Catalonians want more independence: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Marcelo Sanchez, a political commentator in Tehran, about pro-independence parties winning a majority of the votes in Catalonia’s regional elections.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: First of all, walk us through what this victory basically means for the pro-independence movement and Catalonia?

Sanchez: Well this is more than just a vote. Let’s remember that last year Catalonians wanted to hold a referendum and they pretty much decided to separate from Madrid but Madrid blocked every time the Catalonians wanted to try something like a referendum or something legal, some kind of legal maneuver in order to reclaim their own independence from Madrid, the central government was right there to block any initiative.

So Artur Mas and his followers did not have any other choice than call to early parliamentary elections on this September 27 and this date represents more than a hundred years of history and struggle for the Catalonian people to be independent because I spoke to another journalist earlier - he is in Barcelona - he told me Catalonians had their language, their culture, they had their own different identity from Spaniards and if you remember in 1975 Franco’s dictatorship concluded with a really nasty history of violence and prosecution and persecution against the Catalonian people and their language. They were trying to spanishize, trying to make more Spanish of the children in Barcelona, they were trying to limit the language.

So what we see here is just a conclusion of more than one hundred years of history and like they say it is a de facto referendum for the independence now. Let’s see that the road ahead is controversial and probably unclear because we do not who is going to be in the government in Madrid in the next 18 months but what is important here is that they have 72 seats out of 135 seats in the regional parliament. Those are the pro-independence political parties.  

Press TV: What’s to say that the Madrid government will not block independence efforts like it has done in the past?

Sanchez: Well they tried to lock in any possible way. They even [threatened] to start criminal charges against Artur Mas and his followers but this is something really difficult to say what is going to happen in the next 18 months. What probably is going to happen is that Catalonians will hold their own institutions like tax, armed forces or probably their own courts because they do want more independence.  

Polls show that Catalonians since 2008 are agreeing with Artur Mas and sided with Arthur Mas in this claim for independence. Now this happened because Madrid government, Partido Popular (the People's Party), Mariano Rajoy is just full of corruption. They were tired of this political motto. They provide to 20 percent the GDP of Spain and they just got tired of giving and giving and giving and not receiving.

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