MADRID, November 5 (RIA Novosti) — Catalonia will send a complaint to the UN and several European international organizations against the Spanish government, which prohibited carrying out an independence referendum in the administrative region, EFE news agency reported Wednesday.
The complaint was signed by several Catalan parliament members, as well as mayors of Catalan cities. The document will be sent to the UN, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the nearest future.
In the statement, the Catalan politicians said that “Catalan people, based on the democratic laws of political, juridical, and sovereign nature have a right to self-determine their political future”.
“Spanish position contradicts the right and the international practice of the democratic multicultural counties. There is no political will from the Spanish side to establish a dialogue and hold talks,” the document stated.
The Convergence and Union party member said in the parliament that those politicians who signed the document represent the majority of the Catalan population.
On September 27, Catalan President Artur Mas signed a decree scheduling Catalonia's independence referendum for November 9. The Spanish government announced that it would block the motion by appealing to the Constitutional Court. On September 29, the court suspended the referendum declaring it illegal.
Artur Mas then stated that the voting in November will not be carried out as an official referendum, but rather as a questionnaire to find out public opinion.
However, the Spanish government had asked the court to block the so-called consultation of citizens called by Catalan regional government as a way to get around the court's September suspension of an official referendum on secession. On Tuesday, the constitutional court declared the alternative vote illegal too.
According to the poll, conducted by Metroscopia opinion research center in October, 44 percent of Catalans plan to vote for independence and 42 percent – for the autonomy to remain within Spain.
Catalonia is a Spanish region with high level of cultural and political autonomy and its own regional parliament. It has a population of about 7.5 million people, and accounts for a quarter of Spanish taxes.
Separatist tendencies have been fueled by the economic crisis in Europe, as the region managed to recover faster than the rest of the country from the recession and even helped the central government to resuscitate the economy.
