The campaign to keep Catalonia in Spain, on the other hand, is small and fractured, struggling to unite behind a single message or leader. Those who do speak up say the fierce backlash they feel shows how hard it is to debate possible secession from Spain. [...]
Pro-independence forces keep using “absolutely false” reasoning, added Josep Piqué, a former minister and ex-leader of the center-right Catalan Popular Party, whose national branch holds power in Madrid. As the dictatorship of Francisco Franco repressed Catalan language and culture, everyone who opposes independence is labeled a Franco supporter, he said. “We need to keep insisting that the analogy between anti-independence [views] and Francoism doesn’t have anything to do with reality.” [...]
But the nationalists’ success in branding people who oppose them as “right-wing” or worse works too. It’s helped marginalize anti-independence groups that can claim to speak for around half the Catalan population, to look at recent polls. And it’s kept them divided, for example by helping keep Catalonia’s left from joining the common unionist front. [...]
The SCC is the largest of a number of groups that opposes Catalan independence. The secessionist movement gained momentum in 2012, in part following the creation of the Catalan National Assembly (the biggest civil society group in support of secession) and the first mass demonstration in Barcelona in support of independence. The new anti-independence groups include the business collective Empresaris de Catalunya, journalists’ association Pi i Margall, and lawyers’ group Llibertats — none of which is more than three years old.
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