modesta opinió

Today I am on strike.

17/02 After a long trial on diversion of public finds, the king’s brother-in-law Iñaki Urdangarin is sentenced to six years in prison in a Mallorca court. The King’s sister and co-owner of the false foundation that gathered the funds was fined with 265000 Euros. Since then, they have been quietly living in Switzerland and travelling freely around Europe (November 2017).

22/02 Miguel Arenas Beltrán, the rap singer Val Tonyc from Mallorca, was sentenced to 3 years imprisonement for insulting the king in a song.

15/09 The Spanish police delivers a court warning to Catalan newspapers, the TV, and digital media, that they will be prosecuted if the publish publicity about the referendum.

20/09 Spanish police arrested 14 government officials without court warrant, and in the following days raided dozens of printing and postal companies in search of voting documentation. On the same day, a Cruiser ship was stationed in the Port of Barcelona hosting thousands of policemen because the Spanish government did not trust the Catalan police to stop the referendum.

22/09 Spain’s Constitutional Court fined members of the Catalan electoral committee with 12000€ a day until they resigned (a “crime” and a “fine” that they made up on the spot).

During these days, the Spanish police closed down more that one hundred websites, public and private, that they judged had some relation with the referendum. These closures were based on a general court order and each decision was taken by a police officer. With the help of telecommunication companies, they also restricted access to the mirror websites located abroad.

01/10 Spanish riot police attacked peaceful citizens causing 1000 injured; one lost an eye fora rubber ball shot.

In the following days, judges who tried to investigate it were disciplined by Spain’s higher judicial authorities. Catalan policemen were investigated “for not doing enough” to stop people from voting.

09/10 Far right extremists started attacking people in Valencia and Catalonia under the protection of the Spanish police; no one has been indicted.

11/10 Spain’s chair of the Supreme Court threatens the Catalan government with prosecution because it has created a Special commission to investigate abuses against fundamental rights in Catalonia. The move is supported by Spain’s head of the judicial council.

12/10 A Galician teacher is questioned by the Spanish police after showing pictures of the Oct-1st violence and discussing it in class. Later on, 8 Catalan teachers will be questioned by a judged on the same “charge”.

16/10 Two civil rights leader were imprisoned for organizing a peaceful protest. They were accused of sedition together with the head of the Catalan police.

Spanish ministers, with the help of all Spanish language newspapers and most television channels,, orquestrated a campaign against the Catalan public media, public education, the police, the elected government and parliament, and the public healthcare workers. They accused the media and the teachers of “indoctrinating” the public and students. They accused the doctors of falsifying the data on the injured. This is in fact an all-out hate campaign against Catalonia.

27/10 The Catalan parliament approved the proclamation of the Catalan republic; but the Catalan government chose not to implemented after it learned that it would be violently suppressed.

28/10 The Spanish government suspended Catalonia’s autonomy and deposed the government even though no legal provision allowed them to do so. The Spanish police and the judicial system submitted to the decree enthusiastically.

29/10 The President of Catalonia a four ministers went into exile in Belgium.

02/11 A Spanish court put in jail the vice president of Catalonia and seven ministers. They were accused of “rebellion”, a crime that explicitly requires the use of violence. The judge did not allow the accused time to prepare their defense, and did not listen to their counsel. Later the accused were harassed in various ways by Spanish police officers. Moreover, a previous ruling by the same court had established that it was not competent to try this type of crime.

02/11 The  Barcelona satirical magazine “El Jueves” is indicted by a court for a joke stating the the presence of the Spanish police had depleted the stocks of Cocaine in the city.

07/11 Spain’s Chief Investigator of Economic and Financial crime declared to a parliamentary commission that evidence indicates that Spanish President Mariano Rajoy and all former leaders of the Partido Popular had been receiving for their own pockets, and for years, tens of thousands of Euros originated in secret undeclared donations from private companies to the party. Mr. Rajoy had previously denied this before parliament and in court.

In the coming days, the president of the Catalan parliament and various MPs are likely to get jailed too.

The roots of the problem:

It is worth knowing that Catalans do not have control over energy, telecommunications, the most important infrastructures (trains, airports), labor legislation, the financial system, pensions and the structure of welfare, the fiscal system, etc. Now the political parties that rule Spain get in Catalonia 13% or 18% of the vote (whether it is the Spanish right or the socialists). This means that Catalans do not really have democratic control over their resources and key policies. The only way to solve this would be a serious devolution, but this runs against Spain’s traditional idea of what the state is about, which is also compounded by Catalan racism ingrained throughout Spanish politics and administration. The result is a constant and increasing plunder of resources and a neglect of infrastructures. 30% of taxes paid by Catalans get lost in the corrent “financial System”, which is an euphemism for something else.

Add to this impending corruption in government, the press, and the police. The Spanish press repearedly runs headlines about some known Catalan corruption scandals; but the truth is that the party now in government in Spain has nearly one thousand people indicted by the courts in what clearly shows that corruption had become a regular and systematic way of operating at all party levels. In short, the state is in tatters. The people who talk about upholding the law have been the first to break it repeatedly and to protect their comrades who had plundered banks and public institutions, evaded taxes, etc.

People in Europe do not even imagine that deriding, insulting, and threatening Catalans, and particularly people holding nationalist views in Catalonia, is simply commonplace in Spain and is never pursued by the courts. Not only is there still a Fundación Francisco Franco, and not only are Fascists allowed to show off in streets and events unmolested, but people like Gregorio Peces-Barba, former “Defensor del Pueblo” (ombudsman) once joked (2011) that maybe it was true that Barcelona had to be bombed every 50 years to hold it tight. Anti-Catalan views, be they explicit or in the form of innuendos, are constantly and shamelessly present in Twitter, Facebook, television and the print press. Even worse, no political leader in Spain, no leading writer or intellectual, has spoken out against this for obvious reasons.

Finally, journalists by the only independent Spanish-language media outlet, the digial publico.es, uncovered a plot to slander politicians on the opposition run by top politicians, oficials and Police officers at the ministry of interior. Most victims were Catalan nationalists and some Spanish left-wing politicians. A team of Police men have been writing false and unsigned reports that were later circulated down a network of collaborators/journalists for Spain’s main newspapers (all now in control of the ruling PP party). You can find more elaborate information in this great Documentary with English Subtitles.

So this is why.

By the way, I have not mentioned what the EU is doing about this, which is one way of saying everyhing that it is doing about it.

Joan Pujolar

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