International Challenges of Catalonia: defining its public diplomacy through parliamentary debates

Abstract

After a deep parliamentary debate, the Catalan Law on External Action and Relations with the EU (CLEARE) was approved on 26 November 2014 in the Parliament of Catalonia with 99 votes in favor, 29 against and 3 abstentions. The Spanish government decided four months later to take this law to the Constitutional Court. The conservative Spanish government considers that the Catalan administration does not have the competence to deal with foreign actions. However, in 30 years of democracy in Catalonia, there has never been the possibility of having a text with the rank of law that would regulate its political action abroad. In the current context of Catalan politics, where a self-determination process has been led by the regional (from now on called <autonomous=) government, this new bill fixes the guiding principles of foreign affairs, determines the instruments for planning and monitoring external action and defines how to establish international relations of the autonomous government abroad. The rule also establishes the structure and organization of the representation of the Generalitat (that includes the executive and legislative bodies of the autonomous government) and devotes a special section to the definition of public diplomacy. This chapter incorporates some of the most relevant results on this law, the political approaches that the Catalan political parties debated about in the Catalan Parliament (4 December 2013) and their relationship to public diplomacy. At this point, 1t is necessary to mention that this chapter starts with a review and interpretation of the law that highlights the most relevant content on public diplomacy, a simple exercise of description being rejected. So this article is based on the text of the Catalan Law on External Action and Relation