What Catalonia and Scotland can learn for each other?

Scotland and Catalonia are two very different countries but the people of Scotland and Catalonia both have a big decision to make. Wether to become independent and take their rightful place in the world or remain as they are.

One of the biggest differences is that the Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, has reluctantly agreed to allow Scotland's SNP (Scottish National Party) Government to hold an independence referendum. This was cemented by the Edinburgh agreement where issues of over the legality of the vote, who could vote and the wording of the question were agreed by the governments of Scotland and the UK. David Cameron's Conservative Party are in a coalition government in the UK parliament, which has a system designed to facilitate majority governments, while the SNP is in majority government at Holyrood, which has a system designed to prevent majority government. Cameron and his party are deeply unpopular in Scotland with only one Conservative MP sitting in Westminster. This is significant in the independence debate as many would be more likely to vote yes if it looked like the Conservatives were going to win the next Westminster election in 2015. For too long Scotland has had unpopular conservative policy's foisted upon them by an unmandated government in Scotland. Indeed any time Cameron has opened his mouth on the issue of Independence SNP membership has increased.

Unlike Cameron who realised that to resist a referendum would only lead to an increase in support for independence Mariano Rajoy has shown outright hostility toward the idea of a referendum in Catalonia and has even suggested it is illegal. Will the right to self determination enshrined in EU law it may be Rajoy that finds himself on the wrong side of international law. The problem with this is that it does leave the vote open to legal challenges and the current Spanish government would have no problem in challenging a yes vote. This means that even if there is a yes vote it could be years before they could declare independence and it may severely damage relations with Spain. In contrast Scotland hopes for a fairly straight forward transition to independence, hopefully in 2016, and to remain good friends with our neighbours in the south. It is likely Rajoy is so opposed to a referendum because he knows that when the full facts of independence and given to the Catalonians they will vote yes for independence. 

In Scotland we have two campaigns, Yes Scotland and Better Together, well established. Better Together, instead of really engaging and putting forward a positive case for staying in the union have resorted to scaremongering and negativity even trying to claim that the fact that Scotland has vast reserves of oil is a bad thing. Yes Scotland has capitalised on this by being relentlessly positive about Scotland and the future we could have as an independent country. A no campaign is inherently negative and this is something that Yes Scotland has very much capitalised on and Catalonia would do well to do the same.

Catalonia would be far more likely to vote yes in a referendum than Scotland would. Last year well over a million people attended a pro independence march. This is a number Yes Scotland can only dream of although a pro independence march in Edinburgh was well attended and it is hoped that this year's march will attract more people.

It is clear that,although very different Scotland and Catalonia would do well to look to each other and learn from each other during their campaigns for independence. 

 

Ealasaid MacAlister

@emacalister

Alba / Scotland