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Following up a complaint from Serbia, he U.N. General Assembly requested taht the International Court of Justice (ICJ) -on October 2008- should clarify the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence, which took place on the 17 th February 2008. After considering written statements from 36 U.N. member states, including Serbia, USA, France, Spain, etc., the court has finally delivered its conclusion: Kosovo’s independence is legal as the declaration of independence of 17 February 2008 did not violate general international law.
Despite this ruling, Serbia’s President Boris Tadic said his country would never recognise Kosovan independence, while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden reiterated “the United States’ unwavering commitment to Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. Meanwhile, Spain seems unaffected by the court’s decision and is not planning to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
Meanwhile, though, all the Spanish newspapers have rushed to say that the ICJ’s advisory opinion only applies to Kosovo and not to other cases such as Catalonia, Scotland or Wales. However, they don’t seem to have read the arguments used by Spain concerning why Kosovo should not be recognised, and how the ICJ has rejected each of them in its advisory opinion. But more indicative of Spain’s anxiety is precisely how fast and energetic it has protested to say that this ruling is not a precedent for Catalonia.
Only time will prove whether this is true or false, but as of today, this is excellent news for Catalonia and for all the countries and stateless nations that aspire to become states in the near future.
“This is not the real Catalonia” is one the most recurrent arguments used by pro-Spanish Catalan politicians when they attempt to denigrate any kind of pro-Catalan event. We have come to a point, though, where this argument is so weak that it actually sounds funny. Following up last week’s massive demonstration where more than one million people participated in a rally calling for independence, the PP chairwoman in Catalonia Alicia Sánchez-Camacho said that “the real massive demonstration was that of the people who stayed home” and that “the real Catalonia gives support to the Spanish national team”. Well, if you say that in a country of 7 million people only one million was at the rally, as if this was a meaningless figure, you leave yourself open to the retort that out of the 47 million Spaniards, only 14 million followed la roja on TV, and thus, 32,5 million (69,2% of the population) didn’t care about the fortunes of the Spanish team.
 10th July demonstration in Barcelona Another claim that is already filed in the dumping site of discredited arguments is one that states that in Catalonia we look too much into ourselves and that we don’t talk about the issues people really care about. Yes, sure. That’s why for almost three weeks rampant unemployment and the related crisis have vanished from Spanish media: nothing but la roja. Obviously, Spanish citizens don’t care about anything else as long as la roja is doing well.
These are only some of the arguments used in this theoretically “plural” Spain, which jumps down the throat of the President of the Catalan Parliament for wanting a laptop kit while travelling in his official car, and everybody shuts up when, in the midst of this crisis, each of the 23 players of the Spanish national team receive a 600.000€ bonus. Aspects of the beautiful, real Spain…
Last Saturday, 1.5 million people (1.1 million according to the police) gathered in Barcelona in what was the first massive demonstration in favour of the independence of Catalonia. Using the slogan “We are a nation, we decide”, the rally brought the centre of Barcelona to a standstill, and for almost two hours the streets were jam-packed.
 The protest was organised by the prominent Catalan cultural organisation Òmnium Cultural with the public support of about 1600 other organisations, including four out of the six political parties represented in the Parliament of Catalonia (representing more than 85% of votes at the last parliamentary election), the two main trade unions (CCOO and UGT), the main employers' federation (Cipec), and F.C. Barcelona. This unprecedented demonstration will definitely set a record in Catalonia’s history. However, people didn’t march just to make a record, but to send a clear message to our politicians. The stated motive for such a massive protest was the recently announced slashing of the Catalan self-government charter by the Spanish Constitutional Court, but that was only the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. This was not merely, as some would like to think, about the regional authorities trying to snatch a few more administrative powers in the usual haggling with a stingy central government. This was about saying enough to a political arrangement whose proponents have never felt it necessary to offer Catalans a fair deal.: we want our own state.
The consequences of this demonstration are unclear, but at least should make it easier for CiU to embrace more ambitious goals and, for the rest of Catalan parties, it should help them realise that if we act together a Catalan state within the EU seems every day more and more attainable.
After several months of uncertainty, the former president of FC Barcelona,Joan Laporta, has confirmed through his website that he’ll run for president of Catalonia. With his seven years of unprecedented success at the front of the “unarmed army” of Catalonia (to quote M.V. Montalban), he is determined ”to devote his energy to a challenge that, if achieved, will ensure a better quality of life for all citizens who live and work in Catalonia”. 
His first step has been to create a new party, called Democràcia Catalana (Catalan Democracy), which he describes as Catalan, democratic, humanist, progressive, and an advocate of both individual and collective human rights, which will gather citizens from all walks of life with different profiles and backgrounds, and who share the premise that in the twenty-first century (and within the framework of the European Union) there’s no reason why Catalonia cannot be become a Member State of the EU.
Nobody knows to what extent Laporta can change the outcome of the next Catalan elections, but it will surely influence the political debate during the campaign, focusing it on the pros and cons of the independence of Catalonia. And despite recent polls suggesting that he wouldn’t obtain enough votes to win a seat in the Catalan parliament, his enormous popularity and straightforward arguments together with his charm and determination will likely have an impact on the results of ERC and CiU as well as on the PSC’s and even IC’s. Only time will tell whether his jump to politics is positive for the pursuit of independence, but, as of now, it basically looks positive.
(for a comprehensive overview of the whole statute of autonomy process read this)
So this is it, the end of autonomism and, consequently, the end of federalism in Spain. When we started the process for a new statute of autonomy for Catalonia in 2003, independentists supported the idea in the hope that it would be a significant step forward, despite the fact that our goal was to have a Constitution, not a statute of autonomy.
Now, after this painful process of cutting out articles and watering down the essence of the text, any claim that Catalonia can accommodate itself within the Spanish Constitution or that we can transform Spain into a federal state is groundless and against both reality and history.
 Hence, the independence of Catalonia remains as the only alternative that provides Catalans with a prosperous and feasible future. And in the same way we independentists accepted to give the autonomy option a try, it would only be normal that we now all gather around the project to build our own state within the European Union.
The referendums on the independence of Catalonia have reached the metropolitan area, the theoretically worse possible scenario, situated at the heart of the pro – PSOE network of influence and made up of large numbers of Catalans who came from Spain during the 60s and 70s.
The turnout average was 14%, but in places where the referendum was very well organized like in Mataró (121.000 inhabitants), the participation went up to 23%. As in the former waves of referendums, if we take into account the facts that their are non-binding, that are organized by volunteers with neither public funding nor institutional support and with residual presence in media, the result can be considered satisfactory.
Satisfactory not in the sense that this is was our goal or that we didn’t desire a turnout of 48,8% (as in the oficial referendum on the statute of autonomy), but in the sense that it shows that independentism is a real and growing movement, even in areas where not so long ago it would have been considered something of an endangered species.. Now we want a binding referendum, we are ready to face it and to win it (see the latest poll at El Periódico). And for the unionists who despise these referendums: the more you try to delay the official referendum, the bigger the support for independence will be.
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Rosell will succeed Laporta
Good bye, Spain?
About AVE (Spanish High-Speed Trains)
Who will succeed Laporta?
At least a naive strategy
Hereu digs his own political graveonly
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