 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Arun. Today we have Iwan who is a political commentator from Barcelona with us. Welcome Iwan. Thanks Arun. Today we are going to discuss about the recent crisis which is happening in Catalonia. As we all know the Spanish government has invoked Article 155, thereby taking over the control of the Catalonian region and suspending the regional government there. Where do you think the whole Catalonian question is going to? I think we have to say that for now the Spanish state has succeeded in stopping the independence agenda. But this is some, it's a complicated analysis and I think we are seeing right now how the whole crisis is unfolding in different layers, time layers if you want, according to how different players are playing the situation right now. So as we speak for instance, the members of the committee of the Parliament of the Catalonian Parliament have been called for testifying in the national court and the supreme court on the accusations of rebellion and sedition. So we can say that the legal and judicial strategy of the government and the Spanish state is being fully implemented right now. We have the president of the Catalan government who is in Brussels for four days now and what some interpret is him fleeing and not facing his political responsibilities, while others see that it is a tactic to keep presenting the Catalan cause to an international audience and thus contributing to reinforce the effects of the Declaration of Independence that was produced last October the 27th. Then we have a electoral scenario that was a tactical decision by the Spanish government when activating the 155 which basically changed completely the dynamic of the dispute so far. Why? Because in that same day the president of the Catalan government had the chance to call for election himself. He didn't do it because a lot of commentators say that he was subject to such pressure to declare independence that in the end he chose for declaring independence. But the fact that is the Spanish government calling for regional election in Catalunya sets a completely different scene because right now we have a legitimacy problem on the side of the independentist parties which is do we subject to what the Spanish government is dictating upon us now that we have declared independence? I think they are struggling to try to legitimate the possibility that they indeed have to participate in those elections. And on the other hand we have what has been called the constitutionalist or the unionist bloc which is formed not only by the party of the government but also by the socialist party and the party of Fidadanos which is very firm in its decision of applying 155, applying what they interpret as the rule of law and trying as hard as possible trying to submit the independentist actors. The European Union has already declared that it is fine for the Spanish government to act with all rigor of law but they should be aware of being too strict or too hard going too hard on the independentists. So now we are seeing how the government is trying to play this strategy of enacting a soft version of the 155 but at the same time because they are aware that they get political and electoral benefits from going hard but how they balance that? We have Podemos and we have the party of the Barcelona Major Ada Colau that have been trying with relative success to open up a third way and what they are trying to do is not to get pressed by the strength of the two confronting actors So right now they have decided or it's been decided actually that Podemos might participate jointly with the party of Ada Colau in the election of December 21st, the regional election. So it is uncertain what we have right now is that the preliminary polls and surveys that say that the relation of forces between the independentist field and the constitutionalist or unionist field is basically the same as it is right now. So we still have five, six weeks ahead a very intense electoral campaign in which everything can happen and of course both the government and the independentist bloc know that the judicial strategy may have a very strong effect on the electoral preferences of the Catalan people. When we speak about the Catalan national question which is about the Catalan independence movement we see the region by itself is quite rich and it contributes a lot to the Spanish economy. The traditional working class in Catalonia has very recently has only joined the Catalan independence struggle. We see the countries economic elites who were majorly pushing the question of independence. Now the regional government which was there in Catalonia was mostly had a shift towards the right. The whole question which we are looking is with an independent Catalonia if there would have been an independent Catalonia would it join to the larger capitalist structure or it would create a new, it would have been something new out of the box. The national question or the territorial crisis has been going on for many years in the say after the death of Franco and we have had at least two opposing forces. On the one hand we had the independentist forces as you say I think I have to agree with your analysis. I think that in the beginning it was not primarily a preoccupation of the working classes. It became so only recently in the last we could say four or five years and on the other hand we had all the political forces that were the political heroes and the sociological representatives of the Franco regime that constantly tried to put a limit to the territorial aspirations not only of Catalonia but also the Basque country. But on the other hand it was that crisis, the territorial crisis was not the only crisis that was affecting the Spanish system. We also had the economic crisis and of course the political mostly made evident by the negative effects of the economic crisis and the austerity measures implemented by the Conservative Party. I think and I agree with those analysts that say that the territorial crisis manifested in the independentist agenda of Catalonia is probably one of the latest chances that progressive political forces have in Spain to break the system from within. And of course we have some other representatives from the traditional left in Spain that adhere to the most traditional thesis that this is not a working class agenda. This is just an agenda of the right wing nationalists and we are submitting to an agenda which is not ours etc. This is a very interesting debate that is going on. Responding to your question, will that bring an outcome where we can see a Catalonia which is the flagship of revolutionary projects in the world or it will be yet another stronghold for the neoliberal system. I think that has to be decided later because even if you analyse what the internal composition of the independentist block is we see a very strong presence of classical nationalistic right wing conservative elements. We see a big portion of progressive social democratic also in a nationalistic position but trying to advance progressive agendas and then we see a minority but very strong, very committed force which is the coup, the candidacies of popular unity which are openly socialist, openly Marxist and try to advance towards socialism. So first we have to see how the independentist agenda is successful against the struggle vis-à-vis the Spanish system and the Spanish state and then we will see the internal struggle. What we have seen right now is that capital forces have reacted very strongly against the possibility of just opening the crisis up and not controlling for the possible outcomes of it. And I think that has been a major mistake of the independentists which is not trying to advance on a path that was prepared beforehand. All the way especially in the last two or three weeks since the vote of October the 1st especially you have seen that the steps taken by the independentist especially by the government of Catalunya have been filled with improvisation and capital does not want that. Financial powers, the big transnational powers, they want certainty. If you don't give them certainty they are going to react against you and I think that many commentators see a turning point in this public declaration of the two main Catalan bands that if the independence was to be declared they would flee Catalunya and then some 1200 or 1300 companies have followed suit and they have announced that they will change their social side which is not the same as saying that they were moving all their business or the value chain outside of Catalunya but they announced that they will not be a Catalan company and that has impacted really really in the core of the independentist field. So I think that you know that struggle has to be defined but only when independentist agenda has succeeded in creating a complete rupture with the Spanish state. The European Union seems to be very quiet on the Catalunya front. Quite in the sense they have clearly stood for the unity of Spain as other major countries like United States or France or Germany. Somewhere we do see the hypocrisy of these countries when it comes to Catalunya but what they have done in case of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is a case where all the countries rushed in and which ended up in the fragmentation of Yugoslavia but in the case of Catalunya everyone seems to be on the line of United Spain. Will European Union take a lead in solving the crisis in Catalunya? I think that probably this crisis or the advancement into the current phase of the independentist agenda has come in the worst possible moment when you look at it from the perspective of the relation with the European project and the conjunction that involves the European Union. Why? Because we have a major crisis opened by the Brexit assuming that the European Union is essentially a neoliberal project. We have the same conditions that apply to capital so they don't want uncertainty and they are dealing with a huge load of uncertainty when it comes to analyzing the effects that Brexit will have and when trying to figure out how to accommodate a united kingdom outside of the European Union. Several high echelons, European directors and the president of the council and the president of the European Parliament have made public declarations that they don't want further fragmentation of the European Union. They have consistently supported the Spanish government when it comes to preserving the unity of Spain and I think that has to do with dealing with uncertainty. The European Union cannot take further uncertainty right now. As we mentioned before, I think that if you go like the president of the Generalitat, the president of the Catalan region is going right now, he's going for trying to legitimize in a political or purely symbolic dimension what the effects of independence are and that compared to the strategy of the Spanish government which is trying to solidify the rule of law, right now what is more appealing to any state inside the European Union is the latter. So you cannot try to convince people by saying, well, we have the right of sole determination inside of Europe. In that perspective, I don't think it's going to help the independence agenda to just appeal to the imminent rights of the Catalan people or the appeal to freedom. I think that the Spanish government has a lot to lose if they don't handle the Catalan crisis with sufficient care. The European Union does not want to see again these terrifying repression images that were produced during the vote one month ago in October the 1st. Spain is special because it is, to start with, is the fourth economy of the European Union. It is such a big political and economic actor that the rest of the powerful actors in the European Union, including the European Union, have made a point in trying to close that front the best they can. They are very worried about the possible consequences of Catalonia being a distorting point or being some sort of instability focus for the whole Europe. So I think they are trying to put all the effort possible in trying to close that crisis as good as they can. But there is a chance, maybe not now, maybe not in two years' time, maybe at the time where the Brexit is effective, that if the independence agenda tries to or is successful in keeping some momentum and then the two crises coincide again, then we could be facing a completely different scenario because in that sense the European Union will have to have a lot of effort put in trying to consolidate the European project. And in that sense the instability could mount up and then who knows, maybe Catalonia can be a distorting or instability factor vis-à-vis the European Union.