Watching choices being fudged

 

I am starting to type this before Puigdemont, the Catalan President, has made his eagerly awaited (or feared) speech to parliament about the results of the referendum.  As I look at the television I see the man himself walking past a bank of flashing camera, or perhaps it wasn’t him, but that confusion matches the sense of chaos which is ‘situation normal’ for us over the past few months.

What good can come of today?  Well, if nothing else we should be a little clearer about the future of the relationship between Catalonia and Spain.

As far as I can understand the situation today, we are in a no-win position as far as Catalonia is concerned. 

 

Think about it. 

 

If Puigdemont does declare UDI, he will have made a statement, but its reality and practicality will be questionable.  Spain and the central government have vowed to stop independence by any and all legal means possible.  No country has said that it will recognize the new Republic of Catalonia.  The EU has refused to play any part in the crisis other than saying that this is an internal problem for Spain.  45 mouthed some sort of support for Bromo and a united Spain when he grovelled his way to the White House – coincidentally a visit to the other side of the Atlantic when his own country was going through a fair amount of chaos, but let it pass!  The EU has said that if UDI is declared then the new Republic will be outside the EU and will have to reapply for membership.  Some of the big banks have said that they will move their registered offices from Catalonia to elsewhere in Spain because of the ‘uncertainty’.  There have been large demonstrations in Spain and in Barcelona by those who are opposed to independence and who want to stay with Spain.  The country is deeply divided.

Now the parliamentarians are entering the chamber and taking their seats, and the first faces to be shown on the benches are not friendly to the idea of independence.

The President of Spain has thousands of Spanish national police still stationed in Catalonia after the debacle of the referendum and he refuses to withdraw them until the situation has become normalized, i.e. Puigdemont stops talking about independence and a future binding referendum.  He has also not ruled out using Section 155 (ruling directly from Madrid) to deal with the situation in Catalonia.

Puigdemont is now in place and we are waiting for the president of the parliament to take her seat and start the session.

In a worst-case scenario: Puigdemont declares UDI; Rajoy brings Section 155 into operation; massive civil disobedience spills out on the streets of Barcelona and all the big cities.  Violence will allow Rajoy to send in troops.  Disaster.

A better case scenario: there have been talks between the two presidents and some sort of dialogue has been established.  No declaration of UDI is made, but Puigdemont is able to give real incentives for people to accept a delay and a later referendum.  There is still civil unrest as people thing that they have been cheated and the result of the referendum denied.

The session has started.  Fingers crossed.

First item is about violence against women and now the president is talking about the referendum.  The Guardian tells me that the delay was because the CUP party (the most enthusiastic about independence) were unhappy about his statement – which suggests that he is not going to declare UDI.  The Guardian also says that there have been talks between the governments, that might be something to be positive about.

He is walking a very fine tightrope.  As he speaks the television screen is showing crowds listening to him outside parliament.  They are expecting something real.  He better not disappoint them.

Well he’s said it.  He has a mandate for independence and forming an Independent Republic of Catalonia, but he is also demanding that the Spanish government accepts some form of mediation.  And he has agreed to delay the formal announcement of UDI to allow negotiations.

Now it’s the turn of a member of the party that I always refer to as a party of sluts, the Cs, who to gain a taste of power have not found it difficult to align themselves with the conservatives (PP) and at another time with the left (PSOE).  Alliances that reflect no credit on any of the parties.

Other leaders of political sections in the parliament are still talking, but international reaction is coming in and political response.

One writer has stated that Rajoy can still invoke Section 155 of the Constitution, because Puigdemont has not withdrawn the threat of UDI and indeed is stating that he has a mandate to call for UDI from the result of the referendum.

A rather more real threat points towards the reason for the delay in Puigdemont making his speech – the position of CUP.  If these passionate independentistas are unhappy about the delay, then they could break their alliance with Puigdemont’s party and that would take his majority away.

My view, for what it is worth, is based on watching Spanish politicians at work - and especially the politicians of the ruling party PP. 

 

As I have said before elsewhere, PP as a party does not seem to be bound to the normal parliamentary and ethical considerations that I have noted through the years with British politics.  In Spain politicians do not seem to resign when the evidence against them for their wrongdoings is shocking.  They dig in and wait for it to pass.  No matter how blatant, how damning the evidence is against them, they rely on the fact that they are the ruling party and they have their grubby mitts on the levers of power. 

 

So, although Puigdemont’s delay is a worthwhile political offer to avert possible chaos, I very much doubt that Rajoy will sense anything much more than a suggestion of possible victory for him.  He has put his ‘reputation’ on the line and since that and his party are a damn sight more important to him than any abstract concept of ‘the people’ he could well just tough it out.

Everything is still to play for.  And could, and probably will be spread out against the next few weeks.   

And we all know what and who benefits from uncertainty.

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!

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.”