Spain's top court suspends Catalan leader from office
September 28, 2020
Quim Torra has lost an appeal against his current conviction for disobedience and will have to step down. Pro-independence organizations have urged citizens in the region to protest the ruling.
Torra was convicted in December of last year for refusing to remove a banner with separatist slogans from his government's headquarters in the run-up to the April 2019 general election. This was despite repeated appeals by the Spanish election board on grounds that it violated institutional neutrality.
He was fined €30,000 ($35,000) and barred from holding office for 18 months, but had been allowed to remain in power during the appeal process.
The ruling means that Torra's deputy, Pere Aragones, would now take over as interim president until a new election is held.
"The disqualification of Quim Torra is a serious attack on the self-government of Catalonia," separatist group Omnium Cultural said, accusing the Spanish government of waging a "dirty war against independence."
Quim Torra is a staunch supporter of the region’s separatist movement. He became Catalonia's president following the 2017 push for independence from Spain, which led his predecessor, Carles Puigdemont, to flee to Belgium.
Puigdemont was removed from his presidency for holding the 2017 independence referendum and issuing the region’s independence declaration.
Spain’s top court said Torra had ''stubbornly'' disobeyed the country's electoral board by refusing to take down a banner — supporting a dozen former Catalan Cabinet members, lawmakers and activists tied to the 2017 declaration — from a balcony in the regional government's headquarters.
According to recent polls and past election results, Catalans are roughly split on the question of whether it should become independent from Spain.
Catalans, Galicians, Basques and more: Spain's many nationalities
With a strong identity of its own, Catalonia is now at the center of a tug-of-war between the central government and autonomous authorities. To differing degrees, various parts of Spain have strong national self-images.
Image: Reuters/J. Nazca
A Roman province
The Romans had several provinces with Hispania in their names on the Iberian Peninsula. Modern Spain also encompasses such wide cultural diversity that the Spanish themselves speak of Las Espanas (The Spains). The country in its present form was never united under a single ruler until after the 1702-14 War of the Spanish Succession.
Image: picture-alliance/Prisma Archivo
A nation of regions
Spanish nationalism is strong in many regions, with former kingdoms such as Aragon largely content to be recognized as part of the Spanish nation-state. Asturias has its own language, but takes pride in its role as the birthplace of the Reconquista, or the taking back of Iberia from the Moors. Spanish nationalism was evident in recent years in Madrid in response to Catalonia's referendum.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Soriano
Bloodied fingers
Catalonia has long battled for independence. Its flag, the Senyera, is very similar to that of Aragon, to which it once belonged. The design is fabled to represent four bloodied fingers of Count Wilfred the Hairy being passed over a gold shield. Catalans were fairly happy with their situation until a court struck down the region's statute of autonomy in 2006 and support for independence grew.
Image: picture-alliance/Zumapress/M. Oesterle
No great appetite
Valencianismo, or Valencian nationalism, sprang out of the Renaixenca, an early-19th-century rebirth of the Catalan language, of which Valencian is just one variant. However, nationalist sentiment is not widespread in the region, which is home to Spain's Tomatina tomato-throwing festival. The Valencian Nationalist Bloc usually gets about 4 percent of the vote for the autonomous parliament.
Image: picture-alliance/Gtresonline
Other Catalan territories
The Balearic Islands — Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca, Formentera — all speak variants of Catalan. Though there is a greater nationalist feeling on the islands than in Valencia, it is still more subdued than in Catalonia. Meanwhile, La Franja, a strip of Catalan-speaking land in Aragon, was split by the independence referendum, though most residents do not advocate self-determination for themselves.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Seeger
The Basque Country
Because of terror attacks by the ETA militant group, Basque separatists used to make the headlines far more often than Catalonia's independence movement. Separatists consider the Basque Country in France and Spain and the region of Navarre to be one nation. About a third of people want full independence, but most want more autonomy. A referendum proposed in 2008 was ruled illegal.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/R. Rivas
The Galician cause
Although it was the birthplace of the centralist dictator Francisco Franco, Galicia has the strongest tradition of separatism after Catalonia and the Basque Country. Even Spain's mainstream national parties display a streak of Galicianism in the region. Perhaps as a result, starkly nationalist parties receive a lower share of the regional vote.
The Arabic name al-Andalus originally refers to the areas of the Iberian Peninsula that were under Moorish rule for 760 years. As Christians reconquered territories, the area known as Andalusia shrank southwards. Most Andalusians voted for autonomy after Franco died in 1975, but there is little appetite for full independence.
