Catalonia secession to affect Spain negatively: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Marcelo Sanchez, a journalist and political commentator in Tehran, to discuss the autonomous Catalonia region’s possible secession from mainland Spain and creation of a new European country.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that if Catalonia eventually does secede, it will lose the privilege of being a member state of the EU. That does not seem to be scary enough for Catalonians; they are very determined to push through with their independence.

Sanchez: First the question here is who is David Cameron to dictate the policies for the European Union? David Cameron is speaking by himself probably because in this situation the fear actually is that Madrid, Spain as a whole state, can have negative consequences from the separation or the independence of Catalonia because this region – let me correct you here - they have 7.5 million people and they produce one quarter of Spanish exports. So the actual fear would be for Madrid not for Barcelona which is a capital of Catalonia to be separated from the European Union.

This would be a headache for the European Union leaders but not all of them are supporting the position of David Cameron because if you remember, Scottish independence movement has been a traditional political force before and they tried to have a referendum before London allowed them to have this political right, if you will, but in the case of Madrid they did not allow the Catalonian people to express their own right to independence and independence of Catalonia is not something new. You have to remember that under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship they were not even allowed to speak their own language. So they claimed that Spanish government is taking too much taxes from them, they do not respect their self-determination to proclaim their own laws, they do not respect their culture or language. 

Press TV: Very interesting point that you have just touched upon. We know that of course Catalonia is one of Spain’s better-off regions and it counts for one fifth of Spain’s economy. So how will that –let’s change the question and the scenario – it is not going to affect, according to you Catalonia and Barcelona that much, but how will it affect Spain and then the EU in general?

Sanchez: This can set a precedent, a very important precedent, because if you think that Scottish people wanted to separate from the United Kingdom, then Catalonians want to separate, and all these things is moved by economy and money in the end because a couple of years ago the Spain economy experienced this financial bubble and they got into recession, unemployment was really high and still very high, there are a lot of accusations against Rajoy administration for corruption, actually speaking about corruption, Rajoy in August 28, they tried to discredit the movement of independence in Catalonia because they raided the offices of the political party of Artur Mas. They are trying everything possible in order to discredit these ideas but these ideas have been there since centuries ago.

This is not the fifth century, the unification of the kingdom of Spain. We live in the 21st century so we have to think that Catalonians want self-determination not just because this is an ideological or abstract idea. They want for practical reasons to be independent from Spain because they just feel that the administration in Madrid is just not enough and is not qualified enough in order to handle national business and this is just a fact. We can see the statistics on the economy of Spain. They have been downgraded.

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