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!

There's no place like home?

A late night, slightly drunken telephone conversation in the early hours of the morning, offered me a safe haven in Cardiff if the situation in Catalonia descended into chaos as a result of from the referendum for independence.  While much appreciated, I felt the offer was unnecessary and made me think about early warfare.

In history going back, say, to the Middle Ages, battles could take place and, unless you were in the immediate vicinity, you probably wouldn’t know about them.  If you were living in another part of the country, you might never find out about them.  Royal houses might rise and fall and, unless you were near the centre of activity or could read, it would always be something going on beyond your imagination - and have nothing to do with the quotidian duties of your daily life.

Today with television, radio and social media there is a (grainy) immediacy to important events as everyone with a functioning telephone uses it to take pictures or film of what they can see.  The Spanish national police brutality during the referendum in Catalonia on the first of October was captured in a horrific gallery of professional and amateur images that flashed around the world.  A friend of mine held an umbrella over a television company’s camera to capture the full violence of the Spanish police trying to stop voting in her local school - one of the focal points of trouble in Barcelona and the site of many injuries to citizens trying to vote.  No sooner had we seen one image of unprovoked barbarity than another succeeded it.  But, and this is my point, the violence was ‘over there’ in Barcelona, not ‘here’ in Castelldefels.

The scenes at our polling station (in fact my medical centre) were cheerfully chaotic.  Yes there were police there, but they did nothing to impede the vote.  Yes, when Toni came to vote there was a delay as the polling staff retrieved the hidden ballot boxes that had been put in a place of safety because of the threat of a police raid, but he was able to vote and had his photograph taken to prove that he had done so.  Yet 19 kilometres away from us Spanish police were swinging batons, dragging people by the hair, breaking fingers, firing rubber bullets and bloodying faces.

The next day there were demonstrations throughout Catalonia to protest against the police brutality.  Our demonstration was in front of the city hall.  It was well mannered and polite: kids were playing and people were sitting in the cafes drinking coffee.  It’s a week from the day of the referendum.  It’s sunny and Saturday.  The paseo next to the beach is filled with promenading visitors.  I can hear the sound of the sea as I type and not the rumble of encroaching tanks!  Life goes on.

And even if the representative of the Spanish government’s ‘apology’ for the brutality was on the we’re-sorry-anyone-was-hurt-but-you-Catalan-people-are-to blame level, it does at least admit that the publicity was the most disastrous own goal since the last corruption scandal of this scandal-prone minority government.

Having seen how badly Spain has been presented throughout Europe, surely the reasoning goes, they will do virtually anything to stop a repeat of what they did.

The key word in that last paragraph is ‘reasoning’ and the key part of that word is ‘reason’.  Unfortunately that is not something that seems to guide PP in their approach to anything, least of all Catalonia.

Even if politicians in Spain seem incapable of finding a solution to what could be a fatal problem in the modern history of this country, there have been no shortages of advice from commentators from around the world.

As a dyed-in-the-wool Guardian reader I have to admit that I have taken most of my information from that newspaper, together with a judicious seasoning from the BBC and my final position is I suppose based on a hopeful fudge.

Although I think that the present situation is largely the fault of PP and President Rajoy, that is in the past and recriminations (no matter how necessary for one’s state of mind) do nothing to help the present position.  Both sides in recent days have conceded something by toning down their rhetoric and, although a realistic settlement seems as far away as ever, there are signs that both sides are looking for some sort of compromise.  I hope.

Let’s face it, even though the fact that the referendum took place in spite of the paranoid opposition of the government is something to be admired, the real facts of the situation are that only 42% of the electorate voted and, even though 90% of the votes case were for independence, that means that something like 36% voted for it.  Realistically, how can a country where only just over a third of the electorate voted for independence expect to be taken seriously?

But you also have to consider that in a country where the whole might of the government (with police brutality to the forefront) was unable to stop an ‘illegal’ referendum, the fact that over a third of the electorate voted to become independent suggests that there is something seriously wrong with the way that government is being implemented at the moment!

The unity of Spain is a concept that is worthwhile and positive, but that cannot be used as something to nullify any discussion about why such a sizeable and vocal minority of a constituent autonomous region is so deeply dissatisfied.

Perhaps it is too late for the German model to be used for Spain to reform Catalonia as a republic of federal state, but it does seem to me to be the best way forward.

But before that, there will have to be meaningful discussions and negotiations where everything is on the table and nothing (including another binding referendum) is excluded.

Next week could see the proclamation of UDI.  If that happens then Rajoy has not ruled out the imposition of rule from Madrid.  I shudder to think of the extent of civil disobedience if that is his chosen option.  The police, whose reputation was wiped out on October 1^st, are still here as a shadow army for possible occupation.  And there are of course, the armed forces themselves.  Rajoy has said that he has ruled out nothing to support his adamant assertion that UDI will not take place.

Reality is about to get a little sharper.  By Tuesday we should know what route our politicians have taken.

Keep watching Catalonia.

Search and ye shall find

 

The one aspect of the Internet that is clearly superior to using books is that if you type in specific information it will give you a specific answer. 

For example, I was wondering who was the author of the aphorism, “Politics is too important to be left to politicians”.  It seems to be that the sentiment is particularly appropriate to the present situation in Catalonia and I felt that it would be wrong to use the phrase without giving the source.  So, in an atavistic moment I turned to my books.  My dictionaries (well, just a small selection of them if I am honest) are within arm’s reach, which explains why they were a possibility.  If I had had to get up and walk to a bookcase I would have used the computer.

But I didn’t.  And, while I have the Encarta Dictionary nearest to me (a hefty tome bought by me through one of my sixth form students at a discount while she was working in Blackwell’s) next to my (well, Toni’s actually, but I use it more than he does, so there!) Macmillan English Dictionary For Advanced Learners, next to seven dictionaries of quotations, a Dictionary of Ideas and The Pelican History of Art: Painting in Italy 1500-1600.  A heavily weighted shelf!

My first choice to look up the quotation was in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations with an irascible Isherwood staring leftwards towards the back cover and to a rather more serene looking Don Bachardy in Hockney’s double portrait of the couple.  I opened the book at random, hoping to read through a thematic section on ‘Politics’ to find that the dictionary had been arranged by name of author.

This was a disaster. 

My random page had a quotation from my favourite composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) and I was surprised to learn that he was the man who first said, “a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic”.  I must have know that, mustn’t I?  But, whatever, it is back in the forefront of my memory now! 

Just before Sibelius’s entry was one by Manny Shinwell (1884-1986) a Labour politician from my youth and, in the next column another Labour politician, Sir Hartley Shawcross (born in 1902 and still alive according to my book published in 1991, but actually deceased in 2003) saying after the victory of 1946, “We are the masters now!”  Except that is not what he said, the exact wording was, “We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.”  If only that had been true!

On the same page are the last eight of the 130 quotations devoted to George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) including one of my favourites, “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”

There are song titles on these two pages (200-201 if you must know) “Goodbye cruel world” Gloria Shayne; “Little man, you’ve had a busy day” Sigler and Hoffman, extracts from songs like “Yes! We have no bananas, we have no bananas today.” Silver and Cohn; “And here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know.” Simon; “Down in the forest something stirred: it was only the note of a bird.” Simpson.  We have the title of a musical, “A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum” Shevelove and Gelbart, and title of Sillitoe’s novella “The loneliness of the long-distance runner.”

I am not listing these just for the sake of doing so (though they are worth reading) these phrases have survived because they have associations.  We may not give true credit to the authors whose names we might not know or have never know, and even if we have we soon forget, but we might remember their words.  And there are historical, cultural and personal resonances that each one of these phrases unlocks.

For example, the extract from a speech to the Electrical Trades Union conference in Margate in 1947 that is Shinwell’s only contribution to the book is not one that I know, but I remember the character.  I can remember him speaking on the radio and television and I have a picture of a rumbustious, amusing and socialist firebrand.  A living (if ageing, even then) representative of the Labour politics of the Wilson era, during the time in my early teens when I became interested in what the good and the great (yes, that is irony) were doing to my country and trying to understand just why they were doing it.

Some of the songs have come down to me in snatches that my parents sang; I remember seeing the old black and white film of “The loneliness of the long-distance runner” and of reading the book; everyone has his or her own memories connected with “Mrs Robinson”, I would have been 17 or 18, just the right age to appreciate the angst!

The Sitwells are on these pages, Dame Edith and Sir Osbert; B. F. Skinner (always a good name to drop into conversation) with his observation, “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten”; Red Skelton aka Richard Skelton with his deathlessly acerbic comment on the crowds attending the funeral of Harry Cohn in 1958, “Well, it only proves what they always say - give the public something they want to see, and they’ll come out for it.”

And I still haven’t mentioned Georges Simenon (1903-1989) honoured with two quotes, the first about having sex with 10,000 women and the second where he asserts that, “Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.”

Memories, delight and instruction from two pages that I “shouldn’t” have looked at and of course wouldn’t have looked at if I had used the Internet and got the information at once.

If nothing else, my meandering around the two pages touched on memories, courses and reading I had done.  It reminded me of a play “One Way Pendulum” by N F Simpson that I haven’t re-read in half a century and the equally dated concept of a “smoke-filled room” (Kirke Simpson) about where the male power brokers were when they chose Warren Harding as Republican presidential candidate in 1920.

Eventually, after much cogitation and amusement I turned to the back of the book and looked in the index for politics, and found an entry,

                              p. are too serious a matter   DE G 66.3   

and was able to find what I had been looking for quickly and efficiently.

Two adverbs that cannot be applied to the continuing disaster of Catalonia’s quest for independence and the authoritarian PP led minority Spanish government’s violent and mendacious response.  It appears increasingly improbable that any real sort of accommodation will be made between the two sides.

With Rajoy’s typically lethargic approach to tackling a difficult problem before it becomes intractable, we now have a situation where Catalonia is probably going to announce or proclaim unilateral independence from Spain on Monday.  The situation has not be ameliorated by the schoolmarmishly negative contribution from the king yesterday where he reprimanded Catalonia’s people and politicians for trying to break up Spain and his cosy kingdom.

Although the referendum had over two million voters participate, the majority of the voters did not.  Three of the main national political parties vowed to have nothing to do with what they termed an “illegal” referendum and urged their supporters to follow their lead.  Many did.

The violence that the national Spanish police used to try and stop the referendum will have revolted many more than those who voted, but Rajoy knows that his tactics (if his woeful indecision and negativity can be called that) will play to the prejudice that many Spaniards have against Catalonia and the Catalans and he will lose little electoral advantage by playing the heavy hand with an area which has long been the subject of envy and distrust by the majority of their fellow citizens and the source of few votes for his party.

If the President of Catalonia goes ahead and declares independence then Rajoy will have to respond.  As Rajoy seems incapable of any political subtlety, and as he has shown himself incapable of any reasonable compromise he will have to resort to force.

Over the past few weeks the central Spanish government has been stealthily taking over control of certain aspects of the Catalan government’s responsibility.  If independence is declared then the Spanish government has a number of choices available.

It could regularise the taking away of responsibility by invoking article 150 of the Constitution.  This article that has never been invoked before, will allow the central Spanish government to take over all the functions of the Catalan government.  This will and must lead to massive civil unrest.

I hope that the Rajoy minority government are not so cynical as to hope that their constant pushing will produce some sort of violence that will ‘allow’ the state to bring in the armed forces, above and beyond the armed national police, to restore ‘order’.  I do not like to speculate on the consequences of such action.

In a positive sense I would like to think that even at this late date, some sort of common political sense will prevail and the two sides will settle down to serious, real negotiations in which nothing is ‘off the table’ - up to and including a binding referendum about independence for Catalonia at a future agreed date.

I have to be truthful and say that nothing over the past few years in the political field of Spanish government has encouraged me to think that anything approaching common sense will guide our political masters.

I ask those inside and outside Spain and Catalonia to keep watching what is happening and use your voices to try and get a settlement to the present situation that benefits all sides.

And if you don’t feel that you can do that, then please note how power is being abused in Spain and Catalonia and use your voice to tell the perpetrators that they are being watched and that there will be a time when they will be held to account.

Your voice and those of your friends and neighbours are going to be increasingly important in getting out to the world exactly what is happening and what is likely to happen in Catalonia.

Keep watching.

Oh, and in case you were still wondering and hadn’t worked out the clues in the index listing, the quotation at the start of this piece came from the mouth of Charles De Gaulle, perhaps the quintessential non political politician!  And the actual, accurate quote is, “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”

Truth is what you think you can get away with

When in doubt lie.

While this is not really a commendable philosophy, it does appear to be the only one available to the government of Spain as they attempt to deal with the totally negative fallout from the vicious repression of peaceful voters by the Spanish national police.  Voters were kicked, punched, baton whipped, dragged by the hair, jumped on, fired at with rubber bullets, charged into by riot police in full body armour armed and with riot shields. Or not, according to the people who ordered the police into the field

.

At the end of the voting period for the referendum there were almost 900 voters who had been injured.  Members of the public, unarmed, trying peaceably to do something that, for the last 40 years in Spain had been considered a right since the end of the dictatorship: casting a free vote without state intimidation.

Well Monday showed that the youthful democracy of Spain was only paper thin and vulnerable to a government which, through complacency and political ineptitude decided to use force rather than negotiation and fairness to resolve problems.

We have been told by our reticent President that his government has the monopoly of ‘democracy’, ‘legitimacy’ ‘justice’ and ‘liberty’ words which are tarnished when they are uttered by the corrupt members of a minority right wing government that has told us that the brutality of the Spanish National police was ‘proportionate’ and ‘serene’.

The violence of the National Police has been explained away by various PP politicians who have also rubbished the reported numbers of voters injured.  They have dismissed the fact of over two million Catalans voting as a ‘farce’ and asserted that PP are the protectors of democracy in Spain.

This evening we had an address to the nation by the king who, until today, has kept a very low profile in the controversy over the referendum.  Among the platitudes that one would expect at a time of national crisis there was a clear indication to the disobedient people of Catalonia that he was dedicated to a united Spain and one that was not going to tolerate any sort of separation

Interestingly people have started to comment more closely on the painting, a fraction of which was visible behind the king as he gave his talk.  It turns out that this is a portrait of Carlos III – not the famous one by Goya where he is pictured with a gun and his recumbent dog, but an altogether more militaristic one with the king in armour holding a baton not unlike the ones used by the Guardia Civil to attack voters in the referendum.  It is also significant that, apart from the one truly well-known fact about the reign of Carlos III that he instituted the National Lottery, he is known for his suppression of the Catalan language in favour of Spanish.

The present king did not choose this portrait specially as a background for the broadcast, it is one that he chose some time ago to hang on the wall behind his desk in his royal office.  What is interesting is that given the sensitivity of the present situation in Catalonia with international condemnation of violence from the Spanish national police and an immanent proclamation of unilateral independence that the king should choose to have this painting as an almost subliminal subtext to his talk.  Or not, of course.

Today, Tuesday, a General Strike was called to protest about the violence shown to voters by the Spanish national police.  Throughout Catalonia there have been demonstrations in all parts of the country.  Here in Castelldefels there was a demonstration in front of the city hall.  We were there being counted!

The political situation seems intractable with both sides firmly entrenched and disinclined to give an inch.

The Catalan government said, before the referendum, that if there were to be a majority in favour of independence then a declaration of independence would be made within 48 hours of the result, irrespective of the numbers taking part in the ballot.  90% of those who voted, voted for an Independent Republic of Catalonia.  48 hours will be up at 8.00 pm on Wednesday – or perhaps a few hours later if you take the time of the last results to comes through.

This is an exciting and uncertain time to be living in Catalonia.