Protest Camp, Plaça Catalunya, Barcelona #acampadabcn, a set on Flickr.
I had the chance to spend a little time in the protest camp in Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona today. I’m no good at estimating the size of crowds but there were many more people around today than there were yesterday. Here are some snaps I took with my phone.
Many people who live in Spain, as well as lots of observers outside the country, have been asking the same question for the last few months: where are the young people?
With youth unemployment as high as 46% and the PSOE (‘Socialist’) government using the economic crisis as an excuse to force through radical changes to the country’s social framework, why weren’t Spanish youths protesting on the street? The clues to the answer lay in the failure of September’s general strike. Young people weren’t interested. This lack of interest in officially organised and accepted methods of protest (the strike was organised by major trade unions, generally seen to be partners of the PSOE) wasn’t the same as apathy, though it did initially appear similar.
The events of the last couple of days in Madrid, then, are heartening. Thousands of young people, using Facebook and Twitter to organise followers there bought them here, converged on the capital’s iconic Puerta del Sol square and protested against the lack of real democracy, the spending cuts, the incredibly high youth unemployment (higher than in many of the north African countries where revolutions were fuelled by similar complaints), new copyright laws, and much more. Hundreds have also camped out in Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya, mingling with bemused tourists and surrounded by itchy-looking Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police with a reputation for enjoying beating-up students and anarchists). The protest camps are organised: popular commissions have been established to distribute information, food, blankets, legal advice.
The Spanish political establishment, focused only on this weekend’s municipal elections, was taken by surprise. Its response has been telling: Barcelona city hall switched-off the city’s webcam of Plaça Catalunya. Then the Junta Electoral, Spain’s elections commission, noted that the protest camps would have to be cleared because they are in breach of Spain’s electoral law. The PSOE (PSC in Catalonia) has tried to make it sound like they sympathise with the protestors, Barcelona’s mayor bemoaning “international speculators and the damage they do” (the same speculators he sees it has his job to entice into our city). In Madrid, the police have moved to close access to the protest camp apparently in preparation to fulfill the Junta Electoral’s controversial and unpopular judgement.
What will happen over the weekend remains unclear. It is likely that the police will attempt to clear both camps. If they only clear Madrid’s, then Barcelona’s might grow. Whatever happens, it would be wrong to continue to ask why Spain’s youth has done nothing to oppose the country’s corrupt politics. The kids are on the streets. And they want radical change.
This morning on Els Matins, Barcelona mayoral candidate for the PPC (Catalan PP), Alberto Fernández, made it clear that his party is committed to the xenophobic campaign line it has been pursuing for some time here.
After declaring that “Yes“, he has “‘prejudices’ against immigrants” (‘nouvinguts’ or ‘newcomers’ in Catalan, a word which sounds nicer but is generally used in the same reactionary arguments), Fernández went on to insist that “immigrants should comply with the law that we ourselves comply with“. He also said that immigrants who need to apply for or renew their papers should have to go to the city hall and obatain a document to prove they “have no obstacles [sic] with anyone“, and that immigrants “who come to Catalonia to commit crime should be expelled“. Then he went on to claim that Barcelona has become “the capital of antisocial behaviour and crime” which should be dealt with via “a firm hand“.
If you’ve been following the language of the PP in Catalonia, none of this should come as a surprise. But that doesn’t make any of it less disgusting. Of course, we expect the hard right to be thoroughly unpleasant. And that’s why they should be opposed. That said, the two quotes which most got my attention were the ones about complying with the law and coming here to commit crime.
When Fernández says that immigrants should comply with the law, same as anyone else, that isn’t what he is saying. What he’s saying is “immigrants commit loads of crimes and they get away scot free”. I shouldn’t need to point out that the Generalitat has already changed the law concerning petty crime to make it easier to convict bag thieves on the Metro and the Rambles. But how many immigrants are bag thieves anyway? How many steal copper? And is he really talking about immigrants? I’m an immigrant in Catalonia. There are lots of other UK, Italian, French, German and Dutch immigrants here. Does he include them when he says “immigrants”, or does he just mean “immigrants from outside the EU”.
If you read the Shite Press in BCN (pretty much the only press available here), you may have noticed a generally accepted dichotomy between ‘comunitarios’ (‘EU citizens’) and ‘inmigrantes’ (‘immigrants’). What I’ve found hard to understand is that Romanians are often listed with the immigrants, even though they’re EU citizens. Because if, as I suspect, Fernández is talking about non-EU citizens except Romanians, then I think we’re on the verge of spotting where his real prejudice lies. But if, on the other hand, he means to include the French suspect in the Drassanes murder case then perhaps he means to include me in his use of ‘immigrants’. Which he almost certainly is not doing.
As to the immigrants who come here to commit crime, well there probably are a few. There are probably also Spaniards from elsewhere in Spain who come here to commit crime, and Catalans who live here to commit crime. The problem is: how do you prove that someone has come here to commit crime? You obviously can’t. The only thing he can mean is that immigrants who commit a crime should be expelled. And that leads us to the issue of definitions again.
If, as must happen, an immigrant commits a crime here without having come here with the express intention of committing that crime, that immigrant should not be expelled. Actually, Fernández didn’t say this, and it’s not logically safe to give him the benefit of the doubt here. No, he almost certainly means that any immigrant who commits any crime should be expelled.
And not once does he or that idiot Cuní state the percentage of crimes committed by immigrants, or the percentage of immigrants who commit crimes, or how those figures compare with people born here. So what we’re left with is the clear implication that immigrants and crime are somehow inextricably linked and that the best thing for it is expulsion and special treatment.
Don’t vote for the PP.
A couple of days ago, I read what in retrospect was a fortuitously timed article on CNN.com. After detailing Osama bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora, Tim Lister ended by noting that OBL probably wasn’t hiding in the ‘tribal’ area on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border at all. He reckoned that the fugitive might be holed-up in the wilds of Kunar, a remote zone that includes places where “no man has set foot”. Lister was, as we know today, only half right. Osama bin Laden was actually hiding near Islamabad in what seems to have been relative comfort. He was shot dead last night by US special forces.
So the era of bin Laden at #1 on the FBI’s most wanted list (he was already there when the September 11th 2001 attacks happened), is over. I can’t help but feel that it makes little difference now. Because America has already accepted mortal head wounds as ‘justice’, permanent internment camps as ‘security’, and permanent war as normality.
Adam Curtis’s film “The Power of Nightmares” dealt with the twin forces of militant Islamism and neo-conservatism that ended up shaping much of the current geopolitical landscape. Together (and they must always be taken together, for they needed each other desperately), they succeeded in causing probably over a million deaths, most of which occurred in the middle-east. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend that you try to get hold of a copy. UPDATE: As Erik points out in the comments below, the film is available to watch or download for free at the Internet Archive.
If all this is making you nostalgic for the days of “Get this!” Iberian Notes, check out this online novel which features a familiar-sounding character. It’s eerie.
More national policy soon. Until then, sleep well: they haven’t invented their new nightmare yet.
As part of my apparently ongoing series of Questions for a Catalan Independentist, this post poses a question that wasn’t in my original post.
Actually, this is a topic I’ve been thinking about grillz recently, thanks to the input of an uninterested friend who knows something about geopolitics in Europe. Indeed, it’s one issue that I don’t think I’ve ever seen answered by Catalan independentists. It comes down to a simple problem: would France ever allow an independent Catalan state to be declared on its border?
Before you start immediately by saying “I don’t care, they’ll just have to accept it”, allow me to offer some thoughts. France is one of the two key powers in Europe. It’s on the UN Security Council. It’s a centre for international diplomacy. Isn’t it likely that should France choose to block the establishment of a new state on its borders (and one which, let’s face it, would likely have at least some parliamentarians dedicated to the restoration of Catalunya Nord to the Catalan state), is there anything Catalonia could really do? Not being recognised by Spain is of huge importance. Not being recognised by France might be difficult to overcome.
So the question is: What about France? Do you really think France would stand for what it might see as the first of several new states springing up on its borders? Doesn’t this gravely affect the independence argument?
[I intended to write this sooner but I’ve been rather knocked out with flu since Saturday.]
The press was full of it: on the evening of December 3rd, the Spanish military ‘took over’ air traffic control towers across Spain at the request of the government. Air traffic controllers (ATCs) had, we were told, abandoned their duties en masse, calling in sick in a wildcat strike that brought the ‘public infrastructure’ of the airports to a grinding halt. But once again, the story we were being told was a narrow and distorted version of events. One that omitted key details intentionally. So it was little wonder that Spanish workers fel little solidarity for the ATCs.
The truth is that the air traffic controllers strike of December 2010 was precipitated intentionally by an agressive PSOE government, and then dealt with by that same government using the weapons of Franco’s dictatorship.
Step one is always to demonise the strikers, removing the risk that solidarity poses.
So the stage was set for interior minister Alfredo Rubalcaba to deal a vicious blow against the ATCs. And that he did. On December 4th, he declared a ‘state of alert’ (you could also use the term ‘state of emergency’ but that lacks something of the nuance of the various ‘states’ Spain can be in, like alerta, excepción, etc). It was the first time in Spain’s current democracy that such a measure had been used. And unless you’d been here in the 60s and 70s, you might well think it was a pretty standard, if very grave, response to a crisis.
The truth is that the state of alert is a peculiar item of Spanish law that has its roots in Franco’s fascist dictatorship. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Franco’s government used the state of alert to smash strikes. It works by declaring all workers of a specific convenio (like metro drivers or, in this case, ATCs) as ‘mobilised’ military personnel. So you start the day an ATC and before you know it, you’re a military ATC with orders from military staff to attend work as and when they demand it. It doesn’t matter when your shift was supposed to start because the army can tell you to start when it wants you to. And if you fail to do so? Because you’ve just become a member of the military, failure to turn up for work on their command means that you are committing sedition. Mutiny. And anyone who does this is sent to court martial and can end up in a military prison for up to 7 years.
So the state of alert is a method controlling workers by bringing in the army. Thus, ATCs were forced to work at gunpoint in some Spanish airports.
The lessons here are clear. Firstly, whenever there’s a labour dispute, the last people to trust are (a) the government, (b) the management, and (c) the media. This should have been clear before but it bears repeating. Secondly, the failure of the general strike on September 29th had one major effect: as we warned, the government felt it could move on and get away with anything. Thirdly, the PSOE has once again displayed a flagrant disregard for workers’ rights. The state of alert has set a nasty new precedent. By breaking one of the last taboos of Spanish democracy (the army permitted to take command of civilian infrastructure and the militarisation of civilian staff), the PSOE has made Spain a less just, more dangerous country. Now the cat is out of the bag, we can only wait and see when the state of alert will next be used.
We’ve been warned by the PSOE not to undertake more strikes against its dismantling of Spain’s social system and public infrastructure. Now is the time for another general strike. This time, lets make sure it works.
Reference links:
http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2010/11/28/razones-atasco-acabado/623975.html
http://www.corrientemarxista.org/estado-espanol/9-estado-espanol/348-decretado-el-estado-de-alarma.html
When I published my post Some Questions for a Catalan Independentist, I hoped that people would engage with the questions and enter into spirited debate. I later realised that to deal with them properly, each question deserves its own thread. I hope that this helps to foster a polite and friendly debate on the topic. I should also add that these are my questions: I don’t claim to have presented an infallible or complete list of concerns, and I’d be happy to receive suggestions for new ones from readers. I’ll deactivate comments on the original post, so as to continue debate in these new ones.
The first question is the shortest: Why exactly should Catalonia be independent?
UPDATED
Current results (99% of votes counted):
CiU 62
PSC 28
PPC 18
ICV-EUiA 10
ERC 10
SI 4
C’s 3
(PxC 0)
=====
The first results of today’s Catalan elections are in. CiU have won a convincing majority, which was to be expected. The PP has replaced ERC as the third largest group in Catalonia. The PSC has lost 10% of its vote. Iniciativa has fared worse than the last polls suggested. Solidaritat Catalana (‘SI’, Joan Laporta’s party) might get as many as 4 seats. Ciutadans have failed to do better than their previous successes.
CiU’s probable 66 seats leaves the party just short of an absolute majority in the Catalan parliament, but Artur Mas will be the new president. The question now is whether CiU will attempt to govern as a minority government, or if they’ll enter a coalition in order to guarantee the majority. Possible coalition partners would be the PP, ERC or even SI.
The PP would claim that they are the natural partners of CiU, and the two parties have been allied before. But the PP’s politics have become significantly more anti-Catalanista since then. It might be difficult to convince CiU activists that such a colition was really in Catalonia’s best interests.
Esquerra will obviously want to join a coalition. Their main political strategy recently has been to establish themselves as the kingmakers of Catalan politics. I get the impression that ERC might be a difficult sell too, though, as their support has dropped significantly in these elections. On the other hand, a weakened ERC might make a more attractive partner for CiU. It all comes down to whether CiU wants a Catalanist coalition, or would rather see ERC reduced to a minor force in Catalan politics. I suspect that they might prefer the latter option.
The wildcard here could be SI. Essentially a new party, they look like they could have the seats CiU needs, while also being small enough to be a pliable coalition partner. Personally, I see this as unlikely.
UPDATED: View the election results
There’s one week to go until this year’s elections to the Catalan parliament. And that means that the competing parties are ramping up their campaigns, desperate to convince wary voters that they offer Catalonia the best chance of recovery and stability. Fools! Don’t they know that’s my job?!
In case you have the right to vote in these elections (I don’t), and aren’t sure who to vote for, allow me to go over the main candidates.
Artur Mas – CiU (Convergència i Unió)
Mas is a scumbag. He clearly believes that he is entitled to the presidency, dei gratia. His campaign has been heavy on frivolity and light on policy. CiU’s posters include: his face, considerably more jowly than before, a really irritating smiley face, and a slogan and weird little round logo lifted directly from Obama’s ‘change you can believe in’ campaign. It’s like they couldn’t decide which elements to go for, so they just threw everything in. CiU is a shamelessly self-interested political party that seeks to ‘defend’ the bourgeois of Sarriá and Sant Cugat by screwing the rest of us over. It will form a coalition with anyone (not that this is unusual) and I think it’s likely that Mas will pursue a Cameronite campaign of painful, unnecessary cuts to public spending. Civil servants, be afraid. Or just join CiU now and hand them 30% of your salary. Don’t worry: they don’t mind if you pilfer public funds to make up any shortfall. Oh, and Mas says he wants to be president ‘for 12 years’. Catalans, be very afraid.
José Montilla – PSC (Partit Socialista de Catalunya)
If there’s one thing that pisses me off about the Tripartit government we’ve had here for the last 4 years, it’s José Montilla. I don’t doubt that he’s a shrewd back room negotiator (his announcement that he only wants one more term in office confirms this). The thing is that Montilla is a deeply uninspiring, confidence-sapping grey technocrat of a politician. The PSC has run a generally austere campaign, except for this video of a young woman experiencing orgasmic bliss at the moment of democratic involvement – a video which would be rendered much more unsettling if, instead of a cute Catalan chick, it featured the old man from downstairs. This election represents an opportunity for voters to register their displeasure with a Tripartit government that, in one form or another, has run Catalonia for 8 years. And this is the problem: there’s much to dislike about the PSC (they’re fickle, fascist-appeasing, directionless, Madrid-controlled morons, for example), but the Tripartit itself has not actually been as bad as CiU would have you believe. With different people, it could have been a great government. Montilla’s little trick probably won’t get him returned as president, though.
Joan Puigcercós – ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya)
I get the impression that Puigcercós would be happy to remain a party leader rather than a national leader, as long as he remains in work. He’s not as left-wing as he should be, even though like me he studied politics and philosophy, and like me, failed to get a degree. I’m good at computers, he’s good at flags. Actually, Puigcercós strikes me as a fairly honest man, but a bit of a small-time loser. He’d make quite a good school teacher (except for the lack of a degree). ERC’s main policy is Catalan independence. If (and that’s a very big “if”) ERC manages to retain anything like its current position as Catalonia’s third party, Puigcercós would pact with whoever offered him the best deal. A nationalist coalition with CiU would probably be based on some sort of referendum for Catalan independence. Another Tripartit probably wouldn’t.
Alicia Sánchez-Camacho – PPC (Partit Popular de Catalunya)
Known in this house as “that fucking woman”, Sánchez-Camacho has presided over a Catalan PP that has plumbed the depths of right-wing hostility over the last few months. She’s a talentless monster. The PPC has progressed from highly racist electoral material in the mayoral election in Badalona, to producing a computer game where users ‘bombed’ immigrants and Catalan independentists for points. Graeme from South of Watford reckons that the PP are using Catalonia as a testing ground for newer, nastier tactics. He’s probably right. I’d be surprised if they do much better than the 10% they normally get – though low attendance WILL HELP THEM. So go out and vote, otherwise we’ll end up with her in bed with Artur Mas. So to speak.
Joan Herrera – ICV-EUiA (Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds – Esquerra Unida i Alternativa)
Red of cheek and earnest of word, Herrera is one of a handful of Catalan politicians I find it difficult to hate. The eco-socialists of Iniciativa aren’t exactly a powerful force, but they represent a broadly good political perspective: Marxism and environmentalism. In Cerdanyola del Vallès, they formed a town hall coalition with the PP, but they’ve also managed to turn CdV into a really pleasant town. Herrera gained some political capital by arguing that all Catalan MPs should declare their wealth and interests at the beginning and end of each parliament. He then revealed the slightly depressing, though all together pleasing, state of his finances. ERC and, to a degree, Ciutadans, followed suit. The PP, CiU and PSC (fat pigs, the lot of them) all said it was ‘silly’. Now, Montilla has said they’ll back any law that enforces this. I take this as evidence that Iniciativa’s left-wing policies speak to a youth vote that, apart from ‘free orgasms for voes’, the PSC is finding it difficult to engage with. Vote for this party.
Albert Rivera – C’s (Ciutadans – Partit de la Ciutadania)
The thing about Albert Rivera is that he’s obviously a talented chap. I just don’t believe that abandoning the entire system of autonomous communities and withdrawing official support for the Catalan language, while simultaneously indulging a very nebulous neoliberal economic policy is what we need. All too often, C’s supporters are racist scum, too. A low turnout might well favour C’s, the PPC and other fringe groups like the Falange Española de las JONS, España2000 and the Falange Autentica. Those are just examples of other parties. Picked at random.
Other parties and groups
There will be many other parties contesting these elections. They range from the neo-fascist Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC) to the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP), which stands for independence. You are free to vote for these, but it probably won’t have much effect on the election results.
Best result?
Actually, I think that a left-wing coalition would be the best way forward here. However, I really don’t like Montilla. But I like him more than I like Mas. In fact, four more years of Montilla as president would be a fair price to pay for the pleasure of seeing Artur Mas denied the residency AGAIN. So vote for Inicitativa, and hope for some sort of Tripartit. It wouldn’t be perfect but it would probably be the best we can get from these buffoons.
One of the aspects of my questions for supporters of Catalan independence touched on an issue I hold to be of vital importance: What model do you see an independent Catalonia adopting? Some sort of republic? How would it be organised? – This question, while it did receive some responses, didn’t attract the interest I’d be hoping for. That’s probably because I fudged the wording a little. What I was really getting at was: what type of state will Catalonia be?
The reason I feel this is important, indeed the main reason that I’m unable to personally back independence, is the socialist question. Or rather, What Would Trotsky Do? Because while I love Catalonia and would only wish the best for it, I would have trouble backing what I considered to be an independent Catalonia that conferred new rights on itself, but not its citizens. That is, for any such movement to deserve support, it ought to be either genuinely revolutionary or committed to serious socialist policies.
And at the moment I don’t see that happening.
For what it’s worth, Trotsky stated various times that the the cases of of states in the Soviet Union and Poland, independence was an understandable urge, and not at odds with revolution. He would probably not have been quite so supportive of Catalonia’s current bourgeois republicans.
It is true that the Catalan independence movement seems to be generally connected to left-leaning parties and organisations. ERC, the largest openly pro-independence party has certainly shifted away from what was a more chauvinistic “We are who we are” message. But the party continues to struggle with just who they really are. Are they ‘Esquerra’ first or are they ‘Republicana de Catalunya’ first? This question, trite as it seems, sums up the problem with the movement for independence here. I’m not an ERC supporter and nor do I expect that party ever to become a revolutionary force for change. I consider it all too likely that they’d sacrifice the ‘Esquerra’ bit before they sacrificed independence.
But perhaps I’m wrong about ERC and wrong about the chances for a revolutionary independence movement here. If one exists, even in nascent form, I’ve yet to encounter it. And that’s why, for the moment, I still find it difficult to make thebadrash.com a blog that supports independence. At the very least, I would need to see a referendum that included a clear promise as to the republican and socialist nature of the state to come. Otherwise, maybe we should all just support the socialist movement in Spain.
