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.

How ill do you have to be before you can look at what is happening and Catalonia and accept it?

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I am not good at being ill.

There are certain people who seem only to thrive when they are not well.  Rude heath for them would be exactly that, vulgar and unnatural.  As a teacher you know that the one way to get a class to talk is to ask if anyone has suffered any gory injury.  Even reticent kids will tumble over themselves to relate gruesome tales of hacked flesh, broken limbs and unsightly diseases.  Detail piles on detail as each bloody fragment is lovingly recalled.  Ask those same kids to explain in as vivid language any of their positive achievements and all you will get is a smirkingly smug enumeration of the unlikely level of Candy Crush that has been gained though abuse of opposable thumbs.

One of my great aunts made, as far as I can work out, an entire life out of having a ‘delicate heart’ and therefore had to be cossetted and due attention to her frailty had to be given to preserve her life.  Her very, very, very long life.  I think she outlived all of her sisters who had rather more sturdy hearts!  But they hadn’t worked at ill health in the single-minded way that she had.

Anyway, some accept illness, some fight illness and some have illness gifted upon them.  My compact with god was that I would be a blood donor as long as I was kept out of hospital and never had to use any of my own liquid contributions, or indeed those of anyone else.  As a sub-section of this divine agreement there was an acceptance that one-day’s incapacitating illness a year would be acceptable as long as the medicine to get better was a few hours bed rest.

Generally speaking this agreement has worked well.  I do have a couple of chronic conditions, but those don’t really count as they tend to go on and do their thing as a sort of subtle counterbalance to glowing health and are dealt with my daily pill taking, in the same way that my eyesight is ameliorated by the wearing of contact lenses.  So a day’s illness every other year or so; taking to one’s bed; getting better has been the general run of health in my life.

Now that I Am Of An Age I get a yearly flu jab and that then tends to limit my seasonal discomfort to a few sniffles and an occasional little cough.

It does not account for the generosity of partners, whose cough, runny nose, sore throat and irritating headache over the left ear is a gift that I have been trying to get rid of for the past week.

I got better (as I do) and even had an extended telephone conversation with Dianne with neither a sniff nor a liquid cough as a sure sign that the mucus had dried out when, uniquely in my experience, I had a relapse during the night and woke up much worse that I had been!  Unprecedented.  Since then I have had to cancel my Spanish lesson and start wandering around with a toilet roll to mop up what seems to be the effluent from some sort of factory in my nose.   

I have abused the reality that you can get massive (1g) painkillers over the counter in this country and then had only patchy pain free results. 

I have slept in!

That last admission is shocking and a clear indication that Something Is Wrong.

Having said all that, I do think that I am now getting better.  But it has been a salutary reminder of the fact that next United Nations Day I will of an age where virtually all the movers and shakers of the past had long gone to their graves.  With the signal exception of the painter Titian who, it is said, and who am I to disagree, did not complete his finest work until he was in his eighties.  I have no intention of searching my mind to unearth (perhaps the wrong word) more octogenarians (though Shirley Bassey and The Pope spring to mind, but let it go, let it go) to encourage me to consider that there are decades of useful life ahead of me - I am much more concerned that the life that is left is not filled with snot and snorts.

The illness that has laid me low is the sort that precludes intellectual activity, so I have been watching marathon sessions of continuous episodes of The Big Bang Theory - and I still can’t sing along with the opening ditty!  I have very much enjoyed the experience, but as I get better, I find the need for more of that particular drug lessening.  It is always a good thing to find a self-weaning comedy programme!

From time to time as the programmes came and went I did manage to drag my consciousness from its mucus filled nasally blocked dungeon to make some interestingly perceptive apercus about what I was watching - but alas, those pithy observations are now in the same place as the recipients of my nasal discharge.

As I have convinced myself that I am getting better, I have advanced to watching Westworld, the major delight of which is watching the acting and more particularly listening to the enunciation of Anthony Hopkins.  He is one of those British character actors who can make the most banal piece of dialogue sound profound.  His vocal mannerisms may be, uh, mannered, but by god they make you listen.  An unexpected pause, a slight slur, and in-drawn breath, a half look and an impeccable sense of timing - continuous pleasure.

As opposed to the political situation in Catalonia and Spain.

We have had a sort of apology for the brutality of the Spanish police by the senior representative of the Spanish Government in Catalonia.  Not from the central government you understand, where our clueless President still refuses to concede the need for dialogue and compromise.

The latest piece in the browbeating of Catalonia is the action of a couple of very big banks that have threatened to move their headquarters outside Catalonia so that they are still in the EU if the government declares UDI.

And that last paragraph gives the wrong impression.  As far as I can tell, the banks are threatening to move their registered offices out of Catalonia.  Not quite the same thing - as any two-bit shady organization hoping for a bigger return on their capital will tell you.  We can hardly look to the banks as paragons of ethical steadfastness: they go with the money and wherever their financial lawyers say they can get the best deal.  So this form of financial blackmailing is hardly new and it would be interesting to see the real outcome of moving a registered office rather than an entire organization with all its real estate.

The propaganda war is hotting up in Spain and the ‘interpretations’ of reality that we are presented with on television would gladden the heart of a nit-picking pedant like Saint Augustine.  Jesting Pilate would have a field day with the varieties of truthfulness on daily display.

The Socialist party of Catalonia is opposed to independence and they asked their followers to take no part in the referendum.  They have now asked a judicial court to block the proposed sitting of the Catalan parliament on Monday where the results of the referendum were going to be put to the representatives and where a possible UDI could be declared.

I do have some sympathy with those political parties like PP, PSOE and Cs (and their Catalan counterparts) who opposed the referendum and played no part in it.  This is a perfectly good position to take.  But.  And the big ‘but’ here is that when the referendum looked as though it was actually going to happen, everyone should have piled in and either forced the minority right-wing PP government to come to some sort of settlement with the possibility of a fully legal referendum at a future date in Catalonia, or voted ‘no’ in the referendum.  As it is now, we had over two million people defy the central government and, in spite of appalling police brutality and obstruction cast their votes.

The other parties have been wrong footed.  The vote could never have taken place if the political parties had done some politics.  But they didn’t.  And they suddenly have to deal with a disastrous/farcical situation where they fulminate about the grotesque obscenity of people casting a democratic vote.

OK, you can debate ‘legality’ and ‘illegality’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ and all those other high sounding words - but the reality of the situation is that a vote has been held, votes have been counted and a president is poised to declare UDI from Spain.  The posturing of the opposing political parties seems woefully inadequate and the ‘solutions’ that the government of Spain has suggested are ultimata rather than bargaining positions.

Does the Spanish government really want to send the ‘police’ in again?  Augmented by troops?  Do they really want to invoke article 155 of the Constitution and take over the government of Catalonia?  Do they really want to stick to their inflexible standpoint of absolutely no negotiation about a binding referendum some time in the future?

From the outside it must seem, especially about the disastrous pictures of police brutality, that something must give.  Some reason must prevail.  To which I say, live in Spain for a few years and see exactly how this minority PP government acts and reacts and then you will consider that anything is possible.

God help Catalonia!

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.

Spanish shame!

So, as we wake up to another brightly dull day where rain is threatening even if it is not actually falling, what have we achieved in Catalonia after the referendum?

Most importantly, a clear indication of the signal failure of Rajoy and his authoritarian government.  They pledged to stop the referendum and it took place.  They used every trick in the book short of sending in the army and it failed to stop 42% of the electorate turning out for what Rajoy called an “illegal” vote.  Given the obstacles put in the way of voting, the fact that over two million people in Catalonia turned out to vote is a triumph of the people over an uncaring repressive central authority.

The actions of the Spanish National Police that have left at least 844 people injured, two seriously, will haunt the popular imagination for years to come.  When you see pictures of armoured baton-wielding policemen laying into young and old alike; women being pulled by the hair along the streets; people thrown down stairs; voters being kicked and thumped, the adjectives to describe such scenes that come to mind are not those used by our ridiculous President of “firmness and serenity”.

Rajoy must resign at once. 

He won’t of course because he and his corrupt party feel themselves to be above the law and indeed they create their own reality.  Rajoy spoke to the nation and explained that, “there had been no referendum today”.  Rajoy is a master of Political Photoshop where uncomfortable reality can be rejigged through his own weasel words into something more in keeping with his distorted world view.

I have just been informed that an older man who had heart failure in the disturbances caused by the Spanish National Police has now died.  While he was being given resuscitation the voters who had formed a protective ring around those giving assistance were attacked by an armoured police officer who smashed his way into the cordon and people fell on the injured man.  All of this was captured on film and it joins a series of unacceptable views of violence.  Perhaps more significantly, I can find nothing on television to suggest that this story (found on Twitter) is actually correct.  The violence towards the man has been captured on film and I have seen it, but the death is perhaps one of those rumours that we are going to have to get used to during the next few days and weeks as what is a volatile political situation feeds on the truth and half truth that has the potential to rip Spain apart.

If you have not seen what violence Rajoy and his PP government encouraged against peaceful voters then check the link below, and then write to your MP demanding that they condemn the behaviour of a WESTERN EUROPEAN NATION, a member of the EU and UNO, against its own citizens!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/oct/01/catalan-referendum-hundreds-injured-as-police-attack-protesters-video?CMP=share_btn_link

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.