Anyway, here's my cop-out for today:-
Here, here and here are articles on the cat-and-dog nonsense in Cataluña.
More importantly, here's a Times article from the estimable John Carlin which got him the sack from El País - a once-upon-a-time left-of-centre paper which can now be counted on to parrot the government line, however debatable it is. As has been amply demonstrated recently, Spain is not yet a mature democracy. Indeed, it couldn't be. As yet, honest - and, in my view, totally accurate - counter opinion is punished rather than respected. I like to think I've made most of Carlin's points in this blog over the last couple of weeks, albeit less eloquently:-
Catalan independence: arrogance of Madrid explains this chaos: John Carlin
Shortly before the King of Spain addressed the nation this week, some of his more rational-minded subjects hoped that maybe, just maybe, he might rise above the petty-mindedness of the Madrid political establishment. He could, they thought, offer a generous vision of how to resolve the crisis caused by the escalating clamour for Catalan independence. No such luck. By the end of his six-minute speech Felipe VI had only made things worse.
Stiff in his bearing, coldly
commanding in his tone, he did not build bridges, he dug trenches. He
did not lament the police violence during last Sunday’s simulacrum
of a referendum in Catalonia, so damaging to his country’s global
image; he denounced the “irresponsibility” and “scorn” of the
elected Catalan government and threatened more violence. It was the
“responsibility of the legitimate state powers”, the king warned,
“to ensure constitutional order”, code for if the Catalan
government makes good on its promise to declare unilateral
independence, we’ll send in the tanks.
Speaking on behalf not of the nation
but of central government, he did as prime minister Mariano Rajoy has
done these last five years: he abdicated responsibility and,
oblivious to what he was doing, abdicated his sovereign hold on the
hearts of Catalonia’s increasingly embittered 7.5 million people,
80 per cent of whom are in favour of the right to vote on
independence.
Before Sunday several polls indicated
that the secessionist vote in Catalonia stood at between 40 and 50
per cent. There can be no question that those numbers have since
risen. As a British friend who knows Spanish politics well remarked,
minutes after the king’s speech, “that’s another ten points for
the independentistas”. Yes. To add to the ten or more
they added after the police clubbings of last Sunday.
I have a more than academic interest
in this unfolding slow-motion disaster. My mother is Spanish, from
Madrid. I lived 15 years in Catalonia until I moved to London four
years ago, but I have always meant to return and applied for a
Spanish passport after the Brexit referendum. I love Spain and so am
against Catalan independence but I have never loved Spanish politics,
especially the authoritarian strain represented by the people in
power today and shared by much of the Madrid establishment. I have
never forgotten a conversation I had 15 years ago with a man who
remains a pillar of that establishment. “I can’t stand the
Catalans,” he exclaimed. “They always want to make a deal.
They’ve got no principles, for God’s sake! No principles!”
It is Madrid’s adherence to its
blessed principles that has led us into today’s dangerous mess. It
also explains what, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, seems to be the
inexplicable refusal of Rajoy’s government to try to solve the
problem through international mediation, or dialogue of any kind.
“Principles” in the Catalan context means the Spanish
constitution, which does not allow for a Catalan referendum on
sovereignty. One might think that a constitution, being a necessarily
fallible human document, would be open to change as circumstances
change. Not on the Catalan question; not for Rajoy.
Miguel de Unamuno, a celebrated
Spanish writer of the last century, lamented what he saw as a
national political spirit contaminated “by the barracks and the
sacristy”. My sense has long been that the intransigent habit of
thought exhibited by Spain’s political classes is the inheritance
of 500 years of Catholic absolutism. Spanish Catholicism was to
Christendom generally what Saudi Islam is to the Muslim world today:
the most resistant to outside philosophical, political, cultural or
scientific influence. I don’t think it is any accident that there
is no translation in Spanish, or in Arabic, for the English word
“compromise”. The concept of “I cede a little and you cede a
little so we both end up winning” is alien to the Spanish political
mind.
It is why the Spanish empire lost
Cuba in 1898 and before that California and the rest of what is now
the western United States. It is the chief reason why, on the Catalan
question, the centre-right Popular party government of Rajoy and the
Madrid establishment have achieved the opposite of what they claim to
want: instead of working to preserve the unity of Spain they alienate
the Catalan people and fuel the drive for independence.
Put simply, they are third-rate
politicians. Rule one for the intelligent resolution of a dispute
like the Catalan one is to know your enemy: put yourself in their
shoes, try to understand why they think the way they do and then try
to persuade them to come around to your point of view, or at least to
meet you halfway. The Struggle for Catalonia, a new book
by the New York Times correspondent in Spain,
Raphael Minder, ends on just this note. The peoples of Spain will not
be reunited, Minder writes, so long as the political establishment in
Madrid makes no effort to “understand the feelings expressed by
hundreds of thousands on the streets of Barcelona”.
Catalan nationalist feelings go back
at least 300 years. On September 11, 1714, at the end of the Spanish
war of succession, Barcelona fell after a long siege to the army of
Felipe V, Spain’s first Bourbon king. His namesake might have
trodden with a little more tact in his speech this week had he chosen
to recall that this glorious defeat, the Catalan Dunkirk, today marks
the date of Catalonia’s annual national holiday. It is a
commemoration of the suicidal heroism of the city’s defenders but
also a reminder of the oppression they suffered under Felipe V. An
absolute ruler, he demolished a fifth of the city, closed the Catalan
parliament and the universities and banned Catalan as an
administrative language.
An absolute ruler of more recent
memory, Francisco Franco, fanned the flames of nationalist grievance
by carrying out uncannily similar measures after he assumed absolute
power in 1939 following the victory of his fascist forces in the
Spanish civil war. Apart from the executions by firing squad of
leading Catalan politicians and thousands more, he too suppressed the
local language, the chief emblem of Catalan identity. Under Franco’s
rule parents were not allowed to give their children Catalan names
such as Jordi or Josep. The generalissimo chose to regard Catalan as
a dialect, which was as insulting as it was wrong: Catalan is just as
much a language in its own right as Spanish, French and Italian.
A hangover of the Franco era that
continues to stir the nationalist pot is the disdain for Catalan
among other Spaniards. It is accompanied by a dislike for Catalans
generally, whom many choose to regard as snooty and superior when the
truth is, I think, that they are merely shy. But nationalism is a
sentiment, a simmering resentment towards a neighbour perceived to be
abusive. Nationalism is not a plan. Independence is. What we see
today is how one has evolved into the other and on a scale never
before seen. Many who were once merely heart-sore nationalists are
now active campaigners for independence.
The years 2006, 2010 and 2012 mark
the progression. In 2006 the pro-independence vote stood at barely 15
per cent of the population. A decision taken that year gave hope that
the number would drop: not only the Catalan parliament in Barcelona,
but the national parliament in Madrid, voted in favour of a new
statute defining Catalonia as a nation and granting it greater
autonomy than it had enjoyed since the death of Franco in 1975. This
included giving Catalonia a greater degree of judicial independence.
Delays in the implementation of the
statute gave time for a Spanish nationalist backlash. In 2010 Rajoy’s
Popular Party, then in opposition, succumbed to the impulse that
sparked the explosion of Catalan independentismo and
has led to the present crisis: seeking votes in the rest of Spain, it
campaigned against the Catalan statute and took it to the notoriously
politicised constitutional court, where it was overruled. The law
trumped politics, the precedent that continues to hinder a solution
of the problem today.
In 2012 what was then the
centre-right Catalan government nevertheless tried to find an
accommodation with Rajoy, who had become prime minister the year
before. It sought talks to try to obtain fiscal concessions along the
lines of those granted to the Basque country, whose government has a
much greater authority over the collection and distribution of tax
money. But Rajoy rebuffed them. Add the economic crisis and high
unemployment to the outrage among ordinary Catalans at the scornful
treatment they felt they had received and the upshot was the biggest
protest anyone in Catalonia could remember. On the national holiday
of September 11 a million people poured on to the streets of
Barcelona.
What they called for was a legally
binding independence referendum and the clamour only grew after the
British government agreed to precisely such a vote in Scotland in
2014. But Rajoy’s government would not budge. The law was the law.
Pragmatism was for him an unintelligible Greek word. It was as if he
took his cue from the advice Franco once gave a friendly newspaper
editor: “Do as I do, don’t get involved in politics.”
But the Catalans were doing plenty of
politics and in 2015 a rag-tag pro-independence coalition led by
Carles Puigdemont took power by a slender margin in the Catalan
parliament. Whereupon the rhetoric from both sides became more angry
and the political climate more hostile.
Rajoy’s government and his
supporters in the media have portrayed the mop-topped Puigdemont and
his radical comrades as irresponsible and infantile but it has been
hard to avoid the conclusion that, if so, the supposedly adult
politicians in Madrid have descended to the same level. The education
minister stoked the flames by stating the government’s intention
to españolizar — Spanishify — Catalan children;
the foreign minister did the same when he accused the Catalan
government of “an uprising” and “a coup d’état”. Felipe
González, a former socialist prime minister, trumped them both in an
article in El País in which he compared the
independence movement to “the German or Italian adventure” of the
1930s.
Things could have been so different,
so easily, starting with the Popular Party restraining the vindictive
impulse that drove it to overrule the autonomy statute through the
courts. Even if it had not, the massive street protests two years
later provided another opportunity. Had Rajoy possessed an ounce of
statesmanship, he could have gone to Barcelona, made a conciliatory
speech and offered dialogue with the less militant, more pliable
Catalan government that was then in power. Applause would have rung
out around the hall and the Puigdemont radicals would probably have
been done for.
The dangerous showdown today between
Spanish fanatics and Catalan romantics would never have happened if,
along with the change in mood music, the upshot of talks had been the
granting of a binding referendum such as the one Scotland was given
three years ago. Catalans say of themselves that two emotions vie in
their hearts, seny and rauxa: common
sense and raging passion. They are by ancient Mediterranean tradition
a trading nation. When they are not angry, as they are now, they are
the most practical people on earth. A proper referendum held a couple
of years ago would have yielded in all likelihood a substantial “no”
to independence from Spain and, as happened in Quebec, the subject
would have been put to bed for a generation at least.
Instead what we have is the cruel
absurdity of the Madrid government acting towards the Catalans like a
husband who hates his wife and mistreats her but refuses to let her
contemplate leaving him, screaming “She’s mine!”.
What happens now? Puigdemont has said
he will make a unilateral declaration of independence but his delay
in doing so indicates an entirely realistic fear of more violent
reprisals from Madrid, hence his stated desire for EU mediation, so
far refused. Such a declaration would signify scarcely more in
substance than the outcome of the unilateral “referendum”: it
would be more political theatre. Catalonia is not a small Pacific
island, sufficient unto itself. It is part of Spain and part of the
European Union. A hard, overnight Catexit is simply not possible.
Puigdemont is playing a high-risk game.
The Spanish government could see he
is playing a game, if it chose to, and react proportionately: watch
and wait a while and, acknowledging that the Catalan independence
clamour has significant numbers behind it, accede to talks. The wife,
in this scenario, could respond yet to some blandishments. Rajoy
could do what he should have done five years ago and agree to a
binding referendum. In the event of a victory for the “yes” vote,
order — at least order of the type now found in Brexit Britain —
would be restored. Madrid, having given its legal blessing to the
referendum, would have to abide through gritted teeth by the result.
In the event of a “no” victory, the problem would be solved.
Fat chance, though, as things stand.
More likely is that ominous royal defence of the “constitutional
order” by “the legitimate state powers”. Luis de Guindos, the
economy minister, showed just how inflexible the Spanish government
remains when he said in a television interview on Thursday that
Catalan independence was “out of the question” because it was,
first, “illegal” and, second, “irrational”: “Catalonia has
always been part of Spain”.
A part of me still clings to the
sliver of hope I felt before the king’s speech, that maybe the EU
will intervene and knock sense into Spanish heads. But it is more
likely that they will do so only after the cracking of more Catalan
bones, by which time it may be too late. One death at the hands of
the king’s police, one martyr for the Catalan cause, and anything
could happen. Rajoy calls Puigdemont a traitor but if the conflict
descends into widespread violence, and if Catalonia does eventually
achieve independence, history may record that the bigger traitor was
Rajoy.
STOPPRESS
As predicted. the situation just got worse . . .
The BBC this morning:-
1. Catalonia crisis:
Spain moves to suspend autonomy
Spain is to start
suspending Catalonia's autonomy from Saturday, as the region's leader
threatens to declare independence.
The government said
ministers would meet to activate Article 155 of the constitution,
allowing it to take over running of the region.
Catalonia's leader said
the region's parliament would vote on independence if Spain continued
"repression".
Catalans voted to
secede in a referendum deemed illegal by Spain.
Some fear the latest
moves could spark further unrest after mass demonstrations before and
since the ballot on 1 October.
Article 155 of Spain's
1978 constitution, which cemented democratic rule after the death of
dictator General Francisco Franco three years earlier, allows Madrid
to impose direct rule in a crisis but it has never been invoked.
BBC Madrid
correspondent Tom Burridge says that for Madrid this is about
upholding the rule of law in Catalonia, protecting the Spanish
constitution and disciplining what it sees as an unruly, disobedient
devolved government.
However, the central
government wants to minimise the risk of large-scale demonstrations,
our correspondent says. Civil servants and government lawyers have
thought long and hard about what measures to adopt and when and how
they should be implemented.
2. A slow game:
Katya Adler, BBC Europe editor
The Catalan crisis is
reaching breaking point but we have to be careful here. Nothing will
happen from one day to the next.
Political rhetoric
aside, both the Spanish government and Catalan regional leaders know
sentiments are running so high across Spain at the moment, that
millions are poised to take to the streets.
Once the shopping list
of measures has been decided, the Catalan leader has the right of
reply and we're told there is no legal window of opportunity for him
to do so, meaning this could take days or weeks.
Finally, the Spanish
Senate needs to approve the measures.
What is Madrid's
position?
Spanish Prime Minister
Mariano Rajoy had set a deadline of 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT) for
Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to offer a definitive answer on the
independence question, and called on him to "act sensibly".
When it passed, the
Spanish government accused the Catalan authorities of seeking
confrontation.
"The Spanish
government will continue with the procedures outlined in Article 155
of the Constitution to restore legality in Catalonia's
self-government," it said.
"It denounces the
attitude maintained by those in charge of the Generalitat [Catalan
government] to seek, deliberately and systematically, institutional
confrontation despite the serious damage that is being caused to the
coexistence and the economic structure of Catalonia. "No-one
doubts that the Spanish government will do all it can to restore the
constitutional order."
What happens now?
Mr Rajoy is due to
attend an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday afternoon.
On Saturday the
government will be expected to draw up a list of specific measures
under Article 155 of the constitution, launching the transfer of
powers from Catalonia to Madrid.
The article says: "If
a self-governing community does not fulfil the obligations imposed
upon it by the constitution or other laws, or acts in a way that is
seriously prejudicial to the general interest of Spain, the
government... may... take all measures necessary to compel the
community to meet said obligations, or to protect the above-mentioned
general interest."
It is thought the
measures implemented could range from taking control of the regional
police and finances to calling a snap election.
Spain's Senate,
controlled by Mr Rajoy's conservative Popular Party (PP) and its
allies, would then have to approve the list.
Analysts say Article
155 does not give the government the power to fully suspend autonomy,
and it will not be able to deviate from the list of measures.
Where does this
leave the Catalan leader?
Mr Puigdemont said in a
letter to Mr Rajoy on Thursday morning that the independence
declaration remained suspended but this could change. "If the
government continues to impede dialogue and continues with the
repression, the Catalan parliament could proceed, if it is considered
opportune, to vote on a formal declaration of independence."
But he faces an uphill
struggle - it is likely that senior figures in charge of internal
security in Catalonia could be dismissed, and control of the region's
police force could pass to Madrid.
The regional parliament
could also be dissolved.
One Spanish newspaper
has reported that Mr Puigdemont might nominally remain in his job but
Madrid would aim to take control of many of his duties and powers.
Ultimately the process
could end in regional elections but the Spanish constitution does not
impose any time limit.
How much support
does Mr Rajoy have in parliament?
As well as the ruling
PP, Mr Rajoy has the support of the centre-left Socialists and
centrist
Cuidadanos (Citizens)
on the Catalan crisis. Between them they control at least 254 out of
350 seats in the lower house - the Congress of Deputies - and at
least 214 out of 266 seats in the Senate.
However, there have
been sharp exchanges in recent days, with the head of one left-wing
Catalan party accusing the government of choosing humiliation,
repression and fear over dialogue.
The radical left-wing
Podemos party and other regional leftist groups are also opposed to
the government position, and have protested against the detention of
Catalan activists.
Today's Cartoon:-
He was OK unitl his hardware turned into software. |
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