Catalonia: on the precipice of secession?

I’m on a plane back to Brussels from Barcelona at the moment, still digesting the amusingly polarised reaction to Friday’s announcement that the EU has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The significance of the announcement was only heightened for me this weekend by the fact that, as the Nobel committee spoke of the achievement of the EU in keeping Europe together, I was in a country that may be about to tear itself apart.

Friday was Spanish National Day, but you wouldn’t have known it on the streets of Barcelona. The Catalans may have been happy to take the day off work, but they were clearly not in the mood to celebrate. There was no parade, no festivities and - most noticeably - not even any Spanish flags.

In fact the only way one would have known it was national day at all was that in the morning, the streets around Placa de Catalonia were filled with Police officers preparing for a planned march by secessionist demonstrators. Helicopters thundered above us, preparing for the possibility that the city would see a repeat of the massive secessionist demonstrations that took place on 11 September (Catalan National Day) that saw more than a million protestors flood the streets of Barcelona. However from what I saw, this time around the Catalans seemed to prefer ostentatious non-observance to demonstrations.

Though there were Catalan flags draped from nearly every window (perhaps left over from the 11 September celebrations), I did not see one Spanish flag except for those on government buildings.

Belgian shame rally: can ideology be fought with neutrality?

Today more than 34,000 Belgians marched in a demonstration across Brussels demanding that the country's bickering politicians reach a compromise in the ongoing talks to form a government. Belgium has been without a government for 224 days now, the longest government-less period for any European country since the end of the Second World War. As the political crisis continues with no end in sight, there are increasing worries that this could finally be the end of the line for this country, which may be on the verge of splitting into separate Dutch-speaking and French-speaking halves.

I was out at the "Shame Belgium" march today and I was impressed by the very large turnout. It was particularly notable because the demonstration was not organised by unions or political parties, as is usually the case, but rather by a group of five young people via Facebook. The demonstration had no political or regional allegiance - organisers even said it didn't even have an official unionist or separatist stance. In fact the organisers even discouraged people from bringing Belgian flags, though clearly everyone chose to ignore that advice. The stated purpose of the rally was simply to demand that the politicians urgently get on with their negotiations to prevent the country descending into crisis.

Dismantle Belgium?

There was an interesting piece in The Economist last week about Belgium and whether or not its existence really makes sense in the 21st century. Ostensibly it was just about the current conditions in this one tiny country, but in effect it cuts to the heart of the future of Europe as a whole.

The magazine asks the question, given that we’re now in month three of Belgium having no new government because the two parties can't agree, is it time to revaluate the Belgian state? After all if the parties, made up along ethnic/linguistic lines of French-speaking Walloons in the south and Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north still have so much tension after nearly 200 years, perhaps the time may be coming to rethink Belgium’s status.