Simon Harris's Blog, page 2
December 3, 2017
Massive Demo In Favour of Unity of Spain in Central Barcelona on Sunday October 8th
There were a few Spanish flags on the street outside the flat on Carrer Mallorca but it wasn’t until I got to the corner of Bruc and Aragó that unionists could be seen in any great numbers. There were busses and Spanish flags everywhere.
Since the early morning there had been Spanish police helicopters flying overhead and I’d seen loads of police vans. Perhaps because of my political position, I felt more tense about this demonstration than I had on the day of the referendum or the general strike.
Another problem was that a lot of busses had brought people in from outside Catalonia. Free trips to Barcelona had been advertised on Twitter and Facebook in order to boost the number of people on the demonstration. It wasn’t mainly Catalans demonstrating and the main language being used was Spanish rather than Catalan.
The atmosphere was more noisy and boisterous than the comparatively sombre Catalan demonstrations. People were singing “Yo soy español, español, español” (I’m Spanish, Spanish, Spanish) and the cars on Carrer Aragó were hooting there horns in support. Spanish rojigualda flags were everywhere some with the crest, others with the Spanish bull on them. There was a group of lads all wearing Spain national team football shirts. I could but feel it was all a little foreign.
I followed the crowds along Aragó to the corner of Roger de Llúria, where everyone turned to go down the hill in the direction of Plaça d’Urquinaona. Because it was Spanish, the atmosphere was quite festive. From the noise from the car and motorbike horns, there was obviously a lot of support for the unionist cause. The crowd was singing “Viva España. Visca Catalunya” (Long live Spain. Long live Catalonia.)
It was worth bearing in mind that this was Sunday 8th October and in four days time, on Thursday 12th, Spain would be celebrating its National Day, which would mean another big demonstration in Barcelona in favour of the unity of Spain and Catalonia. Here it is known as El Dia de la Hispanitat, literally the Day of Spanishness, and in the English-speaking world it’s Columbus Day.
The crowd moved over to the slightly larger Carrer de Pau Claris. In my 30 years in Barcelona, I had never seen so many Spanish flags. I knew it was going to be a big demonstration but I hadn’t expected it to be this big. Once again there were people of all ages representing a broad cross section of Catalan society.
Even accepting that some of them had come from other parts of Spain, I had the sensation that the majority had been born here in Catalonia and had been bussed in from towns and villages outside Barcelona. Outside the city of Barcelona itself, the municipalities that surrounded it of Hospitalet, Sant Adrià, Santa Coloma and Badalona, and the neighbouring counties of El Baix Llobregat and El Vallès were mainly Spanish speaking.
It struck me most strongly that day just how divided Catalan society really was. The only solution was to have a vote on whether to stay in Spain or not. Otherwise the division would remain indefinitely. There definitely was a breach between Catalan speakers, who identify more as being Catalan, and Spanish speakers, who identify more as being Spanish. More chants of “No nos engaña, Cataluña es España” (Don’t try to to trick us, Catalonia is Spain) as we reached the corner of Pau Claris and Gran Via.
One of the reasons why the organisers, Societat Civil Catalana, had chosen to march from Plaça d’Urquinaona down Via Laietana to Estació de França rather than Passeig de Gràcia and Plaça de Catalunya was that these streets were much narrower and gave the sense that there were many more people than there actually were. I don’t think the SCC had expected such a big turnout so by holding it here they were covering their backs and guaranteeing they could get the photo.
“Puigdemont a prisión” and “Cataluña es España” resounded around me. Catalan senyera flags flew alongside Spanish rojigualdas as if to make the point. Other people carried hears with the Catalan, Spanish and European Union flags in them. They definitely didn’t want a border with Spain and it was easy to see why the EU were unwilling to back Catalonia despite the police violence and failure to respect democratic principles. “España unida jamas será vencida!” (Spain united will never be defeated) went the shout from the crowd.
A couple of streets before we got to Plaça d’Urquinaona, it was impossible to move any further because of all the people. There was a sea of Spanish flags before me so I turned into Carrer Casp and started to make my way back up the hill towards home.
This was undoubtedly a massive demonstration but it didn’t compare with the Catalan demonstrations in numbers despite being on a Sunday and busses having been provided to bring people in from other parts of Spain. Having said that most of the people on the march seemed like normal citizens who happened to have another point of view on the political future of Catalonia. They were a little more exuberant than the Catalans but that’s just what the Spanish are like. Also from what I’d seen, it wasn’t fair to call them fascists. They were just just ordinary people.
It seemed to me that the only way to solve this disagreement would be to hold a referendum. As I walked away from the march, the last Spanish flag I saw had “Viva el Rey” (Long live the King) written on it. How could this ever be compatible with most Catalans’ hope of a Republic?
December 2, 2017
Looking at the Catalan Situation Five Days after the Referendum
It was always clear that the referendum didn’t go ahead under normal circumstances so it wasn’t surprising that the team of international observers declared that the results could not be taken as completely valid. However, neither the Catalan government and their supporters nor the Spanish government and their supporters were prepared to back down and the brinkmanship continued. I still believed that the issue had important implications for sovereignty, for the rest of Europe and for the rest of the world.
This was supposed to be a referendum on independence from Spain but the circumstances it was held under were particularly difficult because it had been declared unconstitutional and therefore illegal. This resulted in the violent behaviour of the Spanish National Police and Civil Guard on referendum day.
The most iconic photograph was the one of an elderly woman with grey hair. She is facing the camera, eyes closed with a pained expression on her face as blood pours across her forehead, down her nose, across her mouth, off her chin and onto her clothes from a massive wound above her hairline. Behind her the armoured helmeted police officers face off against two middle-aged housewives, who are staring back at them, unable to believe what had just happened. According to the Spanish government, these middle-aged and elderly women were violent protesters and the police had acted proportionately.
There were many more images of this kind with the Spanish police attacking people with truncheons and behaving with a level of violence inappropriate in any country that calls itself democratic. In fact, before the referendum, Julian Assange had tweeted that the Catalan conflict would lead to the next Tianamen Square.
The final results were: 2,262,424 votes were cast of which 90% were in favour of independence. However, 770,000 were unable to be cast because either ballot boxes were confiscated by the police or polling stations were closed. So the real figure ought have been more than 3 million which is over 50% of the 5.3 million census. My estimations of the real figures, based on the Catalan parliamentary elections of September 2015, were that around 50% of Catalans supported independence, 35% were against it and 15% were still undecided.
The publication of the results led to an escalation of brinkmanship between the Catalan and Spanish governments because despite the opinion of the international observers, the Catalan government believed the results were enough to declare independence. I had been doubtful about this on Sunday and Monday but the general strike in favour of independence and against police brutality on Tuesday, which was backed by the major trades unions and the pro-independence grassroots organisations, the Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural and brought hundreds of thousands of people out onto the streets of villages, towns and cities all over Catalonia.
The reason why the general strike convinced was that it was an even stronger show of the Catalans’ peaceful civic commitment to independence than the referendum had been. The turnout was massive, not just in Barcelona but all across Catalonia.
Later that evening, flushed with the success of the referendum and the general strike, Carles Puigdemont, the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, gave an interview to the BBC. One of the interesting things about the interview was he gave it in Spanish and not in Catalan, his native language and that of his supporters, nor in English, the language of the interviewer and the international community. The reason why he spoke in Spanish was because he was sending a message to the Spanish people and this meant that any clips shown wouldn’t have to be overdubbed or subtitled when shown on Spanish TV. The message he was sending was that as soon as all the result were in from the postal vote abroad, he and the Catalan government would be making a statement, which would probably be after the weekend.
He also denounced the police brutality and said that this showed the lack of Spanish democracy. He also called Europe into question asking how the European Union could claim to be democratic when it allowed one of its member states to behave this fashion. He also said repeatedly that he would be prepared to negotiate with the Spanish government and called for international mediation so he definitely showed that the Catalans were open to dialogue.
However, later that evening, King Felipe VI made a statement on Spanish television accusing the Catalan government of “inadmissible disloyalty” and “dividing the Catalan people” and also said that Catalonia was heading towards “a very grave situation”. It was pretty obvious that this speech had been prepared by the Spanish government and many people here in Catalonia felt the King had missed an opportunity to be a mediator between the two sides. He could have said that the Spanish government would also be open to dialogue and thereby decrease the tension. However, he continued preaching the authoritarian centralist Spanish line, which only made the Catalans even more annoyed with the Spanish government.
Meanwhile, later that night, disturbances began in the coastal towns of Pineda and Calella, which are well-known holiday resorts about an hours drive north of Barcelona. Both the Spanish National Police and the Civil Guard had booked hotels in these towns and used them to house their officers. I’d heard reports that some of the officers had been drinking in bars around the towns and bragging about what they’d done on Sunday, which had really upset the local residents. As a result, they began demonstrating outside the hotels and putting pressure on the owners to eject the police.
The police officers finally left the hotels on Thursday but rather than leaving Catalonia, they drove to a town called Sant Boi de Llobregat just south of Barcelona, where some disused army and police barracks had been rehabilitated to house them so many Catalans I know considered the country to be under military occupation.
This sentiment grew even stronger as the Spanish judiciary got typically heavy handed and brought charges of sedition against Josep Lluís Trapero, the chief of the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, Jordi Sànchez, the president of the main pro-independence organisation Catalan National Assembly, and Jordi Cuixart, the president of the other main pro-independence organisation Òmnium Cultural. One can understand why they’d go after Sànchez and Cuixart because they’re the leaders of the independence movement.
However, bringing charges against Trapero was completely unacceptable to most Catalans. He was accused of telling his officers not to do their job properly on referendum day. They had been ordered to go to the polling stations and close them down as long as this wouldn’t result in an outbreak of violence. This is what they did, which was in complete contrast to the Spanish National Police and the Civil Guard, who went in batons flailing and firing rubber bullets at innocent voters. What’s more they were all unidentifiable because they were wearing helmets. It’s been many years since we’ve seen such totalitarian images in a so-called European democracy. Bringing charges against the three of them only served to escalate tension and bad feelings.
Later on the same day, Thursday, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, made astatement on Spanish television saying he wasn’t interested in any kind of mediation and wasn’t prepared to negotiate on the referendum and various other ministers came out and said more or less the same thing. It was clear that the Spanish government’s plan was to continue with the heavy handed tactics.
Thursday was a bad day for Catalonia as representatives of the Catalan Parliament announced they would be holding a plenary session the following Monday to discuss the referendum once all the results had finally been counted. The purpose of the session was debate and they hadn’t even suggested that there would be a declaration of independence because there was still disagreement between the independence parties about what would be said.
However, the PSC, the Catalan affiliate of PSOE, the Spanish socialist party, took the motion to the Spanish Constitutional Court, which immediately banned the plenary session. Once again, like in the referendum, the situation was one of ne’er the twain shall meet. The Catalan Parliament believed it had the right to meet to discuss, debate and then take a decision about how to act on the referendum results. The Spanish Constitutional Court had stated that this was unconstitutional and therefore illegal.
I wondered what would happen the following Monday and thought that perhaps there would be another mobilisation to insist that the plenary session would go ahead. We had seen on the day of the general strike how quickly people could be mobilised when necessary. My view was that if the people came out onto the streets it would be almost impossible to stop them.
The Spanish police hadn’t gone anywhere, though, and were particularly annoyed at having been thrown out of the hotels in Calella and Pineda. Various police representatives had been on the news complaining about being insulted by Catalans, which was hardly surprising given that a few days earlier they had been beating up old ladies and shooting rubber bullets at people.
Another important piece of news that week was that companies, most notably Caixabank and Banc Sabadell, the two most important Catalan banks, had decided to move their head offices outside Catalonia to Palma de Mallorca and Alicante respectively. A number of other smaller companies said the would be moving to Zaragoza in nearby Aragón. The Spanish news had gleefully reported on all of this suggesting that Catalonia was about to go bankrupt. However, moving headquarters is not actually the same as leaving Catalonia. In the case of the banks, the move was to assuage the paranoia of their customers in other parts of Spain, who were being told by media in the rest of Spain that Catalonia was about to go bankrupt and that they would lose all their money.
As I was optimistic about the success of the Catalan push for independence, I felt that the fact that companies were leaving meant that they were also taking the possibility of independence seriously. It was also significant that the only companies moving were those with a strong client base in the rest of Spain. Companies that relied on Catalan clients or international companies were going nowhere.
The final item in the news was the position of the European Union and the other major European countries. I had seen people in the streets carrying banners with “Europe are blind? Democracy is dying.”, “893 victims and many more victims. What else do you need Europe?” and other similar slogans written on them.
I was convince that as the dispute continued, the only option was some kind of international mediation but the EU, Germany, France, Italy, Holland and quite a few other countries had all said they supported Mariano Rajoy and the unity of Spain. Europe was seriously being called into question.
A lot of people had asked me what the Catalans opinion on the European Union was. My opinion was that the Catalans had always been very pro-EU, firstly because they’d never really had to think about it and Spain is a net receiver of subsidies and secondly, because they had rather disingenuously expected the EU to protect them from military occupation by Spain. If Europe were to fail them, I felt that Euroscepticism would rise very quickly. I also thought it left the door open for other major actors on the world stage, such as Russia, Turkey, the UK, the US or even China, to come in and fill the vacuum.
This was my view of things five days after the referendu. I couldn’t see either side backing down and feared that it would be difficult to avoid more violence. Some kind of external mediation was necessary in order to get both sides to sit down at the table.
November 26, 2017
Two News Interviews in the Week after the Catalan Referendum: BBC World Service and DW News Germany
A few days after the referendum, on Thursday October 4th, I was interviewed by both BBC World Service and DW News Germany and asked for an opinion on the current political situation in Catalonia. It wasn’t only a chance to express my views but the questions and tone of the interviewers were revealing of the attitude of the foreign press.
The first question Dan Damon of BBC World Service was whether Catalonia was culturally ethnically different given that it had never had its shape on a map. I replied that Catalans claim that Catalonia has existed as a country for 1000 years. The Muslims attacked Barcelona in 987 and the Franks, who the Catalans were vassals of, didn’t bail them out, so the Count of Barcelona declared independence, Then it became part of the Crown of Aragon, as the Principality of Catalonia, when the Counts of Barcelona became the Kings of Aragon. Spanish Nationalists claim that Catalonia has never existed because it has changed its named from the County of Barcelona to the Principality of Catalonia and has never been a kingdom.
On the linguistic question, Catalan is as much of a distinct language as Spanish, French, Italian or Portuguese. In this day and age, it’s more difficult to talk about ethnic differences because there’s been lots of immigration, particularly from France in the 19th century and from the rest of Spain in the 20th century. However, the Catalans feel Catalan and I’ve lived here for 30 years. I consider myself an adopted Catalan and when I visit Spain, I say I’m visiting Spain because it feels like another country.
Dan Damon then asked if there had been forced assimilation of Catalonia by Spain in the same way as the Bretons accused the French or the Welsh accused the British of assimilation. I replied that after Catalonia was annexed by Spain following the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, which was when all the political institutions were abolished and Castilian Spanish became the language of the administration, the law, the language of politics.
For a century or so, Spain was reasonably effective in assimilating the Catalans but then Catalonia got involved in the industrial revolution and regained its confidence. Since the 1880s, there have been pushes for more autonomy, regional government and at times, independence. There were two declarations of independence during the Second Spanish Republic in 1931 and 1934, for example. Then came the Franco regime, which was a period of repression rather than assimilation, of the Catalan identity. Since 1975, the Catalans have been free to express themselves so their identity has flowered whilst the Spanish central government in Madrid hasn’t given them the recognition that they would expect.
Dan Damon then asked me where Catalonia was going politically saying that a lot of Spanish people were unhappy because they didn’t want to see their country broken. I replied rather aggressively that what they do with their country was up to them. I backed this up by saying that, as someone on the ground here, although the referendum on Sunday was important but even more important was the general strike on Tuesday when hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Catalans came out onto the streets in support of an agreed referendum.
Dan Damon then wonder whether in an agreed referendum with all the polling stations open there would still be a vote for independence. I was 100% certain that there would, particularly after the police violence on Sunday. Every action of the Spanish authorities since 2010 when the Spanish Constitutional Court rejected large parts of the reformed Statute of Autonomy has pushed Catalans towards independence because Spain has never been open to dialogue.
I admitted that although I had written about Catalonia extensively about Catalonia and was passionate about the culture and language, I hadn’t got on board with Catalan independence until 2012. I had witnessed that as every year passed more people had come to conclusion that there was no dealing with Spain and the reason why the Spain government wouldn’t agree to a binding referendum was because it knew that there was a majority for independence.
Dan Damon then asked what would happen if Catalonia declared independence and I mentioned a tweet I’d seen, which had a photo of the people on general strike and the caption said “There are no police in the world who can stop this”.
His argument was that companies were leaving Catalonia for Spain, the EU wouldn’t recognise Catalonia and the Catalan debt would rocket because the country wasn’t participating in the global economy so there were lots of ways it could go very wrong. I admitted that there were dangers but said I believed that Catalonia would be able to weather the storm. I wasn’t as pessimistic as the official line suggested I should be and argued that with a capital like Barcelona, which is an international centre for tourism, services, industry, agriculture, commerce and banks, the rest of Europe and Spain, in fact, would be cutting their noses to spite their faces if they let Catalonia go under.
The situation was one of brinkmanship. I knew that the Catalan people and believed that the Catalan government were prepared to take things as far as necessary and for the economic reasons givens, at some point something would have to give. Obviously, Catalonia stood to lose a great deal if it was ejected from the global economy but I personally didn’t think it would go that far.
Dan Damon wasn’t convinced, “Fascinating”
The second interview of the day was a few hours later with DW News Germany by which time the proposed parliamentary session on the following Monday had been declared unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court because they feared that a declaration of independence would be made. As yet it was unclear whether or not Catalan lawmakers would obey the ruling.
A short clip followed talking about the divisions in Spain and Catalonia and how the Catalan Parliament had been expected to declare independence from Spain on the following Monday. They were keen to point out that although Carles Puigdemont said he represented the will of Catalans, a majority of voters hadn’t taken part in the referendum the previous Sunday. Similarly, they reported that Mariano Rajoy had said that Puigdemont was acting outside the law by trying to enforce an illegal referendum and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría described Puigdemont’s message as a journey to nowhere because there is no democracy, no coexistence or rights outside the law and Mr Puigdemont has been living outside the law, outside reality and outside sanity for some time.
In Barcelona, people just wanted the politicians to find a solution to the problem. A woman intereviewed in the street said “I am well aware of the problems we are facing. This is like a divorce. There’s no coming back. You can’t divorce today and get married tomorrow.” A man said “The situation’s very tense. We’ve reached the stage where the Spanish and Catalan governments need to ease tension. They need to talk and international mediation would be perfect. ” The Catalan government had called for mediation but the Spanish government said it wouldn’t enter dialogue until they dropped their threat of declaring independence.
I was asked given the relative prosperity of Catalonia why Catalan separatists thought they’d be better off independent. I explained that there were a number of issues. Firstly, there is the identity issue. As I say in my book, Catalonia is a nation and should be a sovereign state but also Catalonia gets a very bad deal from the Spanish government because the tax deficit, which is the difference between the money paid to Madrid by Catalan taxpayers and the amount returned to Catalonia in investment, amounts to around 8% of GDP, which 2015 was about €16 billion.
The interviewer repeated that Catalonia was the richest region in Spain so it wasn’t doing badly. I replied that Catalonia effectively was a cash cow for Spain while suffering unemployment and housing shortages. Similarly, in other parts of Spain, children get their school textbooks paid for by the state but not in Catalonia. The Catalan administration is continually in debt to the Spanish government.
He asked whether this was enough to merit independence or whether there should a political negotiation between Barcelona and Madrid. I argued that the dispute had been going on for centuries but that the contemporary independence movement began in 2003 with the renegotiation of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which would have give Catalonia the right to call itself a nation, the Catalan language would have had priority, the Catalan judiciary would have had extra powers and furthermore, Catalonia would have had the right to collect its own taxes. It was passed by the Catalan Parliament, the Spanish Parliament and at referendum but was still deemed unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court. It was at this point that Catalans realised there was little chance of reaching a negotiated agreement.
November 23, 2017
A Small Unionist Demo in favour of the Police outside Spain Govt Delegation on October 4th
On Wednesday evening, the day after the general strike, I was sitting at home about to watch the 9 o’clock news when I heard noise coming from outside the Spanish Government Delegation offices just round the corner. It was a small unionist demonstration in support of the police.
Comments on the Photo
Before I start transcribing the commentary to the video, I think it’s worth commenting on the photo I’m using to illustrate the post. It’s not from the evening in question but it is from one of the many demonstrations that were held outside the Spanish Government Delegation in favour of the unity of Spain.
The placard reads “Basta ya de dividir a los catalanes”, which translates as “Stop dividing the Catalans” and it raises the question of how we define a Catalan. Is it some who was born in Catalonia? Is it someone who lives in Catalonia and can vote there? or Is it someone who feels and speaks Catalan?
I’m sure I’ll discuss this question over the videos that cover the unionist demonstrations but there definitely is a battle over who has the right to call themselves Catalan. This goes to the heart of the problem because it turns into a question of legitimacy because a person who has the legitimate right to call themselves a Catalan has the legitimate right to decide the political future of Catalonia.
Obviously, any Spanish citizen who lives in Catalonia can vote and this means they have a legal right to decide Catalonia’s political future but whether they have a moral right to do so is another question. One of the difficulties that is one of divided identities. This gives rise to newspaper surveys like the following, which was done by the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió in 2016 and has the percentages in brackets.
Do you consider yourself a) Only Catalan (14.4%) b) More Catalan than Spanish (19.3%) c) As Catalan as Spanish (41.9%) d) More Spanish than Catalan (5.3%) e) Only Spanish (8.8%)
If we simplify the data we can see that 33.7% of people living in Catalonia consider themselves mainly Catalan, 14.1% consider themselves mainly Spanish and 41.9% consider themselves to be both Catalan or Spanish. Although the majority of people have a dual identity, Catalan society is still pretty divided.
I find it hard to imagine that such a high percentage of Scots, even at the time of their referendum on independence, would consider themselves to be Scottish but not British and, even though they might not want to be British, hardly anyone in Scotland would consider themselves British but not Scottish. This is because Scots have a right to call themselves a nation and nobody else in the rest of the UK would see someone’s Scottish identity as implying that they weren’t fully British.
The situation is very different in Spain and many people see the Spanish and Catalan identities as being mutually exclusive. The question is whether someone who sings “Yo soy español, español. español” (I’m Spanish, Spanish, Spanish) can really consider themselves to be a Catalan. I’m sure I’ll be raising this and similar points in my video commentaries.
Comments on the Video
As with all my videos throughout the month of October, my aim was simple. I just wanted to show what was happening and then comment on it.
When I arrived on the corner of Mallorca and Roger de Llúria, I was clear in my belief that everyone has a right to their identity but immediately felt that the Spanish unionist demonstration was more aggressive than the Catalan pro-independence demonstrations I’d covered so far.
The leader of the Partido Popular in Catalonia, Xavier García Albiol, had called for demonstrations in favour of the unity of Span. People were shouting “No os engaña Catalaña es España” (Don’t fool yourselves Catalonia is Spain) and “Puigdemont a prision” (Puigdemont, go to prison).
Perhaps it was a combination of my bias and the fact that it was dark but the rojigualda Spanish flags draped around people’s shoulders seemed a lot more menacing than the esteladas I’d seen the previous day. There were occasional Catalan senyeras in order to make the point that these people considered themselves Catalans as well but the rojigualdas with its imposing coat of arms in the middle definitely dominated.
In the middle the crowd a group of people were holding a large banner, which read “Gobierno de España, cumpla y haga cumplir la constituciòn. Articulo 155 ya!” (Government of Spain, do your job and make them obey the Constitution. Article 155 now!). The organisers began reading out articles from the Spanish Constitution that they believed the referendum and the independence movement had contravened.
The key articles are 1.2 which reads “National sovereignty belongs to the Spanish people, from whom all State powers emanate.” and Article 2, which states “The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; it recognises and guarantees the right to self-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the solidarity among them all.”
The crowd started chanting “No estais solos” (You are not alone) in support of the National Police and Civil Guard who had participated in the violence on referendum day. I know the situation was polarised but I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone who had watched TV over the past few days and seen the brutality with which the police behaved could offer them their support.
The dominant language amongst the crowd was Spanish. Shouts went up of “Viva Cataluña!”, which means “Long Live Catalonia!” in Spanish rather than the Catalan “Visca Catalunya!”
Although the crowd was smaller, the level of excitement seemed much higher than the relaxed mood of the Catalans. From the megaphone the speakers read statements saying that “all Spaniards were equal under the law” and that “we reject discrimination” so despite having the power of the state behind them and the violence of the police to back them up, they seemed to on a kind of victim narrative. This was probably because in Catalonia they’re a minority and also perhaps because the people on this first unionist demonstration since the referendum were likely to be more radical.
Chants of “Puigdemont a prisión” went up again. I really tried to point out how everybody has a right to their identity but looking at the two sides, I wasn’t surprised that I had sided with the Catalans. This was like a night rally. The talk from the megaphone was all about judges giving rulings and sentences being fulfilled. It was clear they wanted the full weight of the law and the power of the state to be used against the Catalans.
My thoughts as I walked back home was that perhaps their is something bellicose and authoritarian about certain aspects of the Spanish personality. It didn’t seem fair. They were a minority who claimed to be a majority and used the power of the state to stop anyone finding out what the real figures were.
November 22, 2017
Why I Thought The General Strike on Oct 3rd Made Catalonia’s Independence from Spain Inevitable
I am continuing with the rough transcriptions of the videos I made throughout the month of October. In this one, recorded the day after the General Strike against police brutality on October 3rd, I discuss why at the time I thought that another peaceful show of unity had made independence almost inevitable. How wrong I was.
I had made videos on the morning of the general strike or rather general stoppage where I had wandered around Barcelona city centre just describing what I was seeing. Everything I had seen was peaceful, good fun and very positive.
In the afternoon, the masses had really come out onto the streets and the Guardia Urbana estimated that 700,000 people had been out in Barcelona. What was even more amazing was that people had come out onto the streets of every town and village in Catalonia. The TV3 headline read “Civic tide: demonstrations around Catalonia against police repression”.
Girona, Lleida and even Tarragona, where there tends to be less support for independence, were packed with people. In the small town of Berga with a population of only 15,000 people, hundreds came out. Mainly Spanish-speaking Badalona was full of people. The scenes in historic Manresa were incredible. Sabadell, Gelida, Viladecans even Bisbal de l’Empordà came out.
By now, the preliminary referendum results were out. At that stage, 2, 262, 424 votes were cast in the referendum with 90% of those who voted voting in favour of independence. However, the Generalitat calculated that 770,000 votes were not cast either because ballot boxes were taken away by police or because polling stations were closed meaning people were unable to vote. This figure puts the number of people who up to over 57% of a 5.3 million census.
There had been criticism that a vote of 90% in favour of independence wasn’t credible. However, the figure can be explained by the fact that most people who were clearly against independence simply boycotted the referendum.
I replayed some of the scenes of violence from referendum day. In one scene, set outside a school in a country village, a crowd of local residents of all ages and both sexes stand outside the polling station with their arms raised and palms open in a gesture of non-violence as over 50 armoured and helmeted Spanish police come marching down the country road. The police break into a run and go directly into the crowd, batons flailing. People are kicked to ground and as the rest of the group retreats, the police charge into them.
In another, a crowd stands with their arms raised as they face off a line of black.clad helmeted police. All of a sudden, one of the policemen starts hitting an elderly man in the head with his truncheon presumably for something he said. Then all hell breaks lose and the police begin attack anyone standing in the front line with their batons. They hit downwards into the faces and onto the heads of the defenceless people. The camera pans out to a man in spasms, having a heart attack or an epileptic fit on the ground. Whether you believe the referendum was legal or not, there is simply no justification for this level of unprovoked violence.
In a third clip, police are using crowbars to smash in the glass doors of the school in the village of Sant Julià de Ramis, where Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was set to vote. The voters are inside and the police tactics are obviously designed to provoke as much fear as possible.
The result of all this was that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people came out onto the streets of Catalonia to demonstrate against police brutality. There were even Spanish rojigualdas amongst the Catalan senyeras and esteladas. Not everyone supported Catalan independence but everyone opposed the police violence.
If felt that the General Strike was more important than the referendum itself because the Catalan people showed themselves to be united and incredibly peaceful once again despite the police provocation two days earlier. I had been out throughout the whole day and I didn’t see a single unpleasant incident. The Catalans behaved as the Catalan always do.
Unfortunately, Spain seemed incapable of taking any notice of the Catalan people. On the evening of the strike, Spain’s King Felipe VI came on television and made a statement completely in favour of the Spanish government. He accused the Generalitat of “inadmissible disloyalty” and of “dividing Catalan society”. He went on to say that Spain and Catalonia were “living very grave moments”.
What he really should have done is make a call to dialogue between the two sides because it’s pretty clear that, when three million out of a census of 5.3 million and their children, who were unable to vote, want to be allowed to vote on independence, we have a problem.
The problem with the Spanish government and now the Spanish monarchy is that they just seem to hide their heads in the sand. This attitude combined with the police violence was having the effect of uniting the Catalan people and it seemed clear that as time went on more people supported Catalan independence.
The other important interview that evening was Carles Puidemont speaking to the BBC, who announced that his government would declare independence 48 hours after all the results had been counted, which would probably when all the votes had arrived from abroad at the end of the week. So the declaration was planned for early the following week.
“We would always have liked this process to have been driven by dialogue. There wouldn’t have been the police violence but, in any case, we decided some time ago, that it would be the Catalans who should decide. No people should accept a status quo it doesn’t want, against its will though force and beatings and this can only be resolved with democracy. There are people who interpret the Constitution like the Bible, that it contains absolute truths, that it’s more important than the will of the people. It’s obvious that we form part of Spain but we can and have the right to create our own state. And there’s a very clear popular desire, which I don’t think anyone disputes anymore, for us to decide our own future. How can we explain to the world that Europe is a paradise of democracy if we hit old women that have done nothing wrong. This is not acceptable. We haven’t seen such a disproportionate and brutal use of force since the death of the dictator Franco. After each mistake, we have become stronger. Today we are closer to independence than we were a month ago. Each week after every mistake we’ve gained more support from society, a bigger majority in Catalonia who do not accept this situation. So a more clear cut error like taking over our administration or arresting members of our government, including me, this could be the ultimate mistake.”
So it was pretty clear after the previous day’s general strike and show of strength by the Catalan people that if the Spanish government suspend the Catalan government or arrest any of its members, they’re going to have a revolution on their hands. I believed that sooner or later the international community would have to mediate.
I had supported Catalan independence since the Spanish Constitutional Court thew out Catalonia’s reformed 2006 Statute of Autonomy in 2010. Up until that point, I’d just loved the place. When that happened it was clear that there was no possibility of having any dialogue with Spain. All the reasonable things the Catalans were asking for just met with rejection. That’s why people like me and the people on the streets yesterday finally came out and decided they were in favour of independence.
As Carles Puigdemont said, every time they showed a lack of willingness to talk about this, the Spanish government just made things worse. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had said that Spanish police behaviour was reasonable and proportionate. The King had said that Puigdemont’s government was dividing the Catalan people but the crowds out on general strike day didn’t look very divided to me.
I believed that Catalonia had taken a definitive step towards independence from Spain the previous day.
November 18, 2017
Tues Oct 2nd: General Strike in Catalonia in Protest against Spanish Police Violence on Referendum Day
This is another in my series of post that look back on October 2017 in Catalonia using the videos that I recorded throughout the month. Here are rough transcriptions of five videos I recorded in Barcelona on the day of the General Strike against the violence the police used against voters on the day of the referendum.
I began the day quite concerned that there might be more violence but end it in a very relaxed and confident frame of mind, impressed by the Catalans’ peaceful civism and convinced that independence was possible.
I walked across to Passeig de Gràcia from my home in La Concepció and then down to Plaça de Catalunya, which was where I recorded my first video of the day at about 11 am. On my way down most of the shops had been closed and most of the people who were on their way into the centre of had been pro-independence kids draped in Estelada flags, who didn’t have to go to school that day.
My plan for the morning was to go to the three main squares in central Barcelona, Plaça de Catalunya, Plaça de la Universitat and Plaça de Sant Jaume and then end up at the building of the Delegation of the Spanish Government close to my house because this was where I predicted the main demonstrations would be taking place.
My previous videos had received a lot of comments suggesting that George Soros was behind the Catalan independence movement because his aim was to destabilise nation states. I’d also been sent a rather annoying video by UK Column saying that just like the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine both George Soros and the EU were in favour of independence for Catalonia.
However, the EU’s statements in favour of Mariano Rajoy’s government after the referendum made it clear that they didn’t want to dismember the Spanish state. My position on George Soros was a little less categorical because I believed it likely that the Hungarian billionaire would be likely to put money into any unstable situation in a European country.
That didn’t mean, though, that George Soros was behind or controlling Catalonia’s push for independence. Catalonia had been pushing for independence from Spain on and off for over 300 years and although George Soros was old, he wasn’t that old. However, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if he was funding some of the far left movement associated with the CUP, for example.
My mind went back to my concerns about violence breaking out during the day but looking round at the kids in Plaça de Catalunya the atmosphere was very calm and there was no sign of anyone looking for any trouble at all. However, on my way into the centre of town, I had seen a couple of hippy-looking types walking down Carrer de Roger de Llúria very close to our apartment. They were scruffy-looking and were trying on Anonymous masks and bandana-type scarves over their faces as they walked down the street.
Because they worried me, I managed to walk a couple of paces behind them without them noticing me and I managed to catch that they were speaking Italian. I guessed that they were members of one of the European anti-system squatters movements and were in Barcelona specifically looking for trouble. It’s not at all surprising that radical elements try to take advantage of unstable situations and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if George Soros were found to be funding them.
There were obviously lefties and hippy-types amongst the Catalan independence movement but it was dominated by normal people, who wanted nothing to do with violence.
For my second video of the day, I was outside the lovely old building of the Universitat de Barcelona, which was built by architect Elies Rogent in 1863 in the the period just prior to the flowering of the Modernista architectural style for which Barcelona is so famous in the 1880s. Plaça de la Universitat is not surprisingly the place where many student demonstrations take place and today was no exception.
As I walked towards the students, I received a message from a politician friend to watch out for Spanish National Police and Civil Guard who apparently were infiltrated amongst the demonstrators with the aim of provoking violence. The demonstration seemed peaceful but good-humoured and slightly boisterous with plenty of singing and chanting and I couldn’t help that any undercover cop would stand out like a sore thumb amongst the dreadlocks, piercings and revolutionary tee shirts of the students.
The crowd was made up of a multitude of harmlessly rebellious youth dominated by university students but with plenty of school students who thought it was a cool place to hang out. The atmosphere was festive and most of the kids were draped with or were waving bright Estelada flags. I caught a vague scent of marijuana and pushed on through the crowd.
Taxi drivers had blocked of one side of the square and from the empty drivers’ seats it was clear that they had joined the demonstration, which seemed if truth be known seemed more like a celebration. The chant that Barça fans sang when they beat Madrid, “Boti, boti, boti, madridista qui no boti” had been adapted for the purpose with espanyolista replacing madridista.
It felt as if Catalonia had become independent from Spain already and this was the leaving party. “Ea, ea, ea, Espanya se cabrea” (Ea, ea, ea, Spain is getting angry) sang the crowd. Two students climbed up on top of a bus shelter and unfurled a banner that read “Guardia Civil foteu el camp d’aqui” (Civil Guard just bugger off out of here) and a cheer went up from the onlookers.
It struck me that Sunday had all been about the adults and the the serious task of voting. Today was their kids having the chance to show their support for independence and as kids are won’t to, they were turning it into a massive celebration. Despite the haircuts and the garish dress sense, it seemed my fears of violence and radical leftist infiltration were completely unfounded.
For my third video, I walked from Plaça de la Universitat along Carrer de Pelai and then down La Rambla to the Miró mosaic, which was roughly where the van had come to a stop after the jihadist attack just six weeks. Unlike that fateful day, the day of the General Strike was a pretty normal day as far as La Rambla was concerned. In fact, it was business as usual in the whole of central Barcelona apart from the main squares where demonstrations would take place.
I walked a little further down and took a left into Carrer Ferran, a cobbled street,which would lead me to Plaça de Sant Jaume, which is the government square of both Barcelona and Catalonia. On one side of the square is the Palau de la Generalitat, the seat of the Catalan government, and on the other side is the Casa de la Ciutat, where Barcelona City Council meets.
Having walked around the city centre for a while, I was struck by how few Spanish police I’d seen. The occasional police helicopter had flown overhead but the only other police I’d seen were the local Barcelona traffic police, the Guardia Urbana, who had been walking down La Rambla with their chests puffed out looking very self-important.
The atmosphere on Carrer Ferran was also very normal. Most of the shops were closed but it was hard to believe that these streets had been the scene of the historical events of the referendum just two days earlier or that a General Strike was in full swing at that very moment. A Guardia Urbana van drove past me on its way to La Rambla but there was still no sign of the Spanish National Police or Civil Guard.
Apparently, on Monday, the day after the referendum, the Catalan government had asked the Spanish National Police and Civil Guard to leave Catalonia but the response from the Spanish authorities had been that they would be staying for as long as was necessary.
I turned into Plaça de Sant Jaume and not surprisingly nothing was happening. It was early yet and demonstrations outside the Palau de la Generalitat tended to begin at around 1 pm. I turned to face the neoclassical facade of La Casa de la Ciutat, the Barcelona City Council building. The main door is flanked by two statues.
On the left is Jaume I, the great king who not only conquered Mallorca and Valencia from the Muslims but also laid the foundations for the democratic institutions of Catalonia and Barcelona. The Corts Catalanes were the embryonic Parliament that would give rise to the Generalitat, Catalonia’s government institution a century or later in 1359, and the Consell de Cent, the Council of One Hundred, was Barcelona’s first city council and had met in the very building I was facing since the middle of the 13th century.
In fact, behind the medieval facade the city council still met in the medieval council chamber and the Saló de Cent itself was used for larger functions. It saddened that the cheap publicity-loving pseudo-leftist mayor, Ada Colau, was allowed to enter the building let alone run the city council.
On the right of the main door, stood Joan Fivaller, a Barcelona city council leader the city could still be proud of. When the first Castilian king, Fernando I had occupied the royal residence in Plaça del Rei, it had been Fivaller who had insisted he paid his council taxes. The autocratic Castilian had believed he was exempt from Catalan law in much the same way as the Spanish government behaved today. The difference was that Joan Fivaller was prepared to stand up for what was right whereas unprincipled Ada Colau bent in whichever direction the wind blew and based her decisions purely on the number of votes she thought she’d get as a result.
I looked across the square to the Palau de la Generalitat. No statues here but three Mossos d’Esquadra stood protecting the entrance to the Catalan seat of government. Above the entrance, the sobering figure of Sant Jordi, Saint George, looked down from the balcony where Francesc Macià and Lluís Companys had declared independence in the 1930s. I wondered if we would witness Carles Puigdemont do something similar in the next few days.
I walked out of the square along the line of metal crowd barriers that protected the front of the Palau past a group of ANC stewards, who appeared to be waiting for whatever demonstration that was planned for later. I turned into Carrer de Llibretería and out onto Via Laietana.
I looked up Via Laietana and saw that the day’s main demonstration was outside the Comisaría de la Policía Nacional, the main Spanish National Police station in Barcelona. The street had been closed off and was jam packed with estelada-clad Catalans. Cries of “In-inde-independènca!” rang through the air.
Despite the police violence on Sunday, the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed. If this was the reaction outside the police station, I had no reason to be concerned about things getting out of hand, not on the Catalan side, anyway.
Perhaps twenty thousand people had filled the road and were facing the police station, where a foreign Spanish flag waved in the breeze. There were no signs of extremism, just regular people showing that they were pissed off about foreign police coming and beating up their mums and dads.
I was reminded of the time I spent three nights in the Comisaría on Via Laietana in my fir on the floost year in Barcelona. After a day at the beach in Castelldefels, I had wound up at Karma, the discoteque in Plaça Reail, and at around 4 in the morning was walking home down Carrer de la Princes slightly the worse for wear to my flat just behind Santa Caterina market, when all of a sudden a police car stopped and two moustachioed policemen forced me aggressively against the wall. They demanded my papers but as I’d spent the day at the beach, I wasn’t carrying my passport, so they arrested me for having no documentation and bundled me into the back of the police car.
I was taken to the station and spent the rest of the night with about 20 other people on the floor of a cell with the light on. In the morning, I was handcuffed to two other people and we were talking down a labyrinth of stairs and corridors, which weren’t wide enough for two let alone three people. I was last in line and the policeman behind me kept pushing me in the back with his truncheon and shouting “Muevete, rubio” (Keep moving, blondie.)
I was then placed in a cell with 14 other people, which had seating for 5 or 6. We were given a single cheese baguette each a day and water. I was allowed a phone call, which I made to a Spanish social worker friend, who must have pulled some strings because the next day I was interviewed and asked my address and if I had any documentation. I said I did and told them I lived on Carrer Cecs de Sant Cugat in the tiny winding backstreets of the nearby Santa Caterina neighbourhood.
I was then taken by eight armed police officers to a massive police van, which they must have known was too wide to go through the tiny backstreets of the neighbourhood where I lived. When it inevitably got stuck, they all cursed me and then after parking in the middle of the street, they all accompanied me to my fourth floor flat. It took me two seconds to find my passport, which I gave to them.
I was taken back to the Comisaría and then spent another 24 hours in the cells until I was released. I spent a total of 72 hours there. All for not having my passport on me. That was when my intense dislike of the Spanish authorities began and was when my loyalties first began to turn towards the Catalans.
Moving up Via Laietana past the Comisaría, the demonstration turned into a march that seemed to be winding its way up the hill towards Plaça de Catalunya. The river of estelada flags flowed up towards Plaça d’Urquinaona. Always uncomfortable in large crowds, I cut up Carrer de les Jonqueres, which took me to the same destination but wasn’t so packed with people. A little girl was perched on top of the statue of Francesc Cambó. She smiled down at me waving her estelada flag.
I walked up the relatively empty side street and turned into Plaça d’Urqinaona. There were plenty of people there but they appeared to be on their way either to Plaça de Catalunya or Plaça de la Universitat. Everything was extremely peaceful and I was reminded once again that my fears of Soros or Antifa violence were completely unfounded.
A shout went up from the crowd of “Els carrers seràn sempre nostres” (The streets will always be ours.), which is a reference to Manuel Fraga, who was a member of the Franco government and also incidentally founder of the current governing party the Partido Popular. When Fraga was Minister of the Interior after Franco’s death, he famously said “The streets are mine!” following the crushing of demonstrations in Barcelona.
It appeared the marchers were making their way to Plaça de la Universitat. I didn’t feel like going back there again so I turned up through Plaça d’Unquinaona and into Carrer de Pau Claris and started walking up the hill. After a few minutes, I stumbled across another demonstration on the corner of Carrer de Pau Claris and Carrer de Consell de Cent. I didn’t realise what it was about at first but then I realised.
I was outside Instituto Jaume Balmes, which was the first polling station to be attacked in Barcelona by the National Police on referendum day. The teachers, pupils and parents had spread a massive Catalan senyera flag along the road. It must have been about 50 metres long and was strewn with flowers and notes. They were singing “Els carrers seràn sempre nostres.”
It was still only around midday and I was amazed by the numbers of people, who were out on the streets. I was also amazed by the general level of good humour and the obvious festive spirit. Perhaps, like at Plça de la Universitat, this was because a lot of young people were out. What was clear was that the Catalans had voted on Sunday and they were taking the streets today. Yes, the streets would always be theirs.
My wife had just phoned, in tears with emotion. The firemen had just marched under our balcony down Carrer Mallorca on their way to demonstrate outside the Spanish government delegation. She had unfurled our own estelada flag and they had shouted up at her “Molt bé, senyora” (Well done, madam). She was annoyed at me for not having been there.
I walked up the hill and hit Carrer d’Aragó, which is one of the main streets leading into the the centre of Barcelona from the outlying districts of Sant Martí, Sant Andreu and Nou Barris. When I lived in Sant Andreu, I had walked in to town along this route on many occasions. General Strike day was no different. Carrer d’Aragó was full of people who were walking into town from the outskirts.
This was yet another festive day and the Catalans were showing the power of peaceful protest. The experience of walking round the city centre and seeing what was happening with my own eyes had made me feel optimistic. I was starting to believe we could actually win this.
I continued up the hill, moving one street across to Carrer de Roger de Llúria, and finally reached the Delegación del Gobierno, the Spanish Government Delegation, on the corner of Carrer de Mallorca. The fine modernista building was cordoned off by metal crowd barriers and the Spanish Policia Nacional and their vehicles were behind the barriers. It was the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra who were doing the practical policing. They asked me to cross the road.
I joined a small but rowdy crowd, who were standing across the road from the main entrance. They were shouting “Asesinos” (Murderers), which was a slight exaggeration. Admittedly, the behave of the National Police on Sunday had been violent but they hadn’t actually killed anyone yet.
The front of the delegation building was protected by a line of barricades and then perhaps ten or so Policia Nacional were parked up against the front wall. All the cars hooted their horns as they drove past along Carrer de Mallorca into the centre of town. The noise was deafening.
There was a general rejection of the behaviour of the Spanish police and authorities irrespective of whether they identified mainly as Spanish or Catalan. Only 39% voted for the specifically anti-Catalan parties in the previous election with 48% voting for the pro-independence parties. This left a large group of people, who weren’t particularly committed either way and, it was fair to say, that the behaviour of the police on referendum day had disgusted them.
I bumped into my friend Miquel Strubell, who was one of the founders of the ANC. He was also optimistic about the success of the Revolution of Smiles and felt the Spanish authorities were unable to cope. He saw the police’s behaviour on Sunday as a gross violation of human rights and demanded an apology from the Spanish delegate in Barcelona, Enric Millo, as the maximum representative of the Spanish government in Catalonia. As a Catalan himself, Millo should come out onto the balcony and face the people because was no longer a question of being for or against independence but of basic human dignity. Miquel also realised that much of the horn hooting was not about independence but rather in favour of democracy and human rights.
I switched the camera off and decided it was time to go for a beer.
November 16, 2017
The Background to the Contemporary Catalan Independence Movement and the Current Conflict
An account of Catalonia’s attempts to escape the clutches of an authoritarian and centralising Spain can begin on many dates and in many places. Wherever the story starts, though, the common themes of identity and finance are always prominent.
Early Days
In 1640, for example, the main advisor to Felipe IV, Count-Duke Olivares tried to impose the Union of Arms on Catalonia. This involved disproportionate taxation and the compulsory enlistment of young Catalan men to support Castile’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War. Catalonia’s refusal to comply caused one of the great writers of the Spanish Golden Age, Francisco de Quevedo to say, amongst other things, “As long as in Catalonia there remains a single Catalan, and stones in deserted fields, we have to have enemies and war.”
The disagreement led to Catalonia’s first attempt to extricate itself from the rule of the Spanish Crown and the subsequent Reapers’ War, which lasted from 1640 to 1659. The war ended with the Treaty of Pyrenees, in which Castile handed over the Catalan counties of Rosselló, el Conflent, el Vallespir, el Capcir and the north of la Cerdanya to France.
This early period of Catalan obstinance culminated in another war, The War of the Spanish Succession, in which from 1705 to 1714 Catalonia and Castile supported different pretenders to the throne and consequently were on opposing sides. The conflict ended in victory for Castile and the annexation of Catalonia. Catalan laws, charters and institutions were abolished and Castilian Spanish was imposed as the language of law and government. Many historians consider that the end of the Siege of Barcelona on September 11th 1714 marks the creation of modern Spain.
It has often struck me as sad that both the Catalan National Anthem, Els Segadors (The Reapers) and the National Day of Catalonia on September 11th commemorate defeats rather than victories. It says something about the character of this stubborn underdog nation.
Modern Catalanism
The modern movement in favour of Catalan sovereignty began in the period following the failed First Spanish Republic of 1873-74, when initially the Catalan business classes became frustrated being governed by backward and inward-looking Madrid under the restored monarchy of Alfonso XII. The Bases de Manresa, which were drafted in 1892, can be considered the first manifesto of what became known as Political Catalanism and they led to the creation of the first Catalanist party, the Lliga Regionalista, in 1901.
Increasingly frustrated with Madrid’s economic conservatism and military authoritarianism, the Lliga Regionalista managed to group the four Catalan provinces of Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona and Lleida, into the Mancomunitat or Commonwealth of Catalonia in 1914. The Mancomunitat heralded in a period of modernisation but was ended by Spain’s first 20th century dictatorship, which was headed by Miguel Primo de Rivera and lasted from 1923 to 1924.
As has often been the case in modern Spanish history, a right-wing regime provoked a reaction from the left and the Second Spanish Republic came to power in April 1931. During the Republic, the Catalan government attempted to declare independence on two occasions.
Following the declaration of 1931, the left-wing Republican government persuaded Esquerra Republicana leader, Francesc Macià, to back down in return for the restoration of the Generalitat. In 1934, Macià’s successor, Lluís Companys, made a second declaration of independence in response to the right coming to power in what has become known as the Black Biennial. Companys was imprisoned and the Generalitat was abolished.
The left regained power in Madrid in January 1936 and Companys was released from prison and reinstated as President of the Generalitat. These two events led to the Nationalist coup d’etat and the start of the Spanish Civil War on July 17th 1936 and Franco’s victory in 1939 forced Catalanism underground again.
The Estatut
The current conflict between Catalonia and Spain’s central government goes back to the early Noughties, when Spain’s democracy and its system of autonomous communities appeared robust and successful. Catalan legislators decided it was time to ask for some of the competencies that, for various reasons, hadn’t been conceded to the Generalitat during Spain’s transition to democracy following the death of General Franco in 1975 and began drafting a new Statute of Autonomy.
The Estatut, as it was known, would give Catalonia the right to collect its own taxes and the Catalan courts would be the supreme judicial power in the Principality. For administrative purposes, the Catalan language would be placed on a par with Castilian Spanish, which would stil be official, and perhaps most significantly Catalonia would have the right to call itself a nation.
The draft text of the Estatut was passed in the Parliament of Catalonia by 120 votes to 15 on September 30th 2005 and was sent for review to the Spanish Congress of Deputies in Madrid, where it underwent some quite significant amendments. However, the final reading of the Estatut was finally approved by both chambers on May 10th 2006 and subsequently voted into law at referendum by the Catalan people on June 18th 2006.
If this final set of reforms had been allowed, the issue of independence for Catalonia would probably never have become a serious one. At the time, despite a strong sense of Catalan identity, very few people gave much credence to the idea of separating from Spain and independence only had the support of about ten percent of the population.
I used to watch football with some Esquerra Republicana activists and the fact that they supported an independent Catalonia often made them the butt of our jokes. Similarly, in my first book “Going Native in Catalonia”, originally published in 2007, I predicted a bright future for Catalonia and Spain now the Estatut had been passed.
However, even during the review of the Estatut in the Congress of Deputies, the Partido Popular had raised issues of unconstitutionality and particularly offended by the idea that Catalonia could call itself a nation, launched an insulting ad campaign against the Estatut in late 2005. I had become accustomed to the Partido Popular using Catalan-bashing as a vote-winning tactic so when, after the Estatut had become law, they took the text to the Constitutional Court, I paid little heed.
After all, the Estatut had been approved by both the Catalan and Spanish parliaments and by the Catalan people at referendum, it seemed unlikely that it could possibly be deemed unconstitutional. How wrong I was.
At the Partido Popular’s behest, the Constitutional Court took four long years to basically roll back all the important reforms included in the Estatut and everything was done in the most humiliating way possible. In fact, it became so clear that, more than a constitutional issue, this was an attack on Catalan identity that in November 2009 twelve Catalan newspapers concurrently published an editorial titled “The Dignity of Catalonia”.
The final ruling of the Constitutional Court came on June 28th 2010, which incidentally cut fourteen clauses that had been allowed in the Andalusian Statute of Autonomy, and the sentence was seen as a direct attack on Catalonia by the Spanish judiciary. The contemporary Catalan independence movement was born.
Adverse Reaction
On July 10th 2010, there was a million-strong demonstration in Barcelona under the slogan “Som una nació. Nosaltres decidim” (We are a nation. We decide.) which was the first massive pro-sovereignty demonstration since the late Seventies. The majority of people still weren’t really calling for independence yet but the atmosphere of tension wasn’t helped by the triumphant tone of many of the headlines as the defeat the Estatut was celebrated by the Madrid-based media.
A familiar pattern had begun to develop of the Partido Popular using the Spanish judiciary to attack Catalonia while often receiving enthusiastic support from large sections of the media. Other sectors of Spanish society, including PSOE and the supposedly progressive media looked on in acquiescence, confirming in many Catalans’ minds the Josep Pla quotation “The most similar thing to a right-wing Spaniard is a left-wing Spaniard.”
In the Spanish General Elections of November 2011, the Partido Popular won an absolute majority and came to power in Madrid under the leadership of Mariano Rajoy. This was a particularly sensitive time. The European economic crisis was at its height and Spain was particularly badly hit. As a result, the left-wing anti-austerity movement, known as the Indignados (the Indignant), had begun street protests across Spain, including Barcelona, on May 15th of the same year.
Shortly before the advent of the Indignados, a series informal local consultations on Catalan independence had been organised in towns and villages around Catalonia. The first of these had actually been held in the small town of Arenys de Munt prior to the ruling on the Estatut but the movement had gathered momentum and on April 10th 2011 Barcelona held a consultation, in which over 1.1 million people voted.
Not surprisingly, the results of all the consultations were massively in favour of independence. Another pattern was beginning to develop. Consultations on independence would be supported by those in favour and boycotted by those against.
In the midst of austerity measures, the Spanish government started a scheme known as the FLA, the Fondo de Liquidez Autonomico (Autonomic Liquidity Fund), which was a way of lending money back to Catalonia at an interest while at the same time crowing about how inefficient the Generalitat was because it couldn’t stick to its budget.
When President of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, asked Mariano Rajoy for access to the liquidity fund to finance the Catalan debt all hell broke loose from the Partido Popular ranks. PP President of La Rioja Pedro Sanz said that “they have the gall to ask [for money] and then keep their television channels and embassies”. PP President of the Community of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre claimed that “Catalonia receives more money than Madrid”. PP President of Galicia Alberto Núñez Feijoo said that “today Galicia pays and Catalunya asks”.
This was pretty rich as Catalonia was paying around 8% of its GDP (around €16 billion a year) more to central government in taxes than it was getting back in investment and led to calls for what was known as the Fiscal Pact, in which Catalonia, like the Basque Country, would collect its own taxes and pay its dues to Madrid, plus a solidarity quota for the poorer regions of Spain.
Contemporary Movement
Not surprisingly, Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular government refused to negotiate and the Spanish press ran stories about how mean the Catalans were. In La Diada, the National Day of Catalonia, on September 11th 2012, just ten months after Rajoy came to power, 1.5 million people came out onto the streets of Barcelona under the slogan “Catalunya, Nou Estat d’Europa” (Catalonia, New European State).
La Diada of 2012 was the first time I, and many people like me, thought that independence for Catalonia wasn’t only a good idea but was actually possible. However, a gesture from Madrid at that time would easily have burst the bubble and the following week, the then President of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, went to Madrid to try and negotiate the Fiscal Pact again. The door was slammed in his face and Rajoy point blank refused any relaxation of Catalan taxes. From that point on, the independence movement had fully solidified and the only question was to find out how many people supported it.
Artur Mas called early elections to the Parliament of Catalonia for November 2012, in which the pro-independence parties won 75 seats out of 135 with about 48% of the vote. The objective was to hold a referendum. This was also rejected by Rajoy’s Government on multiple occasions and three Catalan politicians even presented the case for a referendum before the Congress of Deputies in May 2014. Inevitably, all but the Catalan and Basque MPs voted against.
As a result the Catalan Parliament passed the Law of Consultations, which would allow Catalonia to hold a non-binding consultation, not even a referendum, just to find out the numbers. The consultation was planned for November 9th 2014 but the Law of Consultations was declared unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court. The name of the vote was changed to Participatory Process, so it was little more than a survey, and went ahead with 2.3 million Catalan participating, 80% of whom voted in favour of independence.
9N, as the consultation was known, was considered a moral victory by the Catalan independence movement and ultimately led to the creation of the Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes) coalition. It was their election victory in September 2015 that set the gears in motion for the referendum on October 1st 2017 and the current conflict between Catalonia and Spain.
November 15, 2017
Two Days After the Referendum I Expected an Escalation of Violence
A General Strike was planned for Tuesday October 3rd. I was still reeling from the effects of the referendum so I went down to the passageway that runs between the Escola de la Concepció and the market to record this video before going into the centre of town.
I had done very little the previous day because I had been so tired after the long referendum day I’d had on Sunday. As you saw in my video of the day, I got up at 4 am, spent most of the day at the polling station and didn’t go to bed until really late so I was exhausted.
Fear of Violence
The day before, I’d done an interview with American journalist Tim Pool, who uploaded it to YouTube as “Catalans Vote for Independence, Will Violence Escalate?”. I’d been so tired that day that I’d gone to bed at about 7 pm.
On the morning of Tuesday October 3rd, I’d watched the evening news broadcasts from the Catalan and Spanish public TV stations, TV3 and TVE1 respectively, in order to get the official line about what happened on Sunday. The truth is, the Catalan and Spanish versions of events were completely different.
In my interview with Tim Pool, I had said that violence would escalate almost whatever happened. Carles Puigdemont and the Catalan government were in a very difficult situation because the result of the referendum was unclear. The Spanish considered the referendum to be unconstitutional and therefore illegal. It took place under abnormal circumstances, which meant it was very difficult to claim it was a valid result. However, the Catalans were claiming it was valid.
2.2 million people had voted and the Spanish news were very keen to point out that this was even fewer people than voted in the proxy referendum or participative process held on November 9th 2014, when 2.3 million people voted. What they failed to mention, though, was that because of the violent actions of the National Police and Civil Guard, 770,000 votes were unable to be counted or were removed so, in fact, the figure was closer to 3 million, which out of a census of 5.3 million is over 56% of the electorate whereas 2.2 million is only 42%.
Spanish Tactics
I now understood the reason for the police behaviour on voting day. On the day, I had realised that they wouldn’t be able to close down all the polling stations but this wasn’t necessary. All they had to do was to use enough violence to keep the turnout percentage in the low forties either by closing polling stations, taking ballot boxes away or by intimidating afternoon voters into staying at home. This meant that the Spanish government could claim the referendum was invalid not only because it was unconstitutional and illegal but also because of the low turnout.
Even more disappointingly, Germany, France, Holland, Italy and the EU had all made statements on the day after the referendum promising support for Mariano Rajoy and the unity of Spain. Most of the statements mentioned negotiations as a lukewarm afterthought.
All this made it extremely difficult for Carles Puigdemont to proclaim independence. Not only would it be rejected by Madrid but also it wouldn’t receive any international support and furthermore, the presence of the National Police and Civil Guard in Catalonia acted as a strong deterrent. Everybody had seen how they’d behaved on Sunday and nobody wanted more violence inflicted on the Catalan people.
I also predicted that arrests would soon be made and that the normally slow Spanish legal system would be holding hearings against Catalan politicians. Were Catalan politicians to step out of line, I was sure Spanish judges would order immediate arrests.
The Spanish authorities had also accused the Mossos d’Esquadra of disloyalty because on referendum day they would turn up every few hours and ask “Who’s responsible here?” and everyone would reply “We all are!”. They would then read out an “acta” or statement to make it clear that they had attempted to do their job but, as their orders had been not to disturb the peace so, they would leave without closing anything down. As a this contrasted so drastically with the violent behaviour of the Spanish police, the Spanish authorities wanted to criminalise the Mossos and claim disloyalty.
No International Support
Despite the support of the public worldwide, who had been appalled by the scenes of violence, the Catalan government had received no official support from any international governments. This put them in a very difficult situation. A UN human rights board had board had said it would investigate the violence but there had been nothing more concrete than that.
Another contrast between the Catalan and Spanish visions was in the reporting of the violence. The Catalans were inevitably appalled while the Spanish news showed few of the violent scenes and described the police behaviour as legal and necessary. The Spanish government even described the police behaviour as proportionate to the violence that was supposedly used by voters.
I was about to go off and report on the General Strike and expressed my concerns that there might be violence because tensions were running so high. A strike implies the participation of students and the left, who have a higher tendency to initiate violence than other sectors of Catalan society. I also feared that the Spanish police might try to provoke the demonstrators or that there might be agent provocateurs amongst the crowds. Any violence could easily be used by Mariano Rajoy as a pretext for ordering a wave of repression against the Catalans.
Furthermore, any violence by Catalans might put the Mossos into a compromising position and force them to act against their own people. It was important then that the Catalans managed to maintain the peaceful attitude they had shown throughout the referendum and on previous demonstrations.
Glimmers of Hope
The only glimmers of hope I could see were the declarations on the various political parties in Spain. The Partido Popular claimed that their actions were firm and the behaviour of the police was proportionate, that the referendum was illegal and that they are the saviours of the unity of Spain.
Their partners in government, Ciudadanos, who are a Catalan party and were originally founded as a lobby against Catalan gains in the Estatut, were demanding Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to be invoked and early elections to the Parliament of Catalonia to be called. At the time, this seemed an interesting scenario because it was far from certain that the unionist parties would win power from the pro-independence parties.
PSOE, the Spanish equivalent of the Labour Party, had been calling for negotiations and hinting that they would support an agreed and binding referendum here in Catalonia. My opinion was that this was a political game and they were calling Mariano Rajoy’s bluff because they support the unity of Spain as much as the PP does.
Meanwhile Podemos were calling for Mariano Rajoy’s resignation but the interesting element was the role played by PNV, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party), who are conservative Basques and had been supporting Rajoy’s PP in order to enable his minority government to get legislation through in the Congress of Deputies.
There had been two general elections in Spain in the last year and I hoped that the internal dog-fighting between the Spanish political parties might lead to a destabilisation of Rajoy’s government, which offer a better chance of an agreed referendum. This would be even more likely if foreign governments put pressure on Rajoy. A combination of a weak government plus international pressure from both governments and human rights bodies as well as the weight of international opinion seemed like the only chance.
Difficult Situation
I make no bones about the fact that I would like to see an independent Catalonia but two days after the referendum, the idea of successfully declaring independence seemed unlikely to me. 90% of an official vote of 2.2 milion just wasn’t enough.
Furthermore, the rest of the world just doesn’t seem to understand the Spanish attitude and tactics. Although everyone seems to think that Catalonia is analogous to Scotland or Quebec and should be given the right to vote on its own political future separately from the rest of Spain, the Spanish political class will never see it this way. Spain is indivisible and indissoluble as a matter of faith.
A referendum is the only solution to the problem but will never be allowed in part because Spain is aware that, after the violence of referendum day, the Catalans would be pretty certain to vote for independence.
November 13, 2017
Demos in Catalonia after Spanish Civil Guard Arrest 14 Members of Catalan Govt on Sep 20th
This is another post looking back on the events of September in Catalonia in the run-up to the referendum on independence from Spain on October 1st. Here I discuss what happened on September 20th when the Spanish Civil Guard raided the Catalan Treasury and other Generalitat offices and arrested 14 members of staff, the most important of whom were the secretaries of Economy and the Treasury, Pere Aragonés and Lluís Salvadó.
As a result of the arrests, from about 11 o’clock in the morning, thousands of people gathered outside the Catalan Treasury offices on the corner of Gran Via and Rambla de Catalunya. The massive demonstration blocked Barcelona city centre and the protests were replicated in towns all across Catalonia.
The pro-independence press described the raids as a coup d’etat and a show of force by the Spanish government. Then later in the day, at 10 pm, the cassolades or saucepan protests began and the whole population of Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia came out onto the balconies to bang saucepans in protest against the arrests. I was out on the balcony each with a saucepan and a wooden spoon making as much noise as we could and shouting “In-inde-independència!”. The racket that the thousands of people make is truly belittling and I’m sure the tourists, who were walking around the streets where we live in central Barcelona, thought we’d gone completely nuts.
The cassolades are another reason why I admire the Catalans so much. They are a peaceful way of making your voice heard and are very much in tune with the creative style of the massive street protests in favour of Catalan independence that have been organised over the last few years. The way they take the streets in a civilised civic manner is both impressive and admirable.
However, the show of force by the Spanish government made me doubt whether the referendum would go ahead or not and reminded me of the Catalan expression “No diguis blat fins que està al sac i ben lligat”, which literally translates as “Don’t call it corn until it’s in the sack and properly tied” and is the equivalent of “Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched”.
The objective of the raids was not only to stop the financing of the referendum but also to instil an atmosphere of fear. There were still ten days to go and it was clear that the Spanish government was capable of a lot more. The Spanish argument was that the referendum was unconstitutional and therefore illegal and as they had already shown, they were prepared to use the National Police and the Civil Guard, and possibly the Army, as and when they considered necessary.
The Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra were in the difficult position of being directly employed by the Generalitat but ultimately responsible to the Spanish government. It was their job to keep the peace and the Spanish authorities were bound to hold them to that.
At the time, I thought that by hook or by crook some kind of referendum would go ahead but it certainly wouldn’t take place under normal circumstances. Around 80% of Catalans wanted a referendum and much more than 50% of those who turned out would vote in favour of independence so the Catalans would claim victory. However, given the strange circumstances, it was obvious that the Spanish authorities wouldn’t accept the result.
I had been saying for some time that ultimately there would be no other option the a Unilateral Declaration of Independence so everything would depend on whether the Catalan politicians, most notably President Puigdemont, had the guts to go through with it.
The Catalans’ reaction to the Spanish police raids was clear. Thousands of people were out on the streets and Julian Assange tweeted out “Spain lost Catalonia today”. I wasn’t sure whether this was completely true. It was definitely the day when the confrontation between Catalonia and Spain stepped up a gear.
I felt at the time that if Catalonia’s push for independence was successful, September 19th 2017 would be be remembered as a turning point when the Spanish authorities overstepped the mark but on the other hand, if the Catalonia didn’t gain independence it would be seen as a black day in history, which would probably have consequences.
To say that Spain had lost Catalonia that day was something of an exaggeration. I think that Spain began losing Catalonia in the days after the first big Diada rally on September 11th 2012, when the Catalan independence movement hadn’t yet coalesced into something stable. Had Marian Rajoy reacted positively to Catalan complaints when Artur Mas visited him in Madrid, the pro-independence bubble could well have burst and everything would have been business as usual.
There had been many ups and downs in the previous five years but we were about to reach the climax to the independence process. I still didn’t really know what was going to happen. I didn’t have the blind faith of many of my Catalan friends perhaps because, as a foreigner, it was a little easier for me to remain objective.
For future reference here is the account of the day from La Vanguardia: Cronología del 20-S, el día en que se ha acelerado la crisis catalana
November 12, 2017
Catalan Farmers Bring Tractors into Barcelona to Demonstrate in Favour of Referendum
This is another in my series of articles using video footage to look back on the events surrounding the referendum and the subsequent declaration of independence. A lot of the thoughts and ideas are quite random but this is an interesting record of what was going through my head at the time I think.
***
On September 29th, the Friday before the referendum, I was on my way back home after doing some errands on the other side of Passeig de Sant Joan. I had heard that farmers would be bringing their tractors into Barcelona to demonstrate in favour of the referendum outside the Spanish Government Delegation office but as I turned from La Diagonal into Carrer Mallorca, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The street was lined with hundreds of tractors.
This was another in a string of popular demonstrations and showed what a grassroots people’s movement Catalan independence is. There had been a massive demonstration the previous day where hundreds of Catalan firemen had climbed up on the roof of the Museu d’Història de Catalunya and unfurled flags. It had been a powerful image.
The sheer number of tractors lined up along a major street in Barcelona was just as powerful if not more so. From the posters on many of the tractors, which read “Votem per ser lliures!” (We are voting to be free!), it was clear that these people wanted independence for Catalonia. The first step in achieving freedom was for the Spanish government to allow the referendum to be held, hence the demonstration.
There were plenty of television crews covering the tractor demo. Some of the farmers began shouting “Votarem!” (We will vote!) and I responded with “Visca Catalunya Lliure!” (Long Live Free Catalonia!).
When I see things like the tractor demonstrations, I’m reminded of why I feel so passionate about the Catalan people and their culture. They are firmly ground in the land, in the territory and in tradition. The solid ideas of “seny”, which is a Catalan concept that roughly translates as common sense, is embodied by the farmers and is something that has to be preserved.
The tractor rally was just another example of the strength of feeling there was in support of the referendum. When a people want something this badly surely it has to be allowed. The Spanish government may claim that the referendum was unconstitutional and therefore illegal but this wouldn’t change people’s hearts and minds. The law has to adapt itself to the needs of the people. If the Constitution doesn’t allow people to vote on their political future, surely it was time to change the Constitution.
The strength of feeling was clear not only from the farmers’ rally but also from the demonstrations by the firemen and the fact that students had occupied buildings on the city centre campus of the University of Barcelona. When the students occupied Plaça de la Universitat, they disrupted the traffic so much that my wife arrived home from work two hours late. Most of this wasn’t being reported on by the media.
Before the video ended, I started joking with a group of farmers, who were sitting on their tractors eating baguettes with fuet, a particularly tasty Catalan cured meat.
In the second part of the video, I’m at the rally, which was held by the farmers’ union, the Unió de Pagesos, at the junction of Carrer Mallorca and Carrer Bruc, The speeches centred around farming issues with the argument being that the only way to have a decent agricultural policy was if Catalonia was independent because the farming industry was different in Catalonia from other parts of Spain and Spanish central government tended to favour regions such as Andalusia, which it considered more “Spanish”.
The slogan was “Jo lluito per la dignitat de la pageia” (I’m fighting for the dignity of farmers). When people visit the modern vibrant city of Barcelona and focus on Catalonia’s strong industrial and service base along with its high-tech companies, they tend to forget that a large part of its economy is still based on agriculture. The rootedness of country people and the fact that they are strongly attached to the land is one of the great strengths of the Catalans.
My commitment to the Catalan cause has completely changed my way of thinking and made me focus on the importance of belonging. It is inevitably conservative because it makes you focus on the importance of conserving tradition and preserving `practices, such as farming, which despite modernisation, are firmly rooted in the land.
The Catalans had to be given the chance to vote on October 1st because the essence of Catalan culture and tradition is always under attack from Spain.
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