Defeat of Catalanism in the referendum in Northern Catalonia

BarcelonaCatalanist defeat in Northern Catalonia. Catalanism had bet it all on a referendum that was a double-edged sword and also served to measure its political impact. The playing field was the naming of the department – equivalent to a province – to try to abandon the Jacobin name of Pyrénées-Orientales from the French Revolution and reclaim the stolen Catalan identity, at least in the nomenclature, with the name Pyrénées Catalanes. What is the degree of connection to Catalanism of a population in which 35% say they can speak Catalan, but as a habitual language it drops to 5%? Well, relative, and the Catalanist option lost by 2,000 votes compared to the Pyrénées-Orientales option, which will remain as the official name. With 18,025 votes, the Jacobin path won (47.21% of the votes), above the 16,092 for the Catalanist option (42.15%) and the 4,061 for the third option of Pyrénées Méditerranée (10.64%), according to departmental data.

The vote took place from June 22 until August 15, but with a count that closed this Friday. And even so, there has been a considerable delay in the scrutiny, which was initially expected to finish around 6 p.m., but was delayed until after 9 p.m., due among other things to the arduous task of verifying the vote. With 40,656 votes – 38,178 valid – out of a total of 384,600 electors, that is, with an 11% turnout, minimal citizen involvement has been evident, but higher than in consultations on territorial name changes in other regions of France. Catalanism has neither mobilized enough nor managed to minimally recognize the proper identity of Northern Catalonia. Be that as it may, Plataforma per la Llengua has reacted after the consultation, highlighting "the support of thousands of Northern Catalans for the Catalan identity represented by the Pyrénées Catalanes option".

In a subsequent statement, Plataforma per la Llengua lamented the "lost opportunity" that, according to the entity, cannot be interpreted as a vote against Catalan identity. "A person can deeply feel their Catalan identity and, at the same time, prefer to keep an administrative designation they have known all their life," comments Gautier Sabrià, delegate of Plataforma per la Llengua, as reported by ACN.

The three final options were publicly presented in mid-June and the vote began on June 22, ending on August 15. Plataforma per la Llengua considers that concentrating a decision of such importance in the summer period, shortly after revealing the final options, was not the best way to generate broad and in-depth citizen debate.

The result of this citizen consultation is significant for the political Catalanism of the territory, articulated in parties like Unitat Catalana – an ally of Junts – which has a provincial deputy on the Departmental Council, Jaume Pol, even though it is also involved in state-level parties, such as the centrist Annabelle Brunet or the vice-president of the department Nicolas Garcia, former mayor of Elna, known for his commitment to the 'Procés' and his friendship with former president Carles Puigdemont. At the same time, the departmental majority, formed by an amalgam of left-wing and Catalanist parties, also suffers a defeat. In contrast, the Catalanist party Sí al País Català had criticized the consultation from the outset for not including the "most popular" name – in reference to the name the party bears – and its leaders did not participate.

In any case, the mayor of Perpignan has also taken a gamble and remains untouchable. The far-right politician Louis Aliot has defended the term Eastern Pyrenees, which aligns with his anti-Catalanism. The victory of Marine Le Pen's National Rally in Northern Catalonia in the last legislative elections, in addition to the triumph in the municipal elections in the capital and in cities like Elna or Canet de Rosselló, represented a paradigm shift for a territory completely dominated by the radical right. Therefore, the referendum was also important to measure whether, in the realm of recognizing Catalan identity, the ultra narrative was faltering, which has not happened.

Including Catalan identity in the name has been an incipient demand from a movement that would dream of a kind of political autonomy in the style of Corsica, but which was in an initial stage that has not taken hold.

Antecedent

The name muddle was aggravated by the macro-regions reform in force since 2016, when Languedoc-Roussillon disappeared to be included in the Occitania region, a territory that does not incorporate Catalanism in its name, even though the North Catalans had mostly voted in favor of the Occitania-Catalan Country option. However, as the electorate was so large, it failed. The counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya, snatched from Catalonia in 1659 and incorporated into France following the Catalan defeat in the Segadors War and the subsequent Treaty of the Pyrenees, still maintain the vitality of Catalanism despite their capital ceasing to be "the Catalan one" officially to become "the radiant one" because of Aliot. The mayor of Perpignan, moreover, has promoted the defense of a "Roussillon" identity, not Catalan, as the town had historically defended, and from a folkloric point of view.

After the result, there will be no change in the name and North Catalonia assumes that the vitality of the Catalan sentiment is rather superficial – linked to sports, like rugby with USAP or the Dragons Catalans – and not so much to modify the historic republican denomination of Eastern Pyrenees. In North Catalonia, there was a linguistic substitution throughout the last century, so that the usual use of the language is testimonial and is hardly registered among young people. In terms of abilities, 61% understand the language and 35% say they know how to speak it, according to the latest Survey of Language Use by the Population, which is from 2015. Furthermore, demographically, half of the population is originally from outside North Catalonia.