What's happening in Catalonia?

Barcelona (the capital of Catalonia) voted past Sunday, April 10th, for Catalonia's independence in an unofficial non-binding referendum. The surprise has been the final participation of 20% of Barcelona's citizens, a quantity that doubles initial estimations. What may seem a low participation rate, may not be underestimated: this referendum has been organized by volunteers; it has not been supported by political parties and Barcelona's city council did not provide any facilities nor permission to advertise the event. Besides, many people decided to stay at home or going out to the beach instead of voting a referendum with no practical effects.

But, what's happening in Catalonia? What is shaking the Catalan society to the point of making unofficial referendums, demonstrations, worldwide awarded lip-dubs, internet activism, and other stuff to promote the break-up with Spain? Moreover, what's happening in Catalonia that even some politicians that were cautious some time ago say now that they have no arguments to not support independentism? Or even more, what is happening to make an English writer to write a book for foreigners in order to explain them the Catalan nationalism, which is often misunderstood abroad? (Catalan nationalism has nothing to do with ethnic or racist issues, but just cultural ones).

Some years ago nobody thought Catalonia could begin its trip toward independence. Today, Catalonia has a government with renewed politicians that are less tolerant to the attitude of the Spanish government against Catalan culture and economy. For example, CIU - the largest Catalan nationalist party - is challenging Spanish courts to not obey any law that may go against Catalan language, continously threatened by Spanish parties which look for imposing Spanish over Catalonia's own language. Many of these politicians voted yesterday saying yes to independence.

After Franco's dictatorship, during which many Catalans were executed to defend the Catalan nation and during which speaking in Catalan language was strictly forbidden, independentism has been a big taboo and nobody deared to play with the idea of breaking up with Spain. As time has passed, this taboo has vanished, and today Catalans have no fear to shout their desire for cultural and national freedom.

The reaction of Spanish media to this event has been the one expected: although they have always said these referendums are non-sense and useless, now they try to use the participation results as an argument to say that the 80% of Catalans do not want independence, whereas recent polls say that there is a large amount of people that do not know what to decide yet. However some Spaniards think that 20% is a worrying number, wondering how a reduced amount of volunteers could mobilize more than 270,000 people in Barcelona (over 1.4 million census) to vote a non-binding referendum.

Barcelona's referendum has been the last one of a series that began on September 13th 2009, in the Catalan village Arenys de Munt. A total number of 874,173 people have voted and a around 90% supported independence. And now...what? Spain forbids any referendums for getting independence, so some Catalan independentist parties are proposing to pass the Law of Independence, which gives power to the Catalan Parliament to proclaim independence unilaterally. The spotlight is focused now on CIU, the largest Catalan nationalist party, which has been traditinally ambiguous regarding independence. Meanwhile, the volunteers that organized the unofficial referendums told they will start doing pedagogy on the right to decide*, which is systematically violated by the Spanish government and laws.

An example of internet activism for the right to decide.

*
Universal Declaration of The Rights of Peoples

Section II. Right to Political Self-determination, Article 5: every people has an imprescriptible and unalienable right to self-determination. It shall determine its political status freely and without any foreign interference.