From a haughty count to a tax fraudster, via a very vengeful dictator.
As pro-independence parties win a majority in the local Parliament but fall short of 50 percent of the popular vote, we name 12 people responsible for Spain’s potential constitutional crisis.
1. Wilfred the Hairy: Perhaps the Knight of the White Moon who defeated Don Quixote on Barceloneta beach was really Wilfred the Hairy — Guifré el Pilós in Catalan. The legendary 9th Count of Barcelona, who died in 897 AD, had estates which extended over lands on both sides of the Pyrenees. No matter that there is little evidence to substantiate claims that the Catalan flag, the Senyera, is derived from his coat of arms or that he ruled over a nation called Catalunya. Wilfred, in the context of a distant, romanticized past, has endured as an important symbol of Catalan nationalism.
2. Count of Olivares: The arrogant, power-obsessed 17th-century grandee of Spain, forever immortalized astride his battle horse by the painter Velazquez, fuels the Catalan nationalist myth. In 1640, Olivares sent an army of 9,000 into Catalonia to raise more money to fight the French. Catalan historians portray Olivares as the bad guy provoking a rebellion in order to crush it and unify imperial Spain. He was unsuccessful and Catalan nationalists survived to fight another day in the War of Succession. The capitulation of Barcelona on September 17, 1714, was forever remembered by nationalists not as a defeat but as a heroic struggle for sovereignty. It was followed by the elimination of Catalonia’s “historic” rights by the Bourbon King Philip V.
3. Francisco Franco: It was Spain’s 20th-century dictator Franco who perhaps most brutally repressed the notion of a Catalan cultural and political identity, separate from the rest of Spain. Barcelona was the last bastion of resistance to the right-wing military uprising which sparked the Spanish Civil War in 1936 — and General Franco did not forgive his enemies. Thousands of Catalans fled across the border to neighboring France, while those that remained and were judged too left-wing or anti-Spanish were executed or imprisoned, the official use of their language and national flags banned. It bred resentment for generations.
4. Emilio Guruceta: On June 6, 1970, fans of FC Barcelona staged an uprising at the club’s historic Camp Nou Stadium. The unwitting agent provocateur was the Basque-born ref Emilio Guruceta, who allowed a penalty in favor of rival Real Madrid. The stadium erupted in protest, Barca players staged a walk-out, while Catalan fans grabbed the ball and refused to give it back before invading the pitch. The Guruceta game was charged with symbolism, a momentary liberation (Franco had another five years to go) with Barca assuming its historic — and somewhat questionable — mandate of being mes que un club, “more than just a club.”
5. Adolfo Suárez: the former Franco apparatchik turned smooth, reforming prime-minister, has Madrid Airport named after him in tribute to the role he played in ensuring that Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy passed off without major violence. But Suarez created a political minefield by negotiating a Spanish constitution that created 17 autonomous regions, each having a share of a limited cake with Catalans greedy for the biggest morsel.
6. Jordi Pujol: The founder of the main nationalist party Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya (CDC) had a consistent record of promoting Catalan separatism under the Franco regime and became a figurehead for Catalan nationalism after running the regional government from 1989 to 2003. Despite once owning a regional bank that went bankrupt, he got considerable concessions for the region during his tenure, in return for the parliamentary support of successive minority Madrid governments on the left and right. In July 2014, an investigation by Spain’s Inland Revenue forced him to admit to concealing large sums of money in secret foreign bank accounts, and to failing to declare the money to tax authorities over a period of more than 30 years. Rather than blame Pujol, many Catalans pointed the finger at Madrid for many years of a cover-up that suited national politics.
7. Iñaki Urdangarín: A former FC Barcelona professional handball player and member of the Spanish Olympic Committee, the husband of Spain’s Princess Cristina fueled Catalan republican sentiment by getting embroiled in an alleged fraud involving millions of euros of public funds which surfaced in 2011 and is the subject of an ongoing investigation. Cristina was stripped of her royal title by her brother Felipe when he took over as king following his father’s abdication. Spain’s new monarch was jeered and whistled along with the Spanish national anthem by pro-independence Barca fans in the Spanish Cup final.
8. José Luis Zapatero: Prime minister of a socialist government between 2004-2011, he failed to deliver a coherent strategy on Catalonia, leading to growing tensions between the region and Madrid as Spain’s economic crisis deepened. Under his watch, a reformed version of Catalonia’s autonomy statute came into force, giving the regional government greater powers and financial autonomy. Its preamble uses the word “nation” to describe Catalonia. But in July 2010 the Constitutional Court in Madrid struck down part of the 2006 autonomy statute, ruling that there is no legal basis for recognizing Catalonia as a nation within Spain and that Catalan should not take precedence over Castilian in the region.
9. Artur Mas: Having owed his career to his “political father,” the self-confessed tax-fraudster Pujol — with whom he served as minister and official spokesman — Mas has hardly covered himself in glory. Rather than lead from the front since being elected in 2010 as head of the regional government, he has allowed the broad church of Catalan nationalism to be driven by emotion rather than reason, and by a radical and intolerant separatism. His promise of independence has been based on a false democratic premise, for it is neither supported by a majority of Catalan voters nor backed by the EU. It is also risks undermining the Catalan economy, as major investors could take fright and pull out as the independence movement steps up the pressure, perhaps ditching Mas for not delivering. Mas’ legacy is a Catalonia at odds with the rest of Spain, and divided within itself.
10. Mariano Rajoy: The Spanish prime minister has shown himself lacking the charisma and the statesmanship to tackle the Catalan question in any meaningful way other than as a potential illegal act which needs to be resisted at all costs. While other former prime ministers from the left and the right have humored the Catalans, Rajoy has contributed to their persecution complex by denying them the right to hold a referendum — in contrast to Cameron’s high-risk strategy over Scotland which had Scots voting “no” as part of a consensual democratic process.
11. Xavier Garcia Albiol: Chosen by Rajoy as the Partido Popular (PP) regional leader in Catalonia, he has proved a disastrous Spanish bull in a fragile political china shop. The 47-year-old former basketball player has a forceful personality and presence — he is 6 feet 5 inches tall. He was chosen to lead the PP’s resistance to the separatists thanks to his success in becoming the mayor of Badalona, the region’s third-biggest city, with a campaign marked by its demonization of immigrants. In the recent Catalan elections, Albiol briefly became Trump-like, hitting out at Rajoy for his incompetence while showing himself to be to the right of Genghis Khan. Catalans responded by giving the PP their lowest-ever vote, causing it to be overtaken by the socialist PSOE and the moderate centrist Ciutadans as the main anti-independence parties.
12. Antonio Baños: The tie-less Barcelona-born leader of the radical left-wing and republican CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy) is the joker in the pack of Catalan politics with the potential to cause more harm than good. The Jeremy Corbyn of Catalan nationalism, this journalist and part-time rockstar has never hidden his disdain for established politicians who he considers largely vainglorious, corrupt, and out of step with the common good. His small independence party now has enough votes in the Catalan Parliament to be courted by Mas and his allies in pursuit of the absolute majority they need to pursue independence. But Baños — who wants to get rid of King Felipe and Catalan independence to extend to Valencia, Aragon, and southern France — has said he won’t enter an alliance with Mas as its leader. He is looking for someone more radically separatist.
Jimmy Burns is an author and journalist. His books include “Barca: A People’s Passion” (Bloomsbury, 2009). His new book “Francis, Pope of Good Promise” will be published in September by Constable/Little Brown in the U.K. and St Martin’s Press in the U.S.
