Catalonia - Politics

Politics

After Franco's death in 1975 and the adoption of a democratic constitution in Spain in 1978, Catalonia recovered and extended the powers that it had gained in the Statute of Autonomy of 1932 but lost with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.

The region has gradually achieved more autonomy since 1979. The Generalitat holds exclusive jurisdiction in culture, environment, communications, transportation, commerce, public safety and local government, and shares jurisdiction with the Spanish government in education, health and justice.

A relatively large sector of the population supports the ideas and policies of Catalan nationalism (also known as Catalanism), a political movement which defends the notion that Catalonia is a separate nation and advocates for either further political autonomy or full independence of Catalonia.

In the last Catalan parliamentary election, the parties that are considered nationalist have obtained 50.02% of the votes and hold 72 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament. Parties supporting full independence from the rest of Spain have obtained 11.56% of the votes, down from 14.08% in 2006 and 16.5% in 2003.

Parties that consider themselves either Catalan nationalist or independentist have been present in all Catalan governments since 1980. The largest Catalan nationalist party, Convergence and Union, has ruled Catalonia from 1980 to 2003, and has come back to power in the 2010 election. Between 2003 and 2010, a leftist coalition, composed by the Catalan Socialists' Party, the pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia and the leftist-environmentalist Initiative for Catalonia-Greens, implemented policies that widened Catalan autonomy.

The support for Catalan nationalism ranges from the desire for independence from the rest of Spain, expressed by Catalan independentists, to a more general demand for further autonomy and the federalisation of Spain. Since 2007, support for Catalan independence has been on the rise. According to an opinion poll from July 2007, two thirds of Catalans believed Catalonia should have a higher level of autonomy, but only 16.5% supported full independence from Spain.

The first survey following the Constitutional Court ruling that cut back elements of the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, published by La Vanguardia on July 18, 2010, found that a majority would support independence in a referendum. Already in February of the same year, a poll by the Open University of Catalonia gave more or less the same results. Other polls have shown lower support for independence, ranging from 40 to 49%.

In hundreds of non-binding local referendums on independence, organised across Catalonia from 13 September 2009, a large majority voted for independence, although critics argued that the polls were mostly held in pro-independence areas. As of December 2009, 94% of those voting backed independence from Spain, on a turn out of 25%. The final local referendum was held in Barcelona, in April 2011. On Sept. 11, 2012, a pro-independence march pulled in a crowd of an estimated 1.5 million, and poll results revealed that half the population of Catalonia supported secession from Spain. Two major factors were Spain's Constitutional Court's 2010 decision to declare part of the 2006 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia unconstitutional, as well as the fact that Catalonia contributes 19.49% of the federal government’s tax revenue, but only receives 14.03% of federal spending.