The right to decide what?

Having ridden the pro-secession wave that rose with September's La Diada (Catalan national day), the CiU Catalan nationalists and the regional premiership candidate, Artur Mas, are attempting to channel their energy toward the polls, with a program whose time frame includes not only the next legislature but extends to 2020 — the date by which premier Mas promises to have secured the existence of a new European state: Catalonia. The number of years may constitute his grouping's first admission of the difficulties standing in the way of his secessionist adventure, in terms of an independent Catalonia being admitted, without more ado, as a state within the European Union.

The now-revealed correspondence between the Spanish secretary of state for the EU, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, and the vice president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, throws cold water on the Catalan nationalist pretensions. In response to the contention made by the former that the EU "cannot recognize a unilateral declaration of independence by a part of a member state," and that, in the hypothetical case of a separation taking place, the new state would "have to apply for admission like any other applicant," Reding answers: "I fully agree with the view of the European constitutional framework that you expound in your letter." It is, then, out of place to trifle with the voters, giving them to understand that the EU would routinely admit a territory that had unilaterally split from Spain.

The leaders of CiU have done their best to dodge giving explanations on the dismal economic financial and social results of their management in the regional government, by the simple means of blaming Catalonia's problems on the connection with Spain, and promising an idyllic future within the European Union. But the road to such an idyll is a rather more tortuous one.

Indeed, CiU's program for the November 25 regional elections avoids the terms independence, separatism and secession, and merely speaks of a "state of our own" — which might serve either for a federal solution, or for full independence. The proposal comes on top of others — in themselves complicated enough for the rest of Spain, but of a supposedly constructive air in the eyes of Catalan voters — such as the creation of state-like structures (Revenue Agency, Social Security) or the co-official character of the Castilian language, suddenly esteemed an asset of the first order. With this rhetoric, Mas is seeking a clear parliamentary majority that would give him a free hand, while the road he would take from there would remain to be seen.

Meanwhile, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), unsupported by the Spain-wide Socialist Party (PSOE), is defending Catalan self-determination by proposing a legal referendum; and CiU proposes a referendum "so that the people of Catalonia can determine their collective future freely and democratically." Mariano Rajoy has now rediscovered the concept of a "plural Spain" so much touted a few years ago by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The warm-up to the Catalan electoral campaign is thick with confusion, when what is needed is clarity.