Catalan leader says nationhood campaign alive

Catalonia’s leader has vowed to push ahead with a referendum that could lead to a historic split from Spain, despite being punished in snap regional elections.

Catalan president Artur Mas said the nationalist campaign was alive even as he struggled to form a government after voters Sunday slashed his majority and left no single party in command.

Before the vote, he had promised to organise a popular consultation on self-determination for Catalonia within four years if voters gave him a mandate.

“The road map to the consultation has a very clear majority at the ballot box,” Mas said Monday, declaring that he would launch discussions with other parties on Tuesday.

“The consultation has to go ahead and I cannot imagine conversations with other political formations in which this matter is not clearly on the table as a priority,” he said.

Mas’ centre-right nationalist alliance, Convergence and Union, remained well ahead in the vote but its share of the 135 parliamentary seats plunged from 62 to just 50.

Republican Left of Catalonia, a left-wing pro-independence party, surged from 10 seats to 21.

The results mean pro-sovereignty parties from right and left have a clear combined majority, but the prospects of them joining in battle for a new nation remain deeply uncertain.

Republican Left of Catalonia has already demanded anti-austerity measures such as lower taxes for the poor and a date for a referendum as a condition for its support of Mas.

The emergence of an independent Catalonia of 7.5 million people lying to the northeast of Spain seems a distant prospect in any case.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has vowed to block any break-up of Spain, saying it flouts the constitution.

The Spanish leader is demanding unity as he ponders seeking a bailout and struggles to overcome a deep recession, banking crisis, bloated deficit, and a 25-percent unemployment rate.

Catalonia, which traces its origins back more than a millennium, is proud of its language and culture, both of which were suppressed under the rule of General Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.

But Catalans feel they get a raw deal from Madrid, which raises far more from Catalonia in taxes than it returns to the region, a shortfall Mas estimates at 16 billion euros ($21 billion).

Catalonia, which has a debt of more than 40 billion euros, had to go cap in hand to Madrid this year for more than five billion euros to help make the payments, further stoking resentment.

At the same time, the wealthy region is being forced to cut spending on health, education and social welfare so as to help trim Spain’s annual public deficit.

Encouraged by a huge pro-independence march in Barcelona on September 11, Mas decided to seek greater taxing powers from Madrid. After being rebuffed, he called the regional elections two years early.

Catalans would vote in favour of independence in a referendum by 46 percent against 42 percent, according to a survey before the election in leading daily El Pais.

The region now accounts for more than one-fifth of Spain’s economic output and a quarter of its exports, and boasts one of the world’s finest football teams, Barcelona FC.