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.

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.