The participatory process is not a proper referendum and has no
legal effects, because during the last 2 years the Spanish authorities
refused to negotiate about how to make it possible. They ignored the
democratic mandate resulting from the last elections to the Catalan
Parliament, held in November 2012, when almost 80% of the new chamber
had promised during the campaign a legal self-determination vote.
Furthermore, Spanish authorities also rejected all the proposals made by
Catalan representatives in those 2 years. They also rejected the
repeated offer to renegotiate the exact date and question wording that
was initially agreed by 6 Catalan parties representing almost two thirds
of the Parliament in December 2013, when they decided not wait any
longer for the Spanish Government to change its no-to-everything
blocking attitude.
Sunday’s vote has no legal effect but it has a great political importance
This Sunday’s process is not the original consultation vote, which
was temporarily suspended by the Constitutional Court upon request of
the Spanish Government. In order to respect the legal framework, the
Catalan Government launched this light version of the original vote,
which does not have all the guarantees of a proper election since it is
run by volunteers. In fact, the Catalan President, Artur Mas, recognised
that the “definitive referendum” will be early Catalan elections
transformed into a plebiscite on independence by the political parties.
However, despite it is not a proper referendum, this Sunday’s vote has a
great symbolical and political importance, even though Rajoy downplayed
it once again on Saturday after he had unsuccessfully tried to stop it
for the last few weeks. In fact, when this participatory process was
announced on the 14th of October, the Spanish Government
downplayed it and make jokes about, but when parties supporting
self-determination put their quarrels aside and they started to work
together to guarantee the participatory process’ success, Rajoy started
to consider it a serious threat and filed an appeal to the
Constitutional Court to stop it. This weekend, when he realised he could
not stop the vote from happening, he changed his approach once again
and downplayed it.
Foreigners and those aged 16 and 17 can also participate
All Catalans aged 16 or older as well as all foreign-nationals living
in Catalonia cast their vote in Sunday’s participatory process, which
will run from 9am to 8pm. There is no previously-made electoral census,
in order not to avoid legal obstacle from Spanish authorities, although
each person can only vote in one specific polling station according to
their home address. The census will be built during the vote, as it is
done in other countries, such as in some states of US, and an IT system
will make sure that voters do not vote twice. Voters will have to
present their Spanish ID card (DNI or NIE) and they will be registered
on the spot by the volunteers running the polling station. Foreign
residents from an EU country will need to prove they have been living
for a minimum of 1 year living in Catalonia and non-EU-nationals, a
minimum of 3 years.
Catalans living abroad are also voting
In addition, Catalans living abroad can also vote in one of the 17
voting centres spread throughout the world in Catalan Government’s
commercial offices (to attract foreign investment and help Catalan
companies reach new markets), if they have previously signed a register.
In fact, the first Catalan to cast his ballot box was a young man in
Sydney, where all Catalans living in Australia could vote. Sydney has
been followed by Tokyo and Hong-Kong. And the last polling station
located abroad to close its doors will be that of Los Angeles. The 17
polling stations located overseas, in cities such as London, Paris,
Berlin, New York and Buenos Aires, are added to the voting centres
spread throughout Catalonia.
There are polling stations in 942 of the 947 existing municipalities
in Catalonia, located in high-schools or, in small towns and villages
without Catalan Government’s venues such as high-schools, the vote takes
place in a municipal centre. However there are 5 municipalities that
will not have a polling station for two different reasons. Pontons and
Horta de Sant Joan, 2 small town halls run by the People’s Party (PP) –
which also runs the Spanish Government, refused to hand over a public
venue. Citizens living there will be offered free transportation by
pro-independence groups to vote in another town. 3 others are small
mountain villages and citizens will also be offered free transport to go
and cast their ballot.
Last-minute obstacles and attempts to stop the vote
In the last 24 hours there have been a series of attempts by Spanish
nationalists to stop the vote from taking place or to put some obstacles
in its way. They range from small vandalism incidents to significant
cyber-attacks and judicial processes. On Sunday early morning a very
small number of voting centres appeared with anti-vote graffiti on their
walls and with the door locks being covered in silicone. However,
volunteers managed to open the voting centres anyway. Besides, on
Saturday, the Catalan Government’s entire website suffered a massive
cyber-attack that put it offline for most of the day. In addition, the
civil society associations that organised the massive pro-independence
demonstrations in 2012, 2013 and 2014 al received a cyber-attack that
saturated their call centres for several hours, preventing them from
carrying out the phoning campaign to mobilise voters. On top of this,
the Association of Pro-Independence Municipalities (AMI) also reported a
similar attack on the same day.
On Thursday, the Spanish Government’s Delegate in Catalonia, María de
los Llanos de Luna, sent letter to all the high-school directors and
high officers in town halls to remind them about the Constitutional
Court’s suspension and warn them about potential legal consequences. On
Friday, the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría,
did a similar thing, also talking about “potential legal consequences”
for civil servants and mayors, although she refused to specify which
consequences could be.
Judicial complaints are filed and the Public Prosecution Office is watching
On Saturday, the pro-Spain’s unity association Societat Civil
Catalana filed a judicial complaint asking the vote to be stopped. A few
days ago, the extreme-right and Spanish nationalist organisation Manos
Limpias (which is not related to the Italian homonym association) had
also requested justice to stop the vote from happening and to act
against the Catalan President. On Sunday morning, the Spanish
nationalist and populist party UPyD - which has no representation
Catalonia’s main institutions - and the extreme-right and xenophobic
party PxC filed a complaint asking the judge to act urgently and stop
the vote. Extreme-right party Falange, which was the only political
party allowed during Franco's dictatorship, also filed a complaint.
These judicial complaints are to be added to the warning sent on
Saturday by the Public Prosecutor Office, whose Director is directly
appointed by the Spanish Justice Minister and reports to him. The Public
Prosecutor launched an investigation into the participatory process. In
addition, in the evening, it asked the Mossos d’Esquadra police force –
run by the Catalan Government – to identify the people opening the
voting centres and those who had authorised it. A few minutes after, the
Catalan Government replied that it was the Government that had
authorised the access and that volunteers were not responsible and
therefore would not be identified by police. And this morning, voting
centres opened at 9am, without police blocking the access, nor
identifying people.
