What next?

 

The Day After The Night Before Syndrome has struck the political ruling class in Spain. 

They had a worrying few hours, as it seemed that their Master Plan to stymie the onrush of the independent movement in Catalonia had disastrously backfired, and then it was confirmed that far from being stopped, the independence parties had managed to retain their absolute majority in the new parliament of Catalonia.

How to spin the disaster? 

The Spanish ruling PP party did exceptionally disastrously in Catalonia: they lost 11 of their seats and now have the shaming total of 3 (three) seats in the new parliament!  And even more humiliatingly, they fail to justify the numbers to be considered a separate group and are now lumped in with the minor parties in the ‘mixed group’ of parliamentarians.

But there was one bright spot for the woefully inadequate political leader Rajoy to go on about.  The fairly new right wing party of Cs gained 25.4 of the votes and 37 seats and will be the largest single party in parliament.  But an absolute majority is 68 seats and so they are nowhere near that number.  If they were to go into coalition they could count of the mighty support of the party with whom they slavishly vote with nationally, PP - so that boosts their total by 3 (sic.) to 40, still 28 seats short of an absolute majority.

They might be able to use the votes of the Catalan ‘socialists’ PSC, as PSC have allied themselves with their natural enemies of PP and Cs against the independence movement in Catalonia.  PSC gained 17 seats, so if they voted with PP and Cs the total strength would be 57, still 11 short of an absolute majority. 

The only other party which is opposed to independence for Catalonia (though they do advocate a binding referendum on Catalan independence some time in the future) is Comú, the Catalan version of Podemos.  Comú is more left wing than the other parties in this grouping and is a very, very uncomfortable bedfellow, even if they could be persuaded to join such an unholy alliance.  And even if they did, their 8 seats would give a final total for the anti-independence grouping of 65 - 3 short of an absolute majority.

On the other side: JxC with 34 seats; ERC with 32 and CUP with 4, make a total of 70 - 2 over an overall majority.  They win.

So, our exiled President in Belgium has offered talks with Rajoy anywhere in Europe other than Spain (where he would be arrested as soon as he set foot on Spanish soil) to start the political dialogue.  This is a situation that needs a political solution.

Rajoy has refused.  Or rather he has offered talks, or as he puts it in his alternative universe, “continued dialogue” (!) as long as the Catalan side is legal i.e. have rejected the idea of independence.  This is a sort of Catch-22 situation where the reason that there is a problem is the only thing that can’t be talked about in trying to resolve it.

I sometimes wonder if Rajoy doesn’t have some orange sash wearing Northern Ireland protestant unionist blood in him somewhere as the only word that he can say (and does with boring regularity) with absolute confidence is, “No!”

Our Spanish “entirely independent legal system” (sic) has stated that it has its sights on other rebellious, seditious and criminal persons of interest who all happen to be leaders of independence groupings.  As some of our political leaders are already political prisoners we can see where this is going.

As these political prisoners have now been elected to the new parliament, how is that going to work?  Are the imprisoned parliamentarians going to be ferried to the parliament building in prison vans and taken back to prison at the end of the day?  How is our likely president going to function when he is in exile in Belgium?  How will the voting take place?  Will the prisoners be allowed to vote?  Is that how Rajoy hopes to reduce the absolute majority of the independence parties to allow more ‘friendly’ fellow travellers to take over?

Rajoy has already said that he will ready and willing to talk to the ‘winner’ of the election in Catalonia: the leader of the Cs.  This is not the way forward.  Unfortunately Rajoy is too politically myopic to see any way forward but his own.

The New Year will bring the first meeting of the new parliament. 

Who knows what might have happened before the vote for the next president!

Everything is still to play for.

A new day?

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THURSDAY 21ST DECEMBER 4.45 PM

Walking towards the entrance of our polling station in Castelldefels we were met by a tall gentleman who had obviously just voted.  He was striding towards us with a look of ferocious distain and contempt on his face, emotions that might be explained by the fact that he was draped in a large Spanish flag.  In the metropolitan area of Barcelona.  In Catalonia.  A country recently ‘taken over’ by the right wing minority government of PP.  It seemed to us that the wearing of the flag was a deliberate provocation, but Catalans are too canny to rise to such obvious and childish challenges.

Given his pugnacious demeanour, I did wonder how his bedecked frame had been received in the crowded room where the actual ballot boxes were.  Although there are many non-Catalans in Castelldefels, there is still a majority of ‘native’ inhabitants for whom the Spanish flag paraded in such an obvious and flagrant way will either recall direct memories of the Dictatorship and the suppression of Catalan identity, or will emphasise more recent memories of Spanish state repression.  In any case, it was a crass thing to do - but PP and the Spanish state are good at doing things to show that they are deliberately tone deaf to the aspirations of Catalans.

Toni’s actual vote was, however, unexceptional - and he was even ushered to the front of the queue as the half of the alphabet that contained his name had an empty desk available for him to register!  So in and out in a couple of minutes.  Job completed, duty done.

Now the waiting to see what other voters thought their duty was!

There are beginning to be accounts of irregularities in polling stations - but at this stage it is difficult to know whether the events are run-of-the-mill incompetence or something more sinister.

There have been reports of envelopes being pre-stuffed with the list of Cs. 

Perhaps I should explain that sentence.  You do not vote by putting a cross next to your choices.  You can choose any of the printed ‘lists’ that are stacked on tables in the polling station, put forward by the different parties.  Each party list has a series of numbered names and, depending on the number of votes cast for each party, a proportion of those on the list will be elected.  It follow that if you are Number 1 on the list you are more or less guaranteed to be elected; the lower down the list you are, your chances of election depend on the number of votes cast for your party.

There are stringent rules about the elections, and votes can be declared null and void if the rules are not followed strictly.  One rule states that you can only have one list in your envelope when you put it into the ballot box.  If by mistake you put two copies of your party list then your vote will be null.  It turns out that in one part of Catalonia some of the envelopes were pre-stuffed with a Cs party list, so if a voter put their list in the envelope without realizing that there was a list already there, their vote would be cancelled.  I am still waiting to hear confirmation of this irregularity.

In another small town the lists of one of the independence parties were missing in the polling station.  That too is being investigated.

I think, and quite reasonably, that there is a level of mistrust on all sides about how this election is going to be administrated.  Remember the election is being run by a corrupt right wing minority Spanish government that has sacked the entire Catalan government and taken over the reins of power itself.  They have everything to lose if Catalonia votes for independence and they are running the election!

The corrupt right wing minority Spanish government has refused international observers to monitor the election and the counting and so the independence parties have mounted an operation to try and observe every stage of the election to try and ensure that there is no widespread fraud.

The right wing Spanish media and press have been one sided in favouring Cs (the right wing, PP supporting, big business financed party) as the best way of getting a PP friendly government in Catalonia.  I sincerely hope that their underhand tactics work against them and Cs are treated with the contempt by the voters that they richly deserve.

It’s now early afternoon and there is a certain calm about the day.  It is only in the evening when people leave work and vote that we might be able to gain a clearer view of what is happening in the country.

THURSDAY 21st DECEMBER 11.40 PM

Well, 97.9% of the votes are in and the independent parties have won an absolute majority.  But.  The party with the largest share of the vote is Cs.

I have had to start a new paragraph because I feel positively dirty admitting that the people among whom I live could vote for such an apology for a political objective.  This single issue party, founded to keep Catalonia in Spain has expanded itself to become a national party with the aid of shady backers, big business and prejudice.

I am appalled that such a party has become, or rather has maintained its position as the opposition in Parliament.

I have to keep reminding myself that the independence parties have an absolute majority to take away the bitter taste of Cs 'success'.

How did it come about?  Well, there are many non Catalans in Catalonia.  Some of them are recent citizens, but others are second or third generation Spaniards who originally came to Catalonia for work and a better way of life than in their home regions.  We have numbers of immigrants from Africa and from South America who have come to an industrial centres like Barcelona and Catalonia.

Just like Britain, the economy of Catalonia depends on an influx of immigrants to keep things running.  Perhaps these people feel more links with a wider Spain than with a Catalan republic.

I suppose you could also say that this electoral campaign was hardly equal for all parties.  Cs had the tacit support of PP with whom they work and vote.  They also had the clear support of most of the national media and most of the newspapers.  On the other hand, our leaders are imprisoned or in exile and our access to the media was obviously limited.  One imprisoned leader for example is only allowed a certain number of phone calls each month and, no unreasonably the majority of them are to his wife.  He was not allowed to participate fully in the campaign and had to make do with a few recorded telephone calls replayed at meetings.  Our President has done his best to be a part of the campaign from Belgium, but it is not the same as being in the thick of things.

Given the disadvantages and the fact that the 'playing field' was distinctly not level, I think that we have done well.

It is unfortunate that Cs got more seats than the largest independence party, but the independent parties have the absolute majority and we will go forward from there.

Now the ball is in Rajoy's court.  He has not got exactly what he wanted: a clear defeat of the independence parties and the election of Cs as the ruling party.  What he has got is a friendly party with the most seats, but with no majority, whatever coalition Cs try to form - the absolute majority is with what Rajoy fears most.

The New Year will see the first meeting of the new parliament and then the fun will start.  Rajoy will probably keep Article 155 going, which gives PP full control over Catalonia.

In this election the Catalan version of PP, the party of the right wing minority Spanish government managed to get 3.9% of the popular vote - a loss of 5% from their previous dismal almost double digit showing in the last election!  And they govern us! 

¡Visca Catalunya!

You can't get away from what is going to be.

There is a real temptation to talk about the fact that today was hot enough for me to sunbathe on the terrace of the third floor; or bemoan the narrowness of parking spaces in our local shopping centre; or the fact that imitation Post-It notes do not stick as well as the real thing, or any damn thing other than the one thing that I should be writing about - the situation in Catalonia.

It is too easy to ignore the big bad world when you live in a seaside resort where you can see the horizon.  How many city dwellers actually get to see a real horizon, a natural horizon, rather than the artificiality of the barrier of construction?  And life goes on.  After all, people come here, have a walk, have a meal and then go home to real life.  Real life, for them is elsewhere - not here, by the side of the sea.

Barça are playing Athletico Madrid and are one down.  At the moment that seems more real and more important than all the crucial decisions and actions that are going to inform the development of Catalonia over the next few days.

And it is days.  The day after tomorrow the Catalan government can issue the already signed declaration of independence.  In five days time the Spanish government could declare that section 155 of the constitution has been brought into play and the government of Catalonia is now in the hands of the government of Madrid.

Or they could declare any one of a number of ‘states’ from ‘alarm’ to ‘emergency; or they could declare martial law; or impose curfews; or bring back the Guardia Civil and the Spanish national police onto the streets.  There could be further (one has happened already) roundups of political opponents; there could be jailings; there could be an all-out national disaster.

And, although the EU is still sticking to the idea that the Catalan Crisis is a ‘local’ problem for the Spanish government, anything really bad that happens in Catalonia will impact directly on Spain and then indirectly and directly on Europe and the EU.  The value of the Euro will respond to the situation in Catalonia and that will have a direct affect on the 27 other nations.  Instability is catching, and there is a price to be paid for it.

Political debate in Spain at the moment is only a little step below racism.  We are watching ultra right wing demonstrations with Franco versions of the Spanish flag, with fascist salutes, with hate slogans taking place.  We are hearing political debate reduced to simplistic nationalistic slogans.  We are seeing sides forming.

In my heart and in my head, I know that I prefer to see unity rather than division.  With all its faults I celebrate the reality of the EU as a way of bringing something like community to one of the most powerfully dysfunctional continents in the world.  We tut-tut about the multiple failures of Africa; we shake our heads at the rampant corruption of South America; we throw our hands in the air at the inability of the Middle East to sort itself out; we chide Asia for its misuse of power; we sigh at the ignorant boorishness of the present POTUS and yet, if we look carefully at what our oh-so-civilized continent is doing and not doing we should be ashamed at our inability to subscribe to a coherent system of fair government.

I am reminded of a film in which an American hangdog comic character plays a millionaire (I’ve just remembered his name, Walter Mathieu) who has lost all his money.  His bank manager explains to him that he is poor and there is nothing in the bank.  Mathieu listens patiently and then asks the manager why he has not cashed his check.  It is a variation on the TV sketch about a British soldier lost in the jungle and, after years of hiding, not being able to understand that the war was over.  It is the perennial problem of not being able to see what is in front of one’s eyes.

Mismanagement, corruption, theft and lies have been the stock in trade of politicians throughout the years as Spain has made the transition from dictatorship to democracy.  We are now living in a country where the fundamentals of decent government have been tarnished and subverted.  The fact that after years of unrelentingly appalling revelations about the criminality of PP, the minority right wing governing party, the fact that 30% of the voting population of the country would still vote for them tomorrow is, to put it mildly, depressing.  In spite of literally hundreds of members of the party and their supporters being indicted for criminal behaviour that the country still votes for them and makes them the party with the largest share of seats in parliament is astonishing.  But significant.

If the torrent of accusations, the clarity of the corruption and the arrogance of their defence is still not enough to get their base to turn away from them to a more congenially democratic and law abiding party, what will?  We are looking at a Spain that threatens to be governed in perpetuity by a party that thinks only of itself and nothing for the gullible who vote for them.  For people who look for hope for a better system to the present main political parties of PP, PSOE and Cs, I have to say that they are deluding themselves and ignoring the immediate past history of their political activity.

Spain desperately needs a radical rethink about the way that it governs itself.  Not one of the parties mentioned in the last paragraph seem to me to offer the slightest shred of evidence that they are up to the job of rewriting the constitution and producing a society that is more equal and lawful.

Catalonia is not without its own problems.  Corruption cases have to be sorted out.  The past president with his 3% and his mafia like family all have to be dealt with.  Everyone knew about the 3% and those who condoned this abuse must be rooted out of the political life of the country.  But, perhaps, with independence Catalonia might have a chance to achieve a more equal society.  Linked with the poisonous corruption of mainstream Spanish political life, it has no chance.

Perhaps Catalans are prepared for the financial, social and political problems that will be their if they call for an independence that is going to be resisted with all means possible by the central government.  Perhaps they are prepared to fight for their ‘freedom’ in spite of the economic and social cost involved.

The next seven days could be decisive in the way the country or region goes forwards or slumps.

Keep watching.

Sad thoughts from abroad!

What can we expect in the next week or so in Catalonia?

A week, they say, is a long time in politics - indeed it is!  But what can you say about a country (Spain) where politics seems like a long dead art?  About a president (Rajoy) who seems to have no understanding about the political duties of his office?  About a division of powers of the three legs of constitutional democracy that have been blended together by the governing political party so that realistic separation does not exist?

Well, say what you like - but the reality of the responses is going to dictate the lives and livelihoods of a whole generation of people living in the country of Catalonia.

A declaration of independ

ence has been signed by the requisite Catalan politicians in the parliament, but its declaration has been delayed for a month to allow negotiations to proceed with the Spanish government.  A delay which was asked for by the EU as a sign of good will towards the Spanish government so that they were not forced into precipitate action.

And the response of the Spanish government?  A complete refusal to countenance any form of negotiation that might involve a realistic consideration of another and binding referendum about the independence of Catalonia.  Government leaders in Madrid have gone out of their way to say that all offers of outside mediation will be rejected because this is a Spanish internal problem.  No discussions will take place about the break up of Spain.  No!  No!  No!

The Catalan government has been given until Monday to clarify if it has actually declared UDI and, if they have not come back to heel by Thursday, then Section 155 of the Constitution will be invoked which takes away power from the Catalan parliament and allows Madrid to take over the running of the region.

The Socialist (!) party of Spain has said that if UDI is declared then they will support the right wing minority government led (!) by Rajoy in their actions against Catalonia.  The vacuous leader of the Socialist (!) party has suggested that there could be negotiations about changing the constitution and the relationship of the autonomous regions to start in six months time - as long as the Catalan government return to what the corrupt band of chancers who make up PP and PSOE call ‘the rule of law’.

For this to work, you would have to believe that the political group (PP) that engineered the rejection of a new relationship between Catalonia and the Central Spanish government and which was passed by both houses of parliament in Madrid and Barcelona, would suddenly change its mind and become reasonable.  PP was directly responsible for the rejection of something that could have assuaged Catalan resentment.  Nothing in the behaviour of PP over the last seven years since the rejection of an agreed settlement in 2010 suggests that they can be trusted in the slightest to negotiate with anything approaching honesty.

The action and inaction of PSOE and Cs have been equally disgraceful, and I treat anything they say with contempt.

So we have something of an impasse.  Neither side believes the other.  No common ground is clear.  No mediation is in the offing.  Disaster beckons.

The tensions in the Catalan parliament are clear.  There are those representatives who want an immediate declaration of UDI.  They say that the response of the Spanish government shows that they cannot be trusted.  They are going to get nothing by offering delay for negotiation because the Spanish government has clearly stated that they are not interested.

Indeed the Spanish government has noted the cracks in the Catalan government and they may well have thought that all they have to do is wait and the cracks will become open division.  Which they will exploit.

If UDI is declared then Spain will invoke Article 155.  Rule from Madrid.  This will infuriate the majority of the population of Catalonia.  There will be Civil Unrest.  Perhaps Rajoy doesn’t care.  He gains little electoral positivity from the poor showing of his corrupt party in Catalonia.  He can afford to ignore any loss of votes for his party because his status will increase elsewhere in Spain as some voters see a long delayed retribution for what they call the arrogance of Catalans and their open display of rejection of the law.

What else can this Titan of political inactivity do?  He could rule from Madrid.  As civil unrest increases and perhaps there are a few deaths he could then send in the army to, what was it the Russians used to say to justify their invasions of rebellious satellite countries? Oh yes, “We sent the army in at the request of the legitimate authorities in [insert name of country] to preserve law, order, liberty and democracy!”

They could then outlaw all the political parties that voted for UDI and signed the declaration.  They could fine, imprison and ban from political life those leaders who ‘misled’ the population.  They could then force elections in Catalonia allowing only the political parties that they deemed ‘legal’ to take part.

I am not Catalan, but from my observations of the people in this country, I do not think for a moment that they would stand by and allow this to happen.

An unsettled country would see institutions and businesses, including the sluttish banks of course, flee to Spain to be ‘safer’.  The financial situation of Catalonia would suffer, whether or not UDI was declared.  People would suffer.

But remember that Madrid is in the middle of the country.  It might be the capital of Spain, but there is no real geographical reason why the capital of Spain is where it is.  It is historical.  And Madrid has artificially bolstered the reputation and importance of the capital at the expense of other more attractive cities.  Like Brasilia, you have a ‘constructed’ capital city.  Barcelona however is on the sea, it has a port, it also has a major airport, and it is also on the main land route out of Spain through Catalonia and into France, part of the vastly important Mediterranean Corridor.  Spain will never want to lose that route, as it would cost it billions that it can't afford to construct another way through the Pyrenees.

Let me give you an example of how Madrid has engineered things.  When my postal vote for Brexit was lost, my replacement ballot was so late in getting to me that I had to go to the post office and get a special delivery of my “NO” vote against the lunacy of Brexit.  It cost a lot.  I was told by the post office people in Castelldefels that my letter would first go to Barcelona, and then it would be flown to Madrid and then be flown on to London and then to Cardiff.  Why?  Barcelona has a major international airport with direct flights to London and the UK.  But no, in order to bloat the services for Madrid and to make it appear more important than it actually is, all the mail was diverted on an extra, irrelevant leg of a pointless journey.  That story is not just about an important letter, but it is also about an attitude in Spain and Madrid.

Try as I might, I can only see disaster on the horizon.  An inflexible minority right-wing government has too much to lose by being ‘reasonable’, so I suspect that they will play true to form and think only of themselves and their party.  They have no concern for Catalonia and they will delight in using an iron fist in an armoured glove to crush what they see as a real threat to their comfortable corruption.

If Catalonia declares UDI then they will have to be in it for the long run, accept economic impoverishment and oppression and discover that it might be time to re-read some of the books that George Orwell wrote.  Those books have been considered as a literature of history, but they may now come to be considered as a guide to current affairs.

What a sad time it is that might be true!

The Republic of Catalonia?

The rain is falling straight in the breezeless air.  The blue terrace tiles gleam with damp reflected depth.  I can hear the gentle wash of the sea and the occasional car.  The sky, as always, seems to have that particular bright dullness that I have come to expect on rainy days in Catalonia, always offering the promise of a glimpse of the sun some time later in the day.

It may just be me and my over romanticised sensitivity to the ‘significance’ of today, but the rain and the broken silence seem like examples of the pathetic fallacy as the depressing weather reflects the division and tension in what is a day of possible futures in Catalonia today.

Today is the referendum on Catalan Independence, where we have been asked to make a simple choice between the status quo and the proclamation of an Independent Catalan Republic.

The right wing minority government of PP with their leader Mariano Rajoy have been spectacularly inept in their handing of Catalonia, and today has provided yet another vibrant example of their idiocy.

When the President of Spain was forced to come to court a couple of months ago and give evidence in a wide ranging corruption trial he defended himself by saying that he was responsible for the ‘political’ direction of the party and not the financial side of the organization.  Leaving aside the unlikeliness of such a position for a moment, let’s concentrate on what he said he was responsible for: politics.

The one thing lacking throughout the lead up to the calls for a referendum and its implementation was political imagination.  PPs response to anything Catalan is always ‘No!’ 

You could take the dissatisfaction with Catalonia’s position in relation to the nation of Spain all the way back to 1714 and the Treaty of Utrecht when Catalonia supported (with British encouragement) the ‘wrong’ side in the War of the Spanish Succession when the preferred Catalan and British choice of the Hapsburg claimant was defeated by the Bourbon.  The defeat of the Catalan’s choice of monarch led to loss of status, land and independence. 

But the Catalans are a resourceful people and the loss of grain growing lands on the other side of the Pyrenees forced them to reconsider their mercantile basis and they developed the cloth trade, remnants of which you can still see in the corrugated roofs of obsolete factories in cities like Terrassa.

The Civil War in the 1930s changed everything and, while Catalonia fought hard and long for Republican ideals it was eventually defeated by Franco’s fascist forces aided and abetted by the axis powers of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

To the eternal shame of the Allied Powers, at the end of the Second World War Franco was allowed to stay in power as a perceived buttress against Communism and he lived on until the 1970s when he finally died and handed over the state to his preferred heir, the restored king.

Democracy and a new Constitution followed and the country started the transition from Fascism to Democracy.

We have now had some 40 years of democracy and the faults in the Constitution are beginning to show. 

Justice in Spain is political.  The separation between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial is, to put it mildly, hazy.  Too many judges are political appointees and those institutions that should be independent such as Constitutional and Supreme Courts are seen merely as an extension of the ruling party’s demesne rather than defenders of individual citizens rights.

Catalonia’s attempts to gain a more favourable arrangement with the central government centres on the Statute of Autonomy that was reformed in 2006, endorsed by the Catalans in a referendum and then rejected as ‘unconstitutional’.  This rejection has exacerbated Catalonia’s feelings of injustice and increased support for independence.  Massive demonstrations in Barcelona have left the central minority government of PP unmoved and they have contented themselves with a steady rejection of anything meaningful that the Catalan government has offered as a basis for negotiation.

For PP and their lackeys in the right-wing Cs party, any discussion about a referendum leading to independence was a no-go area.

In spite of clear indications that the movement towards a separate republic of Catalonia was growing, the central government showed itself to be flat-footed, unimaginative, arrogant and profoundly un-political.

PPs solution to the calling of the referendum was to declare that it would be illegal.  They prompted their friends in the other branches of government to pronounce on the illegality and unconstitutionality and then they sat back and proclaimed that the referendum would not take place.

Their complacency, arrogance and unreality merely provided fuel for the movement to free Catalonia from Spain.

I still maintain that this could have been prevented.  A few elections ago, the parliamentary majority of PP was wiped out.  PSOE (the rough equivalent of The Labour Party) and Podemos (a new left wing party) could have formed a government.  Neither of these parties was in favour of a break up of Spain, though Podemos conceded that allowing Catalonia a referendum was reasonable.

In a ‘what if’ situation, the two parties (with a little help from odds and ends of the left in parliament) could have granted a referendum some years in the future and then worked to make the Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia more like that for the Basque Country.  It could then have been put to the Catalan people. 

It has been estimated that around 48% of the voters in Catalonia support independence with 50% against.  Almost 80% of Catalans wanted a binding vote on independence.  I maintain that, given the number of ‘Spanish’ people living and working in Catalonia, together with the large ex-patriot community, it probably would have been possible to present a re-worked relationship to the electorate and manage to get a convincing majority to stay with Spain.

That agreement between the parties did not happen.  The statistics refer to the past.  The actions of PP and the contempt that they have shown to Catalonia mean that the situation now is very different.

The right wing parties of PP and Cs, together with the ‘Labour’ party of PSOE all urged their followers to take no part in the referendum.  They all proclaimed the referendum as illegal and undemocratic.  All the opposition has played into the hands of the independence movement.  I myself (though I have no vote in this national election) have moved from being supportive of a united Spain to moving to a clear preference for the formation of the Independent Republic of Catalonia.

In the lead up to today and the referendum, the government of Rajoy and PP has gone to extraordinary lengths to stop the vote.

They have arrested members of the Catalan government.  They have drafted in thousands of Spanish National Police to Catalonia.  They have raided print works and confiscated ballot papers.  They have searched factories to discover the production points for ballot boxes.  They have closed down web sites.  They have threatened mayors who have indicated that they will hold the referendum.  They have locked schools where voting booths were to be set up.  They have waged a war of disinformation.  They have taken ballot boxes.  They have threatened and blustered and lied. 

And they have failed.

Today I drove Toni to our local heath centre and there he voted and I am proud to say that I drew the cross in the box indicating that we are in favour of the founding of the new country of Catalonia, independent of Spain and a Republic.

We first went to vote at lunchtime, but the scenes outside the centre were crowded and chaotic.  There were police there, but they were doing no more than observing and, as in any election, available to sort out any trouble.  There was no intimidation.

We returned later in the afternoon.  Crowds of people were there and they filled all the floors of the medical centre.  We had to wait a little while for the hidden ballot boxes (they had been moved to prevent their being taken by the police) reappeared and voting was able to go ahead.

That was not the situation throughout Spain and any glance at the news will show you the sometimes horrific scenes that illustrate what appears to be the gratuitous violence of the Spanish National Police against unarmed people queuing to vote.  OAP baton whipped, punched, kicked.  Voters thrown downstairs.  Rubber bullets (illegal in Catalonia) used against voters.  And the government in Spain has said that the actions of the Spanish National Police have been ‘proportionate’.

The silence from the EU has been deafening about what appear to be attacks orchestrated by a government against its own people who are trying to vote.  I fully support those people and organizations who have started proceedings in the European Parlimant against the apparent violence of the Spanish National Police and the actions of the Spanish State.

As I type, the polling stations have been closed fro two hours.  Results from the smaller settlements in Catalonia are beginning to come in.  People appear to have voted by the million.  If that is the case, then the referendum has produced a result that can be taken further.  Given everything that has been done by the central government to block, hinder and stop this vote any total above a couple of million is a triumph.

Given the apparent violence of the National Police; the failure of the government to stop what they called an illegal referendum taking place; the complete inability of the President to lead his party and the government; the numbers of people who voted in Catalonia - the consequent actions should be:

1              Rajoy must resign.

2              A General Election must be called

3              Catalonia must proclaim its independence

These are very interesting times to be living in Spain and especially in Catalonia.  It is now time to see whether our political masters have the wits and intelligence to live up to a new set of exciting possibilities and remake a broken country.

A Rant!

The Trouble with present day Spain is that there is not enough politics.

That statement may appear on the surface to be a little strange.  We are governed by one of the most corrupt political parties in Western Europe; the number of officials, associates, patrons and general moneyed riff-raff connected to PP that have been, are being or are going to be tried is astonishing.  The Prime Minister has just given evidence in a corruption scandal involving the finance of his party (in which all previous treasurers have been indicted); a previous PP associate and head of a bankrupt bank has just committed suicide; a previous head of the PP government of Valencia has died before she could be investigated thoroughly - well, you get the idea.  Each day brings new scandals and precisely nothing of moment is done about them.

The present government is a minority one.  We have over the past couple of years plodded our weary way through a few elections where the left has thrown away its advantage and allowed the corrupt PP with the help of the sluttish C’s and the abstention of the so-called socialist party PSOE to form a government which has done precisely nothing to remedy the corruption which is rife in the system - how can they when they are precisely the ones who would suffer if anything substantial could be done.

A clear example of the compromised system that we have is clearly illustrated by the Prime Minister giving his evidence.  He was dragged into the Gürtel Case

(you can find out more about this astonishing case here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCrtel_case ) much against the wishes of the governing party as you can imagine.  However, the Prime Minister did agree to give evidence, but we soon discovered that he was not going to give evidence in quite the same way as other witnesses.

You have to imagine the scene: the body of the courtroom in front of the judges is taken up with seats for the accused and a section for the press.  As there are so many accused they leave no room for virtually anyone else.  Each witness sits at a little desk with a microphone, directly in front of the judges.  Behind them are the motley faces of those thieves accused of stealing over a billion euros from the public purse, and of illegally financing PP and its various elections.  They make a gruesome backdrop of grafters, most of whom are personally known to the Prime Minister.  It does not however make a particularly Prime Ministerial setting (though one that I think is totally accurate for the debased reputation of our glorious leader) and there is also an aspect of guilt by association (!) in such a setting.

So, Rajoy did not come openly to court.  He arrived as part of a cavalcade in a car with tinted windows and entered the court via the judges’ entrance that gave him direct access without having to confront the protesters who had been waiting for this moment to hurl accusations against him.

Inside the court, things were different for him.  There were no accused in the massed seats in court.  They were all empty.  He was not asked to take the place where all other witnesses gave their evidence.  Instead he was given a little desk in line with the seating of the three judges!  His background was empty of any bad associates with whom his party has done ‘business’ for years.  Talk about a set up.

But because of the lack of real politics in Spain, the ruling PP is able to get away with things like this.  It is essential to stress that although PP has the largest party in parliament, it does not have an overall majority.  It can be voted down.  It should, in my view, be voted down.  But, politics does not seem to extend any further for most political parties than their own party concerns.  The idea that they have been elected by actual people to serve the country in parliament seems more like a joke in poor taste than a crushing accusation.

Politics in the art of the possible, and I know that there always have to be unsavoury compromises to get things done.  But in Spain at the moment, there is a lot of frenetic activity and lots and lots of high words and angry exchanges but still, THINGS DO NOT GET DONE.  That is an accusation that lies squarely at the feet of the politicians who seem unable to do politics.

I know that the election of 45 as POTUS shows that no matter how appalling your behaviour and outrageous your statements and low your morals, you can be elected to high position.  Brexit has shown that completely unscrupulous scaremongering and out and out lies can get you cabinet positions and the love and care of the gutter press.  Truth, morality, honesty, and ethics - all seem to be olde-worlde relics of a yesteryear that didn’t exist.  I know that a world of ‘alternative facts’ makes for dizzying reassessment of what is possible, but still, politics is supposed to take account of ‘events, dear boy, events’ and those include ways of thinking and ways of behaving.

Although it is glaringly clear to me that our government is irremediably corrupt and is totally unable and unwilling to reform itself and must therefore be removed, I am also aware that something like 30% of the voting population would be prepared to vote for PP if an election was called tomorrow!  It is difficult to imagine a worse few years of unrelentingly bad publicity for PP as the ones that I have watched.  Secret accounts, kick-backs, black money, illegal funding of buildings, campaigns, accounts in tax havens, lies, duplicity, sedition, collusion - you name it, and somewhere in PP you can find it!  And 30% will still vote for them!

The right wing C’s party (the political sluts of Spanish politics) generally supports PP, while making pathetic mewling noises about how independent they are and what they are achieving for the country!  They complicate things.  In my view a vote for the C’s is a vote for PP, and generally speaking they vote with them.  Their cowardly approach is to ask for commissions of investigation rather than vote against the government and bring it down.

PSOE (the so-called socialist party) has undergone its own self immolation with a widely divisive leadership election where the previous leader who lost a lot of seats in a previous election resigned, and then found a certain amount of backbone and suddenly appeared as a candidate for the new leadership which he, amazingly won.  However, they are far more concerned with abstention rather than voting against the government because they have a very real fear about what might happen in any general election that they force!

I think our present situation could have been avoided a couple of three elections ago by parties working together, but ineptitude, political ineptitude made that impossible and so we have had years of the same corrupt government that daily has to become even more corrupt to keep itself in power.

I also know that there is nothing to be gained by saying ‘if we had’ in politics because, that verb tense shows that the past is gone.  We have to deal in the present and, in my view, the political parties, especially on the left, are not doing enough to provide the country with a viable alternative to what we already have.

To say nothing of what is happening here in Catalonia.

 

In October we will have a referendum about independence.  Our government has said that if there is a majority for independence (no matter how many people vote) then the government of Catalonia will start the process of disengaging with Spain within 48 hours of the vote.

The Spanish government has declared the vote illegal.  A previous vote (overwhelmingly in favour of independence) saw the President of Catalonia charged and convicted in a court of law for holding a democratic election.  He has been barred from public office and has been fined.  PP has said that it will do everything that it can to stop the vote.  The Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal and the Catalan government has responded by saying that they will disregard the rulings, which prohibit the vote.

Again, I ask, where are the politics?  Where was the renegotiation of the relationship between the Spanish central government and the region of Catalonia?  Where were the mollifying words about rethinking the relationship of the two entities?  Where was the suggestion that a referendum could be held some time in the future after a process of rethinking the present positions?  Nowhere is the answer.  PP went straight for denial and rejection.  Everything the Madrid PP government does makes new independentists each day.

In my heart I would like to see a Spain united and strong, with an association of regions with a dynamic relationship with central government.  But PP has in the past and seems bent in the future of being absolutist and obstructionist.  They seem to be actively seeking confrontation - to do what?  Send in the tanks?  Disenfranchise the whole of the Catalan government?  Impose direct rule?

Spain, and more particularly Catalonia, is my home.  I am concerned about how this country within a country sees its future.  My status is already under real threat from the idiocy that is Brexit, my position could become even more problematical after the October vote - or before, depending on how far and how stupidly a myopic central government feels that it can act.

So where, to come back to my starting point, are Politics?  And why aren’t they being used for what they should be used for: to provide a government of the people, for the people, by the people.

Are the politicians listening?