And so the Catalans voted and the heavens didn’t fall, Artur Mas did not levitate above the Palau de la Generalitat, grow horns or perform miracles, Spain didn’t collapse and the Spanish Destroyer allegedly moored just off the Catalan coast did not rain down death and destruction on us all.
In fact, what was maybe most striking about the vote on the 9th of November was how boringly normal it all was, just like any old vote back in Britain.
Our polling station was situated just around the corner from the Palau de la Música in central Barcelona, a helpful reminder of both Catalan architectural ingenuity and - as the centre of a recent financial scandal - the fact that Catalan leaders can disappoint like the worst of them (a useful thing to keep in mind during any political process, I find).
The lead up to the vote had been so long and engrossing that I was expecting fireworks, fights and electoral fury.
What I got instead was two tables of tired looking volunteers, a photographer and some flimsy paper ballot boxes. My intention of voting secretly went right out the window when I realised there were no booths or even shady corners to retire to. So, in best school child fashion, I screened my piece of paper from infringing eyes by use of some judicious elbows and made my choice.
I’m not going to tell you how I voted. But I will say that the decision wasn’t easy. Nor was it helped by the rather vague question posed.
The ballot asked: a) Do you want Catalonia to become a State? (Yes/No); if you answer yes, there is a second question: b) Do you want this State to be independent? (Yes/No)
I surely can’t be alone in thinking this question is rather rather unhelpful. For what, after all, is a state? There is, apparently, no working legal definition. So Catalonia could, as far as I understand, simply call itself a state with no one able to prove it isn’t.
Maybe this sounds like nitpicking. Maybe it is: a Yes / Yes vote is obviously a vote for an independent Catalonia. A No vote backs the status quo.
But I’m a pedantic Brit and, among all the people I’ve talked to about the Catalan vote, no one has been able to explain exactly what a Yes / No vote - backing a Catalan state that isn’t independent - would mean. A Federal Spain, maybe? Or Catalonia becoming equivalent to Scotland or Wales within the UK - that is a country within a country?
Perhaps this ambiguity is fitting. After all, the whole vote has rather been defined by such uncertainty. Did Catalonia hold a referendum on November 9? A consultation? A poll? A survey?
I’m still not really sure, with language being batted forward and back between the Catalan and Spanish parliaments like a particularly depressing game of tennis.
As I left the polling station I was struck again by how mundane the whole process had been. And then the thought struck: isn’t that just how it should be?
One of my favourite campaign slogans in the run up to the vote was “Votar és normal” - to vote is normal. It perfectly sums up how many Catalans see the independence movement: not necessarily for or against but eager to exercise their right to decide their own future, as is normal in a democracy.
And this was how the vote felt for me: normal, boring even, with little to raise the heartbeat above a gentle skip. This was just another vote, on another Sunday in another mundane school hall, just like you’ve done before and will do so again.
But isn’t that just the point? Voting on our future is what we do in democratic Europe. That’s not scandal, revelation or impudence. It’s the way things are. Boringly - and wonderfully - enough.
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Normal? Yes, in the sense that, other than the "ultres" in Girona who ended up crying, there were no imcidents to speak of. But emotion? There was plenty to go around. I was too late volunteering to man a ballot box (rather than an urn which is what I put my parents' ashes in), but I did man an ANC table at which we were collecting signatures to protest to the UN about the Spanish government's refusal to let us vote. I took a signature from a 92-year old "àvia" who promised to live long enough to be buried in an Independent Catalunya. THAT gave me goose pimples.
Publicado por: Brian McLean i Eyre | 11/11/2014 22:53:09