Contrasting articles on Catalunya and Euskadi

Thanks to Col·lectiu Emma, I've just read an interesting article by Paddy Woodworth, comparing what is happening in Catalunya with what is happening in Euskadi, the Basque Country, a place with which he seems to be well acquainted.

  Madrid's nightmare

  

  Foreign Policy, 20 August 2010

It's worth reading alongside a contrasting article that appeared just over a week ago in Spiegel Online.

  Zero Tolerance in the Fight against ETA

  

  Spiegel Online, 13 August 2010

One of the great unanswerable questions of the last century is whether a country like Ireland would ever have won its independence from the United Kingdom if it had not fought a war for it; or whether the UK would ever have relinquished its strategic interest in the north if people hadn't been prepared to fight for it. We in Wales and Scotland can only consider ourselves fortunate that we can be independent whenever we vote for it.

But once a fight for independence has become violent—or indeed the fight to prevent it, for in any armed conflict both sides use violence—it requires no little effort and commitment to then fight by peaceful and democratic means.

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To my mind, Der Spiegel's article reads too much like a vanity piece for Patxi Lopez. As I read the situation in Euskadi, the Basques will undoubtedly vote for independence whenever Spain allows them to do so ... that's why Spain refuses to let them exercise that choice. They have been able to portray far too many Basque leaders calling for independence as terrorist sympathizers, imprisoning them and banning their parties.

But Catalunya, like Wales and Scotland, has no real history of violence in the fight for independence, so the issue is not clouded in the same was as it has been in Ireland and Euskadi. If Catalunya can gain its independence by peaceful means (the onus being on the Spanish, because they're the ones who might use military force to prevent it) it will then be hard for them not to let Euskadi do the same.

And if Scotland wins its independence, it might in turn be the catalyst that triggers Irish reunification. For the unionist community has far stronger cultural and social links with Scotland than with the RUK. And their loyalty to the crown will be severely tested when a queen they respect and can look up to passes away to be replaced by a son who cannot be looked up to.