The Scottish First Minister during her resignation speech. E,P

Heroine worship

Sturgeon was a heroine for the three Catalan presidents who were in office during her eight-year stint at the helm of the SNP

MARK NAYLER

Friday, 24 February 2023, 13:50

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Pere Aragonès has left little room for doubt about how much he admires Nicola Sturgeon. Last week, Catalonia's pro-independence president said on Twitter that the outgoing leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) «will continue to be an inspiration to independence movements», and thanked her for her «commitment to progress, social justice and the tireless fight for freedom». Sturgeon was one of the most prominent secessionists in Europe, so what will her departure mean for the Catalan pro-independence movement?

In making Scottish independence - or at least another referendum on the matter - her absolute priority, Sturgeon was a heroine for the three Catalan presidents who were in office during her eight-year stint at the helm of the SNP. Carles Puigdemont backed her calls for a second referendum after Brexit, and at a meeting in Edinburgh in 2018, Artur Mas, who handed the presidency to Puigdemont in January 2016, thanked Sturgeon for continually supporting the region's attempts to achieve self-determination.

Indeed, the admiration seems to be mutual. Sturgeon was cautiously supportive of Puigdemont's disastrous attempt to break away from Spain in 2017. On the day of the illegal referendum, she condemned the Spanish government's interference, saying that it should have «let people vote peacefully», although she was careful not to explicitly endorse the unilateral declaration of independence that followed.

Despite the admiration with which she's regarded by her Catalan counterparts, Sturgeon didn't do a huge amount to advance the cause of Scottish independence - in fact, one of the SNP's biggest setbacks occurred on her watch. Last November, the UK's Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to arrange a vote on secession without Westminster's permission. The biggest victory for the SNP during the last decade - and something held up as a gold standard of political collaboration by Catalan separatists - was the independence referendum of 2014, but that happened two months before Sturgeon became leader of the SNP. It was billed by then-SNP leader (and Mas's idol) Alex Salmond as a «once in a generation» opportunity for Scots to vote on self-determination - and they opted to remain in the UK.

Whether Aragonès will come to admire Kate Forbes as much as he did her pugnacious predecessor remains to be seen. Both politicians face enormous obstacles in making independence anything more than the subject of crusading rhetoric: the British government, now led by Rishi Sunak and backed by last year's Supreme Court ruling, is as unlikely to grant a repeat of the 2014 vote as Pedro Sánchez is to sanction a referendum on Catalan independence. For the foreseeable future and in practical terms, there's not much Forbes or Aragonès can do to realise their dreams of secession; the latest polls also show that the majority of Scots and Catalans no longer share those dreams.

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