Europe joins the campaign

The election campaign starting next week has a new protagonist: the European Union. From exile in Brussels, the main Together for Catalonia candidate and ousted Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, at the weekend criticised the EU’s response to Catalonia’s independence process. In fact, Puigdemont said he favoured a referendum to decide whether Catalonia wanted to stay part of the union, a suggestion criticised by Catalan political parties and remarks the president later clarified.

On Twitter yesterday, Puigdemont argued for the European credentials of the Catalan nationalist movement and said he was in favour of a Europe that is “more integrating, more prosperous, more democratic and more committed.” Puigdemont also argued that the Catalan conflict was an opportunity to move towards a “stronger European Union where the public increasingly has more of a say and states have increasingly less.”

Puigdemont’s former coalition ally, the ERC republican party, responded through spokesman, Sergi Sabrià, that Catalans are “Eurocritics” not “Eurosceptics”, and he dismissed the referendum idea. Meanwhile, ERC MP in the Spanish Congress, Gabriel Rufián, made his own contribution to the issue calling some of the EU’s recent actions, such as its handling of the refugee crisis, “miserable”.

As for Puigdemont’s PDeCAt party, leader Marta Pascal, retweeted Puigdemont’s message calling Catalan nationalism “Europeanist”, adding: “We want to be Europe. Let there be no doubt.” As for the EU, a European Commission spokesman responded to Puigdemont’s criticisms saying Europe is “a union of democracies, based on the rule of law.”