Constitutional and Comparative Analysis of the Catalan Secessionist Process

Abstract

The chapter analyzes the constitutional framework in which the Catalan secessionist process has developed. It starts by focusing on international law, particularly on the right to self-determination of peoples as established in the UN treaties and case law, and on the so-called remedial secession, and later sums up the two main foreign experiences of secessionism (Québec and Scotland), as well as two relatively minor cases in Bavaria and in Veneto, highlighting the similarities and the differences in respect to Spain and Catalonia. The barring by the Spanish Constitutional Court in 2014 of the “right to decide” and of any kind of referendum on independence is also discussed. The chapter ends with an assessment of the role the EU has played in the secessionist process, particularly of the issue of whether an independent Catalonia would automatically remain in the EU (applying the so called “internal enlargement”), or rather would leave it, and also of the position of relative neutrality adopted by the Commission.