RESPONSE TO THE COMPLAINT BY THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES OF CATALONIA SENT TO THE UNITED NATIONS, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE AND THE OSCE MAY 2015 On 9 November 2014 in Catalonia (an Autonomous Community of Spain) a sham referendum was held in which the citizens of this Spanish region were asked: Do you want Catalonia to be a State? Voters who answered ‘Yes’ had to answer a second question: Do you want that State to be independent? The Spanish Constitutional Court had suspended the decree that authorised the holding of this consultation. However, premises opened on that 9 November for the purpose of voting. On some of the premises there was a document, entitled: "Citizen Complaint to the United Nations, The European Parliament, The European Commission, The European Council, and the OSCE" Enclosed is the content of the document and our response to the alleged complaint sent to the United Nations, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the OSCE Sociedad Civil Catalana (SCC) is a private association comprised of people of varying ideologies and political sensitivities that was created to speak for a part of society and to make the point that there are many people who disagree both with secession and with the secessionist process that exists in Catalonia. CITIZEN COMPLAINT TO THE UNITED NATIONS, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE AND THE OSCE The undersigned elected representatives, who represent a large majority of the Catalan people in the Catalan Parliament, the European Parliament, in the Spanish Parliament, and in Catalan municipal councils, address the United Nations, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), make our complaint against the Spanish state for violating the right of the Catalan people to decide their political future by preventing them from exercising democracy by means of a referendum or internationally recognized consultation. 1. The people of Catalonia have, for reasons of democratic legitimacy, political and legal sovereignty, and as such, the right to decide their political future for themselves because: a) The Catalan people have, throughout history expressed and democratically exercised the desire that Catalonia govern itself, with the aim of improving the progress, welfare and equality of opportunities of all its citizens, and of strengthening its own culture and its collective identity. b) The self-government of Catalonia is also based on the historic rights of the Catalan people, on its ancient institutions and on the Catalan legal tradition. c) In recent years, on the pathway towards deepening democracy, a majority of the political and social forces in Catalonia have put forward measures for the transformation of the political and legal framework. The most recent of these took its shape in the process of reforming the Catalan Statute of Autonomy that was approved by the Catalan Parliament in September 2005, considered and approved by the Spanish Parliament, and backed by the citizens of Catalonia in June 2006. Four years later, the Constitutional Court amended it substantially, contrary to the will of the people. The Constitutional Court clearly showed its politicisation, acting as if it were a parliamentary chamber and thereby infringing one of the basic principles of democratic systems, the division of powers and its independence. d) Since then, Catalonia has been governed by a Statute of Autonomy that is not what was approved by its citizens. On 10 July 2010 in Barcelona there was a demonstration of more than a million citizens protesting against the judgment of the Constitutional Court. Objection 1: The Catalan people do not represent a sovereign political and legal entity. Art. 2 of the Spanish Constitution attributes national sovereignty to all Spanish citizens as a whole, who, acting as the constitutive power, wrote and ratified this Basic Law, which was put to a referendum in 1978 and supported by a very large majority of Spaniards, and also of Catalans, who voted in favour of the Constitution by an even larger margin than in Spain as a whole. The Constitution grants the regions and nationalities the right to autonomy, which is enshrined in Part VIII through the establishment of a constitutionally guaranteed federal system of territorial distribution. That is to say, in Spain, as in Germany or the United States, the constituted powers (central state and autonomous communities) cannot have a block of legal instruments (constitution and statutes of autonomy) that set out the basic rules relating to the allocation of powers and institutionalisation of self- government. It follows that there are no historic rights under which Catalan self- government could be claimed, as is recognised by the Spanish Constitution in the framework of Additional Provision 1 for the territories of Navarre and the Basque Country, but not for Catalonia. Finally, the Catalans are Spanish citizens who live for administrative purposes in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. From the point of view of international law Catalonia is not a sovereign entity understood as an entity of international law. Nor does it have the capacity to act autonomously externally but it must respect the principles of unity of external action of the Spanish state, the institutional loyalty, the co-ordination and the co-operation that are enshrined in Spain’s legal system. The Constitutional Court did not substantially amend the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy; it struck down a small number of sections and reinterpreted others as a consequence of complying with the obligations that it holds under Art. 161.1 of the Spanish Constitution and the Organic Law with regard to appeals of unconstitutionality presented by parliamentary groups and the ombudsman. The fact that the Statute was ratified by means of a referendum does not represent any attack on the democratic principle, since this institution is established in the Spanish constitutional system as a control mechanism and not for taking decisions. Moreover, in the USA and Switzerland, countries where direct democracy is well established, it is common for courts to annul laws that originate in referendums if their content is contrary to the constitution. Therefore, the action of the Constitutional Court is also beyond reproach from the point of view of comparative law. In a democracy demonstrations, however many people may take part in them, do not override the decisions taken by the institutions of the state, which enjoy the legitimacy of the ballot box in electoral processes that take place in accordance with the law. 2.- In recent years the Catalan people have repeatedly expressed their wish, either directly or through political representatives, to decide their political future: a) On 11 September 2012, the National Day of Catalonia, the streets in the centre of Barcelona saw the biggest demonstration in the history of Catalonia, led by the slogan "Catalonia, new European state". On the same date in the two following years the general public showed their capacity for mobilisation and organisation with the Vía Catalana, a human chain that ran across the country for more than 400 kilometres, forming a human "V" that filled the two main roads of the country’s capital. b) On 25 November 2012 elections were held for the Catalan Parliament, leading to an unequivocal mandate: to exercise the right to decide the political future of Catalonia. This will of the Catalan Parliament was stated in the “Declaration of Sovereignty and of the Right to Decide of the Catalan People”, which was approved in January 2013 with the support of more than two thirds of the members of the Parliament. This declaration was challenged by the Spanish government in the Constitutional Court, which partially annulled it. Objection 2: The Catalan people express their will through the institutions. In democratic political systems demonstrations and freedom of expression are regarded as cornerstones of the right to public participation, provided that they are exercised in conditions of institutional neutrality and plurality in the media and are used as a means of connecting the representatives with the people that they represent. Notwithstanding that, the will of the general public is given practical meaning through the bodies that make up the Catalan democratic institutions, which have the necessary legitimacy to take decisions within the scope of the competencies that the Constitution and the Statute have granted them. Anything outside these competencies would consist of an arbitrary will. It is not true that the elections of 25 November produced an unequivocal mandate with regard to the right of self-determination of Catalonia, among other reasons because not all the parties included this claim in their election manifestos. In fact, the party that stresses the question most strongly, the one that has led the Catalan government since 2010 (CiU), lost 12 of its 62 seats in the Catalan Parliament. The “Declaration of Sovereignty and of the Right to Decide of the Catalan People”, which was approved in the regional Parliament in January 2010 by a large majority, was appealed by the Spanish government to the Constitutional Court, which ruled that it was not a simple resolution with political effects but that it also had effects in the world of the law. Likewise, it decided that it was contrary to Art. 2 of the Spanish Constitution, which states that national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people (in the entirety of the citizens of Spain). The court added that the right to self- determination of a territory is a possible and legitimate political option in the Spanish constitutional system, but that it is possible only by means of a constitutional amendment that allows recognition of the Catalan people as a distinct legal entity that is capable of separating from Spain.