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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The crisis of the Spanish state

Posted by Jim on September 30, 2017

 

Ahead of the October 1 referendum on self-determination, the Spanish
government is engaged in a level of political repression in Catalonia
not experienced since the days of the Franco dictatorship. Kate Shea
Baird writes for the Independent on the sudden collapse in Spanish
democracy.
 

Last week Mariano Rajoy lost control of the narrative on the Catalan
question. Appearing before the press after a series of raids and arrests
designed to halt a unilateral referendum on independence planned for 1
October, the Spanish Prime Minister trotted out the government’s
well-worn arguments in defence of the constitution and the “rights of
all Spaniards”.

However, Rajoy’s professed defence of the rule of law is increasingly at
odds with reality on the ground. Over recent weeks, judges in Spain have
used startlingly loose interpretations of the Supreme Court’s ruling on
the referendum’s illegality to issue orders that violate many of the
rights they’re charged with upholding. Local police across Catalonia
have seized posters and banners related to the 1 October vote, and the
Spanish Civil Guard has searched a number of newspaper offices for
incriminating materials. These aren’t signs of a state that’s confident
in its authority.

Significantly, this legal overreach hasn’t been limited to Catalonia,
and nor has the popular response to it. Judges in Madrid and Bilbao have
ruled public debates on the Catalan question illegal. While both events
eventually went ahead despite the court suspensions, the apparent
attempt to use criminal law to suppress political expression recalls
some of the darkest moments of Spain’s recent history.

The scale of state repression in Catalonia and its extension to the rest
of Spain mark a significant shift in the ongoing dispute over the
national question. The conflict is less and less about competing
conceptions of democracy and increasingly about the defence of the basic
rights like freedom of assembly, speech and the press.

As Rajoy addressed the country on Wednesday night, the streets of
Barcelona swelled with tens of thousands of people demonstrating outside
the Catalan economy ministry, where a junior minister had been arrested
earlier that morning. On the other side of the city, protesters gathered
outside the headquarters of the pro-independence party “Popular Unity
Candidacy”, blocking the entrance of the national police, which had
spent the morning attempting to search the offices without a warrant.

Is this a revolt with a national current? Undoubtedly. But there is
something else going on, too. Wednesday’s rallies were not the highly
organised, disciplined affairs that characterise the annual
demonstrations of the independence movement. Their spirit owed something
to the anti-establishment “indignados” movement that occupied the
squares of Spain’s major cities in May 2011 and politicised a
generation.

Protesters alternated between collective renditions of the Catalan
national anthem, “Els Segadors” and the libertarian and anti-fascist
chants of “the streets will always be ours” and “no passaran”. As night
fell, the air was filled with the sound of people banging pots from
their balconies in protest, even in neighbourhoods where support for
independence is relatively low. Elsewhere in Spain, emergency solidarity
protests were held in more than 20 cities, using the hashtag
#CatalunaNoEstasSola, “Catalonia, you’re not alone”.

Since the financial crisis in 2008, both the independence and the
“indignados” movements have questioned the foundations of the so-called
“’78 Regime” in Spain, the constitutional settlement that transitioned
the country to democracy after decades of dictatorship. While neither
movement on its own has had the strength to pose a serious threat to the
established order, united around a common cause, they could create the
most formidable grassroots movement in Europe.

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