On Catalonian issue

Namely, the White House and US President Trump personally, a week before the referendum in Catalonia, after meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Washington, said they are supporting Spain's unitary character. The EU, and some lower-ranking politicians, have limited themselves to condemning the violence that was used by the Spanish central police during the referendum in Catalonia. European leaders are mostly silent without personal political statements, but Brussels's stance that the referendum in Catalonia is an internal matter that needs to be resolved under the Spanish Constitution actually means support for Madrid, and not for Catalonia. Russia, according to Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, is consistent in the position that the referendum in Catalonia is an internal affair of Spain. 

 

Additionally, even before October 1st, Brussels clearly warned the government in Catalonia that if the region becomes independent, it will not automatically receive EU membership. On the contrary, it will have to follow the same procedures as the members admitted in 2004. Thus, the idea that there will now be a series of referendums on independence in the EU states is not realistic, because they will not be accepted neither as independent states nor as EU members. In this sense, the EU acts fairly solely and confidently that it controls the situation and that no one will recognize Catalonia.

 

The Catalan independence referendum is a serious issue for Spain, but it is also very serious for the EU which in the negotiations BREXIT process enters a zone of strong turbulence because this referendum is mostly in favor of the UK. Namely, what is not being announced very loudly is that the main point in those negotiations is precisely Gibraltar, for which the UK has a longstanding dispute with Spain. Otherwise, the three divorcing divisions that the EU wants from Britain are the finances it must return, the fate of Northern Ireland and the rights of three million EU citizens living in the UK and one million Britons on the continent. In the negotiations with Brussels on the process of its BREXIT from the EU, the UK now has shaken Spain and the EU.

 

After the referendum on independent Catalonia, whether or not it will be secession, it is certain that this shattered Spain has weakened positions in relation to the Gibraltar issue, which the EU has set as one of the main conditions in the negotiation process for BREXIT between Brussels and United Kingdom. Now it has returned to the EU as a boomerang, so that the EU's positions in the negotiation process for BREXIT have become even more complicated in terms of the UK.

 

So, the future of Gibraltar is the first major dispute to be overcome during the negotiations with the UK, a topic that was put on the table by the EU when BREXIT was activated in the end of March by the 50th article by British Prime Minister, Theresa May. That meant an increase in tensions over Gibraltar, especially as the EU simultaneously gave Spain the right to veto any contracts in the BREXIT negotiations process concerning the British rocky enclave in the south of Spain. The British self-governing territory of Gibraltar is a source of tension between Great Britain and Spain for decades, especially since Spain claims legitimacy over territorial waters.

 

That the EU takes into account the UK's connection with the referendum in Catalonia is indicated by the fact that the European Parliament at the same time, with its approval, adopted a resolution, backed by all major political groups, "believing that in the fourth round negotiations there was insufficient progress in terms of the rights of citizens, Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as resolving the case of the United Kingdom's financial obligations to the EU." This leads to the prolongation of the fifth round of negotiations, delaying the process and time for the final separation of the UK from the EU, with Spain becoming BREXIT's "collateral victim".