Catalonia independence tragic for Spain economy: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Marcelo Sanchez, a journalist and political commentator in Tehran, to discuss the announcement of early parliamentary elections in Catalonia.

Following is a rough transcription.

Press TV: How do you read this snap elections and what it means for of course Catalonia and the question of independence?

Sanchez: Well. Essentially you have a situation where Mariano Rajoy is some kind of an ostrich because he sees the danger and he just put his head in a little hole, trying to avoid the reality of what is happening in Catalonia.

Like you mentioned before, the proxy elections of September 27 are just motivation for the Catalonian politics in order to move ahead to this process of separatism and independence. They wanted to do this long before and it has now just [become] official.

Basically, you have two positions; the government in Madrid, saying that this is just a parliamentary election, but they do not want to acknowledge the will of the people in Catalonia that they really want to separate from the central government in Spain. Then you have Convergència i Unió and Esquerra Republicana forming a united front for this cause of independence and like you said, they have 18 months afterwards. But the constitution in Spain and the central government in Madrid are calling to reject these ideas and also they threat to go to extreme measures if this votes pass and Catalonians really want to move toward independence.

They are threatening to have courts and even some kind of treason processes against the Catalonian leaders such as Arthur Mas and others who were really vocal about criticizing the role of the central government of Madrid. They blamed Madrid for austerity measures, unemployment and financial crisis. Catalonians do not want to be part of these financial initiatives from the government of Mariano Rajoy.

Press TV: Right but as you just mentioned the central government of Madrid is not just willing to acknowledge that a problem exists; however, does it still have the time to do so and give Catalonia some sort of political and economic autonomy to avert a split?

Sanchez: Over and over again these days we hear representatives from the Madrid government saying that ‘no this is just parliamentary elections, we should not pay attention to those separatist independent voices.’ Even Mariano Rajoy, maybe a month ago, went to Catalonia trying to convince the people there that his party, Partido Popular, he was trying to put into people’s minds that he was going to fix all these situations, all these polemic things about austerity in Spain. But the Catalonians do not buy these messages. What they want essentially is to go and choose for themselves what is going to be the future of this region because like we mentioned before it is such an important region for Spain’s economy.

So to lose Catalonia would mean tragedy for the economy of Spain, but at the same time to lose Catalonia would be something really positive for the people of this region because they would develop their own agencies, their own system of government and let’s remember they have their own language, their own culture and for hundreds of years they were some kind of a different identity inside of  the Spanish country.   

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