TO DESCRIBE the Spanish government’s approach to the unconstitutional independence referendum organised by the regional administration in Catalonia on October 1st, a senior official recently quoted Sting: “Every step you take, I’ll be watching you.” And so it has been. In the run-up to the promised ballot, Catalonia is tense. But officials are confident that they have prevented anything resembling the organised vote that Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president, intended to deliver a “binding” result. The most that will happen, predicts another official in Madrid, is an informal exercise in which some votes may be cast in makeshift stalls.
The conservative government of Mariano Rajoy has relied on the courts to disrupt arrangements for the vote. On the orders of a Barcelona prosecutor, a dozen key Catalan officials were arrested (and later freed) and 9.8m ballot papers seized. The Generalitat, as the Catalan government is called, dissolved the electoral authority it...Continue reading
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