Editorial: a love grown cold who can hold?

Photo: AFP/SCANPIX

This year, Europe may get two new states. Referendums of independence are planned by both Catalonia and Scotland. The path to independence will be easy for neither – mainly due to the sceptical stands of metropolitans, to put it mildly. While the UK is mainly relying on attempts to convince, Spain has taken a clearer path towards obstructing separation.

Though, in his December letter to EU heads of state, the Catalan President Artur Mas assures them there are legal ways to hold the referendum, his main obstacle has been its very legality. Thorny, as well, is the path before Scotland. For starters, the opponents opted to intimidate: Scotland is too small, it won’t manage economically, it will fail in public administration. Over these past months, London has altered its rhetoric: if you go, you break England’s heart. Will the warmer words, uttered over the imaginary threshold, hold Scots back? One wonders... But while London and Edinburgh may, in their moment of crisis, recall the times that have been better, romance has long been lost between Madrid and Barcelona: never have these taken the trouble to buy flowers to camouflage the baseball bat; even so, nowadays reasonable discussions are giving way to outright insults. Either way, both countries are doing their best to make it hard for the ones packing their bags.

The issue is not territorial losses alone, for Spain and UK alike. True, as colonial powers, both have seen their domains melt like wax on a hot stove; still, empire-thinking remains in the blood till the last patch of it remains. At least as weighty, however, is the economic argument: with Scotland and Catalonia alike, both are rather givers, not takers from the common pot; should they go, not only smaller, but a lot poorer states would remain.

Meanwhile, speculations abound around the strongest card London and Madrid may hold, should they opt to tackle Edinburgh and Barcelona together – the option to impact referendum results by use of the EU-membership argument.

Namely: EU-membership is not guaranteed; post-independence, this will have to be applied for. Should the «separatists» see this, even in part, as something up to benevolence by London and Madrid, fear may cloud out longings for independence. Whether the fear is rational on not, the thought of being isolated by EU may still serve to hamper ideas of independence.

So: what do we say? Europe, used to underline its foundations of shared values – democracy, human rights, freedom – and touting these as its chief item of export, is strikingly interests-based in its own territory.