One of the most anticipated statements after the proclamation of Brexit was that of Prime Minister Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Since Scotland voted mostly to remain in the European Union and Brexit has taken them out of it against that will, Sturgeon has asked to hold a new referendum and has expressed Scotland's "irrevocable will" to become independent.
In his speech, Sturgeon has referred to the Catalan process, which she wanted to give as an example of what not to do.
"The Catalan independence movement teaches us that a process without legality or legitimacy doesn't achieve independence".
It's an opinion that we have heard before among the ranks of Scottish nationalism. Despite the enormous differences between the two cases (Scotland was previously an independent country and British legality did contemplate an eventual independence referendum) at the beginning of the the Catalan "procès" European nationalisms followed with interest the steps of Mas and Puigdemont until Nationalist leaders embraced unilateralism, at which time the Scottish nationalists themselves began to question the methods of Catalan nationalism.
That the Catalan process has not respected the legality is not a subject of debate, because Catalan Nationalist leaders have made disobedience their flagship and they have as one of their mottos "We must disobey unfair laws", assuming as inspiration the roles of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King.
However, the accusation of "illegitimate" not only refers to the part that the rule of law can judge, that is, to the legality, but to that part that could only be judged if the process had been legal, and this is the fact that the referendum was not organized so that the will of the citizens of Catalonia could be reliably known. A vote without a legal framework (it didn't conform to the requirements of the Venice committee or the guidelines of the Statutory Guarantees Committee that nationalism had created for this purpose) in which the majority of Catalans decided not to vote (even taking as certain nationalism figures) in which only one part organized, executed, voted and counted and in which more than 80 municipalities with more yeses than inhabitants were detected, ballot boxes that arrived full at the polling stations, people who voted several times. ..
The fact is that the images of police violence profusely disseminated by the Catalan nationalist media (which grew with abundant fake news) still remain in the memory of Europeans, but they have not managed to hide that the clash was caused by unilateral action of some nationalist leaders who used people as pawns of a growing escalation of which today only remains images of the streets of Barcelona on fire.
European nationalist movements are looking for that "momentum" that allows them to ally in a common front that gives rise to the new states they are looking for, but Catalan nationalism does not mark the way, but in cases like Scotland's, it's being shown as an example of wrongdoing.
