Thus, there is not a clear historical or legal basis for the exercise of external self-determination in the case of Catalonia, since according to the United Nations a territory can legally secede from a State in cases of military occupation, colonialism, cultural discrimination, or continued and massive human rights violations, called, in this last instance, after the case of Kosovo, the “remedy secession”.

The other driving force behind the nationalist drive in Catalonia, aside from the successful construction of an exclusive national identity, at least for half of the population, is a perception of unfair redistributive policies vis à vis other regions in Spain, which is typical of other rich territories in Europe (Veneto in Italy, Flanders in Belgium, etc.)

Indeed, in 2012, the nationalist president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, launched a bid for independence after the central government rejected his claim of allowing the region to collect all taxes and to contribute to the common national budget as much as it received in transfers from it, thus nullifying any redistributive effect.

In 2014, the nationalist movement unilaterally organised an informal referendum for independence, in which less than half of the electorate participated. In 2015, nationalist parties failed to achieve at least 50% of the vote in the regional election, but they nonetheless pursued their independence agenda. Finally, on 6-7 of September 2017, the pro-independence majority in the Catalan parliament passed two unconstitutional bills that were used as the legal base for a self-determination referendum to be held on October 1^st. Again, no more than 40% participated in an unconstitutional referendum with no independent recounting body, according to the nationalists themselves. On the basis of this so-called referendum, the regional parliament, with the absence of most of the opposition, declared independence on the 27^th of October. On the same day, the Spanish Senate voted in favor of intervening in Catalonia’s autonomy, using as a legal base the mechanism of federal execution contemplated in Article 155 of the Constitution, which was copied from Article 37 of the Fundamental Law of the German Federal Republic.

The Catalan pro-independence movement therefore appears to contradict several federalist principles, both in substance and in methodology.

First, the Catalan nation, as a cultural community, is already fully self-determined within Spain, and any grievances could and should be resolved politically and in full respect of the constitutional boundaries. It is very clear that the unilateralism that has characterized the nationalist movement is incompatible with the rule of law and the principle of territorial integrity, both key principles of the Treaty on the European Union (Articles 2 and 4.2).

Secondly, federalism does not believe that every nation has the right to have its own separate, fully sovereign political state, because this contradicts the principle on which the concept of European federation lies upon, i.e. shared sovereignty and multicultural polity.

Furthermore, European federalism could not endorse the indiscriminate birth of new sovereign States in Europe, thereby affecting the strength and stability of the Union, and eventually complicating the decision making process, provided that the Union were to survive the challenges of intra-state nationalisms not only in Spain, but elsewhere. It is not by chance that the United States Supreme Court declared that the American federation was “an indestructible Union of indestructible States”, thus enforcing the principle of territorial integrity in a two way dimension, at the state and the federal levels.

Thirdly, independence based on economic claims of redistribution issues, apart from having been grossly exaggerated by nationalists^[5], is in contradiction with the solidarity principle, a fundamental value of both federalism and the European Union.

All in all, micro-nationalisms, whether in Spain or in any other Member State, are a regressive and negative force for the European integration process and a federal global governance. They pose a challenge to the federalist principles of supra-state sovereignty, multicultural political entities and solidarity, and a stable international order, and, in the case of Catalan nationalism, also to the rule of law and democratic statehood, the basis of any regional or global federation. If history has an end, in the ideological sense, this points towards a federation of free, democratic and liberal states, not to the proliferation of new narrowly conceived nations along linguistic or cultural lines.

Thus, regional nationalists should not be comforted in Europe, and even less so, by European Federalists.

^[1] Renan, Ernest (2010). Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?,  Mille et une nuits, Clamecy (France).

^[2] Albertini, Mario (1999). Nazionalismo e federalismo, Il Mulino, Bologna (Italy).

^[3] For an overview of the historical and economic claims of Catalan nationalism, see Borrell, Josep, and Francesc de Carreras et al. (2017), Escucha, Cataluña; Escucha, España, Península, Barcelona (Spain).

^[4] See Carreras (2017), op. cit.

^[5] See in particular Borrell, Josep, and Joan Llorach (2015), Las cuentas y los cuentos de la independencia, Catarata, Madrid, and the book reviews with a Federalist outlook by Llorente, Pilar (2017), “Economics and the Tall Tales of the Independence of Catalonia”, in The Federalist Debate, XXX, N°1, March 2016, and Ruiz Devesa, “Los mitos del nacionalismo y las cuentas de la independencia en Cataluña”, in Letra Internacional, N° 122, Summer.