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6 November 2017
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| Spain Catalonia Belgium (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions) |
The outlawed independence referendum in Catalonia hasn't just sparked a political crisis in Spain. The flight of the region's ousted president to Brussels is sowing divisions within the Belgian government and looks set to damage ties between the two European Union partners.
Even as Carles Puigdemont and his lawyer were
questioned by an investigating judge on Sunday about his extradition, members
of Belgium's government, Belgian politicians and Spanish officials were trading
barbs in the mainstream and social media.
Most vocal are members of the Flemish
nationalist N-VA party — a key member of Belgium's ruling coalition and whose
separatist desires appear to have been inflamed by Puigdemont's most recent
drive for Catalan independence from Spain.
"I am just questioning how an EU member
state can go this far," Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior
Minister Jan Jambon told the VTM network Sunday, in reference to the jailing of
several of Puigdemont's associates in Spain last week.
Puigdemont maintains that his arrival in
Brussels is about raising the profile of Catalan nationhood at European level,
and not to interfere in Belgian politics, or "Belgianize" politics in
Catalonia. But his stay is being dubbed "the Belgian government's
nightmare" in the media.
"The dossier is a time bomb for the
federal coalition," wrote the daily Le Soir.
Very little criticism of Spanish Prime
Minister Mariano Rajoy's government has been voiced by Spain's 27 EU partner
countries, but Belgium did condemn the violence, much of it blamed on police
heavy-handedness, that marked the Oct. 1 referendum in Catalonia.
Around 900 people were hurt — nearly all of
them minor injuries. Spain's government defended the police response, saying it
was proportionate to the resistance officers met on the streets.
"You have Spanish law but also
international law, the European Human Rights Treaty and such things and they
come ahead of member state law," Jambon said. "I think the
international community must keep a close watch."
On Twitter, a close Rajoy ally and member of
the European Parliament, Esteban Gonzalez Pons, wrote that "a year ago,
Jambon who is defending Puigdemont, was justifying collaboration with the
Nazis."
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has
tried to stay above the fray, refusing so far to comment on the case of
Puigdemont and four of his associates in Belgium.
Still, that hasn't stopped Belgian Foreign
Minister Didier Reynders from weighing in.
"There has been excitement around this
dossier that exceeds the limits of what is reasonable," he told
broadcaster RTL. "Some people are getting involved in Belgium and
commenting on the crisis when it's not their role."
"The first thing to do is keep the
dialogue open with Spain," Reynders added.
Easier said than done when Belgian politicians
are using politically-charged language to compare Rajoy's center-right
government in Madrid and the Spanish judiciary to the dictatorship of Gen.
Francisco Franco half a century ago.
"You know where the past of the Popular
Party is, and ever more its present — and it is Franco, it is repression, it is
jailing people because of their opinion, it is the use of violence against its
citizens," N-VA leader Bart De Wever told the VRT network Monday.
De Wever isn't a member of Michel's
center-right government but he speaks for a party that is central to four-party
coalition.
Yet even the moderate Socialist opposition in
the French-speaking part of Belgium is using similar language.
"Puigdemont has abused his position, but
Rajoy is acting like an authoritarian Francoist. Let's find the path to a more
federal Spain," tweeted Elio Di Rupo, a former prime minister and
Socialist leader in Belgium's southern Wallonia region.
Things are only likely to heat up as
campaigning for the Dec. 21 regional election in Catalonia gets underway, and
Puigdemont starts stumping for re-election from Belgium. Brussels prosecutors
confirmed Monday that his provisional release terms allow him to campaign here
and talk to the media.
If Puigdemont's lawyer exhausts all avenues
of appeal, the ousted leader could be in town until January.
In a column published Monday on the
London-based Guardian's website, Puigdemont said the detention of his
colleagues in Spain is "a colossal outrage" and he vowed to fight for
separatist rights.
He said he wants to draw the attention of
other EU countries to the crackdown and "demand a political rather than
judicial solution to the problem."
The specter that Spain's arrest warrant might
even be refused is also very real, as a legal precedent exists that raised
tensions between Belgium and Spain in the past.
In October 2013, a court in Ghent rejected a
Spanish European arrest warrant to extradite a female member of the armed
Basque separatist group ETA.
Maria Natividad Jauregui Espina is accused of
shooting dead a senior Spanish army officer in 1981. The warrant was refused
over serious concerns that her fundamental rights could have been abused by the
move.
The 58-year old woman continues to live and
work in Belgium. Her lawyer was Paul Bekaert, the man now representing Carles
Puigdemont.The Total Investment &
Insurance Solutions
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