The World

By Victor Mallet in Madrid

Secessionists are making a noise again in western Europe. Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, is pushing for a referendum on independence from the UK. In Catalonia, more than a hundred towns and cities are preparing to hold referendums on independence from Spain on December 13.

How should unionists respond? Much is written about the choices taken by secessionists, especially the use or avoidance of violence and the role of ethnicity and language, but the dilemmas for the unionists on the other side of the argument are equally important.

From Canada to China, unionists often seem bereft of smart strategies. Central governments and supporters of existing nation states tend to look either repressive or weak.

Recent events in Spain suggest the best approach is benign neglect: in other words, smile a lot, agree with everyone, do nothing and wait for separatist firebrands to burn themselves out.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, responded with well-judged blandness to an unprecedented joint editorial in 12 Catalan newspapers in defence of “The dignity of Catalonia”. He had read the editorial, he said, “with great interest” and with “great respect” for its opinions. Who can argue with that?

But three years ago, Spain’s opposition Popular party – the main political force for Spanish unionism – made the mistake of mounting a court challenge against the newly approved statute of the autonomous region of Catalonia. The PP objected in particular to the use of the word “nation” to describe Catalonia, arguing that this was unconstitutional in the unitary state of Spain.

The trouble with this approach is that the Constitutional Court will eventually have to make a decision that is bound to make large numbers of people unhappy, whether Catalan nationalists, Spanish nationalists or both.

Indeed, it is the likely imminence of a ruling, and the widespread assumption that the judges will strike down at least part of the Catalan statute, that has raised the political heat in Catalonia and helped to spawn both the referendums and the joint editorial.

Given that Catalonia, like Scotland, already enjoys a high degree of autonomy, and given that only about a fifth of Catalans and a fifth of Scots favour full secession, there is a good case for the Constitutional Court to make a Solomonic judgment and then for the government to take as little action as is consistent with the ruling.

Unionists have little to gain by making a fuss and stoking the fires of separatism when they already have the quiet support of the majority.