Scots Independence Genie Fires Separatist Dreams of EU Statehood
A short walk from Edinburgh Castle, past tourist stores hawking kilts and tartan scarves, a church hall is about to become a patch of Barcelona for the day.
As Scotland votes next week on whether to break up the U.K. after more than three centuries, a group of about 100 Catalans will gather to watch the outcome unfold and ponder the implications for their own bid for freedom from Spain.
“I get goose bumps just thinking about it,” said Raquel Gella, 25, a Catalan marketing manager who has lived in Scotland for five years after arriving as a student. “Who has the chance to see history made in two countries?”
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The Catalan interest is just the tip of the iceberg. Whether Scots choose to remain in the U.K. or call time on the 307-year-old union with England and Wales, the vote has already proved to separatists from Flanders to Venice that the dream of taking control of their own futures has a chance of becoming reality.
If the political spirits of the 18th and 19th centuries were dedicated to forging larger sovereign states, the referendum has opened up an alternative vision for the 21st century in which smaller national groups dismantle them. That reshaping of the map has ramifications for governments, finances, international relations, companies and investors.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
If the Scottish referendum is successful for the Yes campaign, it will trigger at least… Read More
Evolving Europe
The pound dropped to the weakest since November against the dollar yesterday after polls showed the pro-independence campaign in Scotland had wiped out the No camp’s long-standing advantage, leaving the result too close to call. In Spain, bonds fell, with 10-year yields rising the most since May.
Scotland’s Bid for Independence
“The symbolic value of what is going to happen in Scotland is very important,” said Gerolf Annemans, president of Vlaams Belang, a Flemish party calling for Flanders to secede from Belgium. “Marching toward independence and the reshuffling of the older nation states is a logical evolution, and Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders are pieces of that new Europe.”
The Scottish vote has sharpened the divide in Europe between competing schools of thought. One says that globalization and a hyper-connected world mean the continent should consign cultural and ethnic tensions to history. The other says the European Union is exactly the framework in which regions and provinces can assert their identities and thrive.
That would mean “a Europe of peoples and regions where the Bavarians can be Bavarians instead of Germans,” Ibon Areso, the mayor of Bilbao, the economic capital of Spain’s Basque region, said in an interview. “A Europe that is more a Europe within which different identities can live together more easily.”
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
At the heart of the argument is economics. The Scottish nationalists want control of… Read More
Integration Blueprint
The successive waves of European integration over half a century have already changed the definition of a state, said Robert Lineira, apolitics researcher at Edinburgh University.
“The nation, state and market had to be the same but with the EU that’s not true anymore,” said Lineira, who moved to the Scottish capital from Barcelona in January. “The state doesn’t mean what it used to mean. The independence that the Scottish nationalists are proposing doesn’t look like a traditional state.”
The U.K. has been a blueprint for political and economic integration. The 1707 Acts of Union that united the English and Scottish Parliaments in London and Edinburgh merged currencies, budgets, trade tariffs and weights and measures and opened an era of nation-building as the English and Scots went on together to become an imperial power beyond parallel.
300 Years
Spain consolidated its control of Catalonia after the siege of Barcelona which ended 300 years ago tomorrow. Germany, Italy and smaller countries like Belgium were stitched together in the 19th century from city states and provinces. Places like Veneto were joined with Sicily, Prussia married with Bavaria.
The formation of the U.K. was precipitated by the failure of a Scottish trading colony in Panama, an event that bankrupted Scotland and paved the way for what those who favor independence now see as a marriage of convenience.
Scottish nationalists led by Alex Salmond, who heads the semi-autonomous government in Edinburgh, say the U.K. served its purpose and now it’s time for smaller countries to have their day again. They are spurred on by the history of Europe since World War II and the creation of newly independent states such as the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Salmond points to 193 countries in the United Nations compared with 55 originally in 1945. The EU now has 28 members, a quarter of which didn’t exist as sovereign states a little over two decades ago.
Scotland’s Gift
“Scotland has given so much to the world in terms of invention and innovation and if we do achieve a Yes vote, that demonstration of a peaceful path to change will be another great gift,” Michael Russell, education secretary in Salmond’s administration, said in a speech in Glasgow last week.
If the Scottish referendum is successful for the Yes campaign, it will trigger at least 18 months of negotiations to carve up the U.K.’s institutions, including moving the British nuclear submarine fleet from the deep waters of Gare Loch about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Glasgow.
It will also ensure the ripples across Europe continue, said Sebastian Balfour, professor emeritus of contemporary Spanish studies at the London School of Economics.
“The response within the nation states of the EU is going to be quite alarmist,” said Balfour. “I certainly see a whole range of responses to tame this movement, to give it some kind of institutional form that does not undermine the nation state.”
Barcelona Crowd
The rumblings are already being felt: Balfour will be in Barcelona as an observer tomorrow when Catalan nationalists aim to bring more than a million people onto the streets of the region’s capital to build momentum for their own independence ballot set for Nov. 9. Unlike in the U.K., that’s a vote the central government in Madrid refuses to recognize.
Then there are the Basque provinces and the Veneto region of northeast Italy. An informal Internet vote in Veneto in March found 89 percent of respondents wanted to leave Italy, according to results on the plebiscito.eu website.
Gianluca Busato, who organized the poll and runs the website, said last month that the Scottish and Catalan votes showed “the wind is blowing louder and louder for independence.” He declined to comment for this story.
Belgian Talks
In Belgium, forged as a state in 1830 after winning independence from the Netherlands, elections in May saw the N-VA Flemish nationalists become the biggest party. They are in talks with groups from both sides of the linguistic divide to form a coalition and enter the federal government for the first time.
Never far from the heart of the argument is economics, as well as what happens to debt and who pays for what.
Scottish nationalists want control of North Sea oil and say Scotland, whose gross domestic product makes up about 10 percent of the U.K.’s, would be the 14th richest country in the world. Catalans too say they can run their affairs better than Spain.
“That’s actually an unspoken key part of the equation,” said Balfour. “The votes in favor of independence are fueled very much by the failure of the nation state because it has followed austerity policies to generate growth and jobs.”
Both sides in Scotland say the battle will go down to the wire.
A YouGov Plc poll last weekend suggested the lead for the No campaign had crumbled, with the Yes side overtaking for the first time. A monthly survey by TNS published yesterday provided more evidence of a swing to the nationalists, reducing the No lead to a single percentage point.
‘Already Won’
For many Catalans, it’s a victory for Scotland just to hold a vote on independence, something the Spanish government has said it won’t agree to for Catalonia.
“Regardless of the result, Scotland has already won, because they can exercise their sovereignty, they can decide,” said Carme Forcadell, president of the Catalan National Assembly, a campaigning group that has organized tomorrow’s demonstrations in Barcelona.
In Edinburgh, the church hall on George IV Bridge in the city’s Old Town is booked for 120 people to mark the day of the Scottish vote, with debates in Catalan on politics and cultural representation in the Spanish region.
At least 50 people are coming over especially from Barcelona and representatives of all political parties have been invited, said Meritxell Ramirez-Olle, president of Scotland’s Catalan Centre, which is organizing the event.
Genie Released
Gella, the 25-year-old marketing manager, says while she’s not sure of the outcome in Scotland, she’s clear about how Catalans will vote if they’re allowed. As an EU citizen — the Scottish vote is for residents rather than U.K. nationals — she is eligible to vote in both ballots.
“The point of no return” has been passed, she said on a lunch break in Edinburgh in July. “Catalonia will become independent regardless of the result in Scotland.”
Martin Davis, chief executive officer of Edinburgh-based fund management company Kames Capital, has been advising clients as far back as May to recognize the way that voters like Gella are changing the status quo.
While the referendum may go either way, its consequences are already reverberating across the continent, he told the audience at a dinner on the Royal Yacht Britannia.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” he said.
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