Catalan Separatists Pull Off Protest But Referendum Is Harder

Hundreds of thousands of pro-independence Catalans joined hands to form a nearly 250-mile human chain Wednesday to press their cause, but a tougher organizational challenge lies ahead in lining up support for a secession referendum. [...]

Catalan government officials estimated some 1.6 million people lined up on highways, beaches and city streets along the length of the chain, which ran from the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. TV helicopters flew over the route, and if there were any gaps in the chain, they didn't appear to be significant in video footage. In Barcelona, the atmosphere was festive. [...] The demonstrators, decked out in Catalonia's yellow and red colors, came with a message for Madrid. One young girl held a sign reading "Catalonia is not Spain."

Catalonia, Spain's wealthiest and most industrialized region, has long asserted that the central government discriminates against its language and culture while draining off much more in tax revenue than it returns in investment. Spain's painful recession has intensified the disputes over scarce resources and fanned secessionist flames.

[...] In a radio interview last week, Mr. Mas appeared to back off a pledge to hold the vote next year, saying he didn't expect the central government to permit it. Instead, he offered the option of holding a parliamentary election in 2016 that would also allow voters to take a position on independence and would carry the force of a referendum.

Mr. Mas's comments provoked grumbling from members of the second-largest party in Catalonia's parliament, the Republican Left of Catalonia, or ERC, which has a longer history of backing independence than Mr. Mas's more mainstream Convergence and Union Party, or CiU. The two parties have fashioned a political alliance of convenience?which includes a joint pledge for the referendum?since the ERC gained seats and the CiU lost some in parliamentary elections in November.

In the face of criticism from the independence movement, Mr. Mas retreated from what he told the radio interviewer and said the referendum will occur in 2014 "one way or another." [...] Talk of delay is anathema to independence activists. "Normally history is decided by those who know how to use windows of opportunity before they close," said Elisenda Paluzie i Hernández, an independence backer who is dean of economics at the University of Barcelona.

Other analysts point out that while Mr. Mas has tried to ride the pro-independence wave, he doesn't control the diffuse movement.

"This is a movement that's always been more about average people than about politicians," said Joan Serra, spokesman for the Catalan National Assembly, the largest of some 14 citizens groups that organized the chain. He called Wednesday's protest "a show of strength" and a demonstration of organizational capacity. Pro-independence forces developed a phone app to keep participants informed and deployed drones to photograph it. [...]

In Madrid, where the independence movement is viewed warily, the chain protest received cursory coverage on state television. It showed live shots of protesters along the chain for about four minutes after they joined hands, then cut to a stock-market report and a story on the 9/11 remembrance in New York. Last Sept. 11, independence activists widely criticized state television for making a march by about one million Catalans its fifth-most important story of the day.

In one incident in Madrid, approximately 15 anti-separatist demonstrators burst into a Catalonian cultural office shouting "Catalonia is Spain". [...]

Some Catalans who oppose independence said it would be mistaken to give Wednesday's demonstration too much weight. The protestors are "a hyper-mobilized minority" whose voice is further amplified by pro- independence Catalan media, said Joaquim Coll, a historian at the University of Barcelona. He said the anti-Madrid sentiment that has surged in Catalonia in response to Spain's long recession is comparable to the anti-immigrant or anti-euro sentiment that has emerged in some other crisis-battered European countries.