Barely on the heels of last week’s momentous referendum held in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, Spain’s Catalonia region took the same step on Sunday, with regional leader Carle Puigdemont declaring upon hearing unofficial referendum results that a door has been opened to a unilateral declaration of independence.
“With this day of hope and suffering, the citizens of Catalonia have won the right to an independent state in the form a republic,” Mr Puigdemont said in a televised address flanked by other senior Catalan leaders.
“My government in the next few days we will send the results of today’s vote to the Catalan parliament, where the sovereignty of our people lies, so that it can act in accordance with the law of the referendum.”
With regard to the violence at the polls by Spanish police, he said: “The Spanish government has today written a shameful page in its relationship with Catalonia.”
The European Union, he added, could no longer “look the other way.”
The Catalan parliament by law has 48 hours in which to declare independence in accordance with a law that it passed on September 6.
The referendum queried voters on a single question: “Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?” Two boxes were available for an answer: yes or no. Under its new referendum law, the result is binding and if a “yes” independence must be declared within 48 hours after the declaration of results by the Catalan electoral commission.
Approximately 15,000 Jews will be affected by this decision.
According to the European Jewish Congress (EJC), about one-third of the 45,000 Jews of Spain live in Catalonia.
Despite Sunday’s violence, Jewish community celebrations of Sukkot and Simchat Torah in Barcelona are scheduled to take place as usual, according to community leader Victor Sorenssen, quoted by The Jewish Forward.
No one that he was aware of was injured in the melee, he said, adding that “the Jewish community … respect(s) all the different approaches and points of view of our members that range from pro-independence to being against.”
Catalonia, home to 7.5 million people and one of Spain’s wealthiest and most productive regions, is led by its capital city, Barcelona, in northeastern Spain. In November 2014, Catalans held an unofficial poll among its 5.4 million eligible voters on whether to secede from Spain. At that time, 80 percent voted in favor.
Hundreds of Catalans were filmed by the BBC being bloodied by Spanish police as they streamed to the polls to vote on Sunday despite the violent efforts of Spanish police trying in vain to block them from casting their ballots.
The BBC quoted the Catalan government as saying more than 800 people were injured in the clashes.
According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, there were three arrests and 33 police officers hurt. The Catalan authorities told reporters that 319 of the 2,315 polling stations were closed by Spanish police wielding batons and some of whom fired rubber bullets at voters.
Separatist leaders had vowed they would declare independence from Madrid within 48 hours if the referendum resulted in a ‘yes’ for secession.
Although the country’s Constitutional Court had suspended the vote — declaring it invalid in much the same way that Baghdad did last week with the referendum held by the Kurdish Regional Government — crowds overflowed at polling stations across Catalonia from the wee hours before dawn as Catalans waited to make their wishes known at the ballot box, even if it meant braving the rage of the Spanish government.