Defeat of Catalanism in the referendum in Northern Catalonia

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

The vote took place from June 22 until August 15, but in a count that took place this Friday. There has been a considerable delay in the scrutiny, which was initially expected to finish around 6 p.m., but was delayed past 9 p.m., partly due to the arduous task of verifying the votes. With 40,656 votes out of a total of 384,600 electors, meaning an 11% turnout, there has been a low citizen involvement, but higher than in consultations for territorial name changes in other regions of France. The result has been clear, and Catalanism has neither mobilized enough nor managed to minimally recognize its own Northern Catalan identity.

The result of this citizen consultation is significant for the political Catalanism of the territory, articulated in parties such as Unitat Catalana – an ally of Junts – and which has a provincial deputy [on the departmental council], Jaume Pol, although it is also involved in state parties, as is the case of 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, with an amalgam of left-wing parties and also Catalanists, suffers a defeat. On the other hand, the Catalanist party Sí al País Català had criticized the consultation from the outset for not including the "most popular" name, referring to the name they use as a party, and its leaders did not participate.

In any case, the mayor of Perpignan, who remains untouchable, has also taken a gamble. The far-right politician Louis Aliot has defended the term "Pyrénées Orientales," 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 municipal elections in the capital and in cities like Elna or Canet de Rosselló, represented a paradigm shift for a territory fully dominated by the radical right. Therefore, it was also important to measure whether, in terms of recognizing Catalan identity, the ultra narrative was faltering, which has not happened.

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

Background

The naming confusion worsened with the macro-regions reform in force since 2016, when Languedoc-Roussillon disappeared to be included in the Occitanie Region, a territory that did not incorporate Catalan identity into its name, even though the North Catalans largely voted for the option of Occitanie-País Català at the time, but it failed due to so few voters. The counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya, mutilated from Catalonia in 1659 and incorporated into France following the Catalan defeat in the War of the Reapers and the consequent Treaty of the Pyrenees, still maintain the vitality of Catalan identity, even though their capital officially ceased to be "the Catalan one" to become "the radiant one" because of Aliot. Aliot, moreover, has promoted a defense of a "Roussillonnaise" identity, not Catalan as the town had historically defended, and from a folklore perspective.

After the result, there will be no change in the name, and Northern 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 enough to modify the historical republicanism of the Eastern Pyrenees. In Northern Catalonia, there was a linguistic substitution throughout the last century so that the usual use of the language is testimonial and is barely recorded among young people, and in terms of ability, 61% understand the language and 35% say they can speak it, according to the latest survey of language use in 2015. Furthermore, demographically, half of the population is originally from outside Northern Catalonia.