Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/19/libertat.html
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Franco died, his supporters didn’t.
The government in Madrid is making Catalunya’s independence inevitable with their harsh and high-handed approach to this situation. They have not tried to beat the pro-independence arguments, they have just tried to beat and imprison anyone who opposes them.
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Now, Catalan independence is surging again, on the news that the movement’s leaders are to serve long prison sentences for “sedition”
Gee, who could’ve seen that coming? [not the clowns in Madrid, apparently]
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Not to contradict what you wrote but some change has happened. Some years back the father of a friend was given honorary Spanish citizenship. He had gone over in 1936 or 37 to fight on the Republican side, spending most of a year in Franco’s POW camps. When he died some years back, he was the last of the Mac-Pap volunteers.
He also played an important part in the building of a memorial to the Mac-Paps in Ottawa, which was unveiled in 2001.
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The problem with Catalonia has nothing to do with franco, it already existed before.
That is something independentists say to fool the Democrats.
They are trying to declare the independence of a territory (something illegal in your country possibly) with less than half of the population in favor of this.
For the rest, the president of the region is akin to supremacist theories of the Catalan race as can be seen in his writings.
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It may have existed before Franco, but you can’t say he had nothing to do with it. His oppression is well within living memory, and the current constitution was largely written by Francoists, including the re-establishment of the monarchy. People aren’t that quick to forget, especially when things like the sentences handed down to these Catalonian leaders show that the spirit of Franco is still alive and well in Spain.
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While I can understand the catalunyans wanting to be independent on an emotional level, on a practical level it’s not really practical anymore. Also they try to force an independence when they don’t even have a majority of the population wanting one.
The spanish government is handling it extremely clumsily and hamfisted which doesn’t really help.
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“You can’t have a referendum but if you did you would lose”
Madrid convincing nobody with their short circuit logic.
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One word: “Homeage to Catalonia”.
Franco seized power, the Republicans had been voted in.
Catalonia was a hotbed of resistance to Franco, George Orwell spent his time there as a vo!unteer to the Republican side.
I have no idea how much has changed since Franco died, but his iron fist squashed the area after the war. And the division of the war still seems there, at least to some extent, with the fussing over The Valley of the Fallen.
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The situation is dire in Catalonia.
First the Spanish state negated any political solution to the demands of the Catalan people, and resorted to lawfare instead. Jailed or sent to exile our elected government. Now I’m afraid that it is expecting the situation to turn into violence so that it can justify even more repression. There’s elections in November, and traditionally in Spain negotiating is seen as a weakness and would make the party in power to loose votes. Also hardline and repression against Catalans seems also to be a source of votes in Spain.
To this effect the police is not acting according to the standards of a democratic state but rather like thugs with the agenda to generate violence in the demonstrations. They charge against people sitting in the ground, they shoot rubber balls indiscriminately, beat and humiliate people in the streets, have run over protesters with their vehicles and terrorize and beat citizens on the street with no reason.
They also seem to be targeting journalists, even though they are perfectly identified. An abnormal number of journalists have been injured directly by the police and even shot these days (59). In one instance the police detained a photographer when he was taking pictures of a specially brutal beating of a protestor.
Theres a collection of videos of Spanish police brutality here:
https://catalanrepression.github.io
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The only way to know the support for independence is to hold a referendum.
It’s a huge red flag for a “democracy” if its biggest threat is polling the opinion of the citizens.
When supporters of Spanish repression start to show up in this thread you’ll start to see all sort of explanations on why a referendum is impossible, is illegal for some reason, can’t be allowed or is dangerous. You will start to think they live in another universe (or are from a former century).
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Last time they had a referendum pro-independence one even while they were being physically beaten by cops.
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Although a small thread, it’s good to see some informed opinion here. In other places I’m seeing references to Palestinians. Yugoslavia breaking apart. Baltic states. I ask why separate!! Are you oppressed? Is there ethic cleansing! Religious differences! Wer you a different country at one stage! “No”. So same religion. Same Race. Same food. Your essentially a city. What is it.
Found two great papers. Which I suspected. Latent racism. In an old NorthSouth Italian way. And a new growing organized xenophobia.
The Rise of Xenophobia and Populism in Catalonia (2012)
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=chess_easa
Three myths about Catalonia’s independence movement https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_three_myths_about_catalonias_independence_movement
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Here are some videos of Spanish police brutality in the 2017 referendum:
https://spanishpolice.github.io
The Spanish state claimed that the referendum was not valid and the result would be ignored. Even so, they deemed necessary to send the police (both regular and military) to brutally beat and terrorize the citizens at the polling stations.
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And that’s the problem. Unless the Spanish government recognises the referendum and will abide by the result, anti-independence voters know that they don’t need to vote. Only independence supporters will be motivated to vote, especially if there’s a risk of getting beaten up by cops.
I disagree. It could be an advisory referendum, recognised by Madrid. The anti-independence voters will have a strong incentive to vote as a win for their side would put the matter to rest.
Agreement from both sides that a win for independence would lead to negotiations run through a number of different committees, not an outright break. Once a divorce agreement is on the table there would be a vote on that again.
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One word: “Homeage to Catalonia”
So…three words?
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Congrats on your fast reading comprehension if you want us to believe you have just read these 2 papers and understood them in context.
If you had read them you would have noticed that the first one is centered on the rise of the far right populist party “Platform for Catalonia”, this party was extinguished in feb 2019. “Platform for Catalonia” was absorbed into Vox, that is a far right fascist party in Spain, strongly opposes the independence movement of Catalonia (even advocating with the use of extreme violence with the military), supports racists policies, is strongly against LGTBI rights and openly misogynistic.
The second one is a list of reasons to try to downplay the demands for democracy of Catalans. I’ll just point out one of the reasons given in the article:
“Modern Spain is a pluralistic democracy which ranks high on all recognized standards.”
I’ll rebate this point just with one example, unrelated to the current wave of repression.
Let’s say that this is not clear cut, and not at all by anyone in Spain that has been cursory following the news:
A 6 years ago a very shameful case of systemic corruption was discovered in Spain that involved the party in power (PP). The investigation took several years, the government and judicial system tried to dismiss the case, judges were mysteriously replaced from the case as soon as progress was detected.
One of the most important pieces of information in the case was a list of names of the people that received a cut of the bribes received by the party. In that list there were the names of several politicians, among the names there was the following name:
“M.Rajoy”
Even the president of the PP party and then president of the Spanish government Mariano Rajoy was accused and had to declare before a judge under investigation.
The Spanish judiciary and police dedicated all their efforts for several years to find out who this M.Rajoy was and where could he be hiding. At the end they the investigation did not produce any leads and Mariano Rajoy was absolved, M.Rajoy the corrupt politician is still at large.
I’m not making this stuff up:
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I vaguely recalled some kind of corruption issue with the Spanish judiciary being a major spark to the Catalan separatist movement. Thanks for providing the details.
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If anything the independence movement in Catalonia is inclusive and strongly antifascist. If it was based on classic XIX century nationalism as you seem to imply surely they would have never reached such a strong number of supporters. This is also an important point, the Spanish government is facing their demands from a XIX century mindset: race, religious faith, nationalism, censorship, repression, violence, lawfare. Whereas Catalans think of the right of self-determination, free speech, solidarity, activism.
Also, other people in Spain are wising up and protesting against the repression in Catalonia. Probably because they know that once the recipe of violent repression is applied to the Catalans and applauded in Spain, it will soon be used to dissidents also inside Spain. Regrettably the Spanish police is also strongly repressing them in Madrid:
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