The referendum granting independence to the former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro is spurring similar hopes in Spain, where Basque and Catalan separatists see it as paving the way for their regions to become sovereign states.
The Montenegro vote "shows that the right to self-determination is real and is applied today in the heart of Europe," the Basque separatist party Batasuna said in a press release.
"I feel a sane envy," said Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira, leader of the Catalan separatist party ERC.
The Spanish government and mainstream parties, however, rushed to reject any comparisons between Montenegro and the Spanish regions, fearing a new upsurge of separatism.
The Montenegro referendum came at a time of a heated debate on the status of the Basque and Catalan regions, with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero planning to launch a peace process with the armed Basque separatist group ETA, while Catalonia has just secured a wider degree of autonomy from Spain.
Separatists and moderate regional nationalists stress small nations' right to self-determination in Europe, while the conservative opposition accuses the Socialist government of endangering the country's unity by being soft on regionalism.
The Montenegro referendum was awaited eagerly by nationalists in the northern Basque region of 2.1 million, where ETA has killed more than 800 people in its four-decade campaign for a sovereign Basque state carved out of northern Spain and southern France.
The group declared a permanent ceasefire in March, and Zapatero now intends to launch a peace process which is expected to include talks between the Basque political parties on the region's future.
The region's governing moderate nationalist party, PNV, and the Batasuna radicals are planning to table a request for a referendum on the right of the Basques to decide their own future, something Spain has categorically rejected so far.
"It may take several decades and successive referendums to win independence," conceded Joseba Alvarez, one of the leaders of Batasuna, which was banned in 2002 as ETA's political wing, but which expects to become relegalized soon.
About half of the Basques support nationalist parties such as Batasuna and the bigger PNV, which has proposed a considerably wider autonomy short of full independence.
Zapatero's government is trying to counter separatism by offering watered-down autonomy plans, such as the new Catalan statute, which has been approved by the Spanish parliament and is to be confirmed in a June 18 regional referendum. The plan fell short of separatist expectations in the wealthy north-eastern region of 6.8 million, where the radical ERC plays a minor, but increasingly visible role.
Regionalism is also on the rise in other regions, such as the southern Andalusia, which does not have its own language like the Basques and Catalans do, but which is nevertheless seeking a recognition of its specific identity.
The centrifugal tensions are causing concern in Madrid, where politicians and commentators stressed the differences between Spain and the former Yugoslavia.
The two were not comparable, "neither politically, nor diplomatically, nor judicially," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana -- a Spanish Socialist -- said it would be "delirium tremens" to compare Montenegro with EU countries including Spain.
Conservative editorials stressed the differences, saying Montenegro had already existed as an independent state and that it was functioning as a separate entity from Serbia, something that was not the case for Catalonia or the Basque region.
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Just as the cause of the Kursk submarine disaster remains shrouded in mystery — the nuclear-powered Russian submarine suffered an explosion during a naval exercise on Aug. 12, 2000, and sank, killing all 118 crew onboard — it is unlikely that we will ever get to the bottom of the sequence of events last month that led to the sinking of the Moskva guided missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with two missiles, while Russia says ammunition onboard the ship exploded and the ship tipped over while being towed
The war in Ukraine continues, and lines are slowly being drawn in the sand. Nations have begun imposing sanctions; few can ignore the reality of Russia’s aggression and atrocities, especially as it edges to the possibility of making a full declaration of war. For Taiwan, this resurrects a different reality, the tangled web of its own complex past and how as a colony of Japan, it became involved with Russia, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Some role reversals are immediately evident. Taiwan is now an independent nation and the CCP rules China. The CCP indirectly
RSS