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Thursday, October 05, 2017

Thoughts from Galicia: 5.10.17

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

If you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, see my web page here.


As I'm on the boat to the UK, here's a cop out: Something lifted from one of the UK newspapers. Written - possibly with tongue in cheek - by a female columnist, it lists what attributes a woman looks for in a man at various stages of her life. Seems pretty accurate to me. But not totally because, if it were, there'd be a long line of young women outside my gate . . . .

What Women Want in a Man. Age 20
  • Handsome
  • Charming
  • Financially successful
  • A caring listener
  • Witty
  • In good shape
  • Dresses with style
  • Appreciates finer things
  • Full of thoughtful surprises
  • An imaginative, romantic lover 
What Women Want in a Man. Age 30
  • Nice looking [prefer hair on his head]
  • Opens car doors, holds chairs
  • Has enough money for a nice dinner
  • Listens more than talks
  • Laughs at my jokes
  • Carries bags of groceries with ease
  • Owns at least one tie
  • Appreciates a good home-cooked meal
  • Remembers birthdays and anniversaries
  • Seeks romance at least once a week 
What Women Want in a Man. Age 40
  • Not too ugly [bald head OK]
  • Doesn't drive off until I'm in the car
  • Works steady - splurges on dinner out occasionally
  • Nods head when I'm talking
  • Usually remembers punch lines of jokes
  • Is in good enough shape to rearrange the furniture
  • Wears a shirt that covers his stomach
  • Knows not to buy champagne with screw-top lids
  • Remembers to put the toilet seat down
  • Shaves most weekends 
What Women Want in a Man. Age 50
  • Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed
  • Doesn't belch or scratch in public
  • Doesn't borrow money too often
  • Doesn't nod off to sleep when I'm venting
  • Doesn't re-tell the same joke too many times
  • Is in good enough shape to get off couch on weekend
  • Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear
  • Appreciates a good TV dinner
  • Remembers your name on occasion
  • Shaves some weekends
What Women Want in a Man. Age 60
  • Doesn't scare small children
  • Remembers where bathroom is
  • Doesn't require much money for upkeep
  • Only snores lightly when asleep
  • Remembers why he's laughing
  • Is in good enough shape to stand up by himself
  • Usually wears some clothes
  • Likes soft foods
  • Remembers where he left his teeth
  • Remembers that it's the weekend 
What Women Want in a Man. Age 70+
  • Breathing
  • Doesn't miss the toilet 
If that's not heavy enough for you, here's a message from a Catalan columnist working in London. Clearly not a fan of Sr Rajoy:-

I was Catalan, Spanish and European. But Mariano Rajoy has changed all that: Irene Baque

On Sunday , I watched innocent people being beaten up, pulled by their hair and thrown down stairs – just for trying to express their opinion in a ballot – people back home in Catalonia who could easily have been neighbours or school friends. I was glued to my screen for 12 hours with tears in my eyes, sitting in my room in London.

As a Catalan living in the UK while the EU referendum played out, having seen the false promises made in favour of Brexit, I could not support the idea of independence. I respected the idea of a referendum – we live in a democracy and people should have a right to decide and I understood the frustration of many Catalans – but I did not think independence was the solution. That was before Sunday. But having seen the way the Spanish government decided to use force to fight the will of peaceful citizens, where does that leave me?

After six years in the UK, I know how it feels to be rejected from the place I now call home, and have learned that separation, borders and flags are rarely the answer. While trying to come to terms with where EU citizens like me sit in the divided country I now live in, a feeling of division is also growing back home.

The division comes from both sides, though. Spain does not want to see Catalonia leave, but it is certainly going about preventing it in the wrong way. Early last week videos appeared of hundreds of people in the south of Spain seeing off police cars leaving for Catalonia to help the central government, shouting “Go get them!”, while waving Spanish flags. It said it all. It felt as though we were back in the Spanish civil war. At a cafe in Madrid, on referendum day, my brother overheard a group of women saying: “These Catalan people just need a couple of slaps to learn they have to stay.”

As the Catalan journalist Jordi Évole said: “Many Catalans had already left Spain mentally. Yesterday Rajoy got a few more. Yesterday many citizens against independence felt a huge repulsion for what they saw.” I’m in that last category – I still don’t think independence is the solution, but I don’t want to be represented by a government that uses military tactics to deal with a dissatisfied region.

Just as many Brits do not feel represented by Theresa May,  Mariano Rajoy does not represent all Spaniards – many feel ashamed of their government’s actions against their neighbours. Many took to the streets in Madrid to show solidarity.

What is going through Rajoy’s mind? Was it total incompetence, being caught off guard by a momentum that not even Catalonia’s president, Carles Puigdemont, expected? Or, has Rajoy done the political maths and decided that actually, those women in the cafe in Madrid who think the Catalans deserve a slap to bring them in line are representative of enough of the electorate? [See my comment yesterday about the probability that his party would increase their share of the vote if a snap election were held soon]

Regardless, Rajoy has turned what should have been just another unofficial poll that went largely unnoticed outside the country into a referendum on having a referendum that has shocked the world. And the answer is a resounding yes.

While almost 900 Catalans bear the wounds of police aggression, the Catalan government is still negotiating what will happen in the next 48 hours, and the king of Spain is yet to be seen. [He's now made a - counterproductive? - televised appeal to the Catalans]

The People’s party’s deputy leader, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, seemed to have been watching a different TV channel to me when she said: “The policemen were only fulfilling the orders of justice, acting with professionalism and proportionality. The objective of their acts was never the people, but the electoral material.”

Rajoy’s incompetence cannot be overstated, but Puigdemont cannot be absolved of responsibility. Both are playing Russian roulette with a young nation struggling with deep structural issues. Brinksmanship is common in politics, and has become more so in recent times, but purposely pitting citizens against each other, forcing them to decide which flag to hang from their balcony, takes reckless politics to a new and terrifying level.

I fear Puigdemont’s impulse to declare independence would only result in Spanish tanks entering Barcelona’s La Diagonal, just as happened 78 years ago, witnessed by a generation who did not expect that to happen again in their lifetime. The suppression Catalans lived with during the Franco dictatorship has remained in people’s hearts, and has been transmitted to my generation. My friends and I, born in the 1990s, grew up feeling that Catalan culture and history is part of our identity. We didn’t dance flamenco, we didn’t support bullfighting. We had our own traditions.

I am Catalan, feel Catalan, was educated in Catalan. I am also Spanish and European. Up until recently, these sides have been easy to reconcile. It feels as though something has changed. My initial instinct was not to vote, and to let the people who have something to say say it.

But in the week leading to referendum day, the Spanish government’s reaction changed my mind. It felt like this was no longer about nationalism but about democracy and free speech. Had I been at home over the weekend I probably would have taken to the streets in support of my fellow Catalans, voting blank as Barcelona mayor Ada Colau did. This is about having a conversation and opening dialogue.

Those Catalonians who wanted to vote for independence were united by the desire for self-determination, regardless of age, social class or political ideology. Now I wouldn’t be surprised to see that group grow, united behind a message of democratic rights.

Whatever is next for the independence movement, one thing is sure. There will forever be a before and after 1 October in both Spanish and Catalan history.

• Irene Baqué is a Barcelona-born journalist and film-maker

And here's a dialogue - from The Real News - between 2 observers who know what they're talking about:-

Can the Spain-Catalan Crisis Be Resolved?

AARON MATÉ:Tens of thousands are protesting across Catalonia today following the Spanish crackdown on its referendum. Spanish forces injured hundreds who took part in Catalonia's vote for independence, which authorities say received over 90% support. Today in Barcelona, a massive crowd marched on the Spanish National Police regional headquarters. The Spanish government says the referendum was illegal and their standoff with Catalan leaders is said to be Spain's worst constitutional crisis since the country became a democracy four decades ago.

SEBASTIAN FABER: Professor of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College: Today, there's been a general strike declared all over Catalonia with a high percentage of following. Barely any public transportation ran, roads were blocked, freeways were blocked. And the streets of the cities, especially Barcelona, filled with people either marching in silence or singing songs and kind of performing what has been so far the collective attitude of the Catalans as they are fighting for their right to self-determination. That performance has been a performance of peaceful protest, civilized dialogue, democratic, the performance of democratic aspirations, really. 

The response from the central Spanish state has been, for the past number of years but especially in the last weeks and especially last Sunday, has been harsh and inflexible and repressive. On Sunday, we all saw how people trying to vote were met with visored riot police with the billy clubs, nightsticks hitting old people, young people, anybody who tried to express their democratic right to vote.

The defense that the Spanish state has given of its crackdown on what the Catalans are trying to do is that it's merely following the law. The Constitution of 1978 in Spain does not allow for referendums on self-determination. It declares that Spain as a nation is indivisible, and it limits the recognition of Spain's multinational makeup really to the creation of 17 autonomous regions. 

Catalonia has tried to redefine its statute of autonomy, but in 2010, that redefined statute was declared null and void by the country's Constitutional Court, by Spanish Constitutional Court. Ever since then, so for the past seven years, the push for self-determination and the push for independence has been stronger and stronger. And everything indicates that the state's response, the harsh response from the Spanish state has only managed to increase the feeling that lives among many people in Catalonia, which is that they don't fit, they don't belong to Spain, Spain doesn't want them. 

Just an hour ago, the Spanish king came extraordinarily on television in a six- or seven-minute speech to declare his position. Some people hoped that he would sound a more conciliatory tone, a more sympathetic tone, perhaps that he would mention that the police violence of last Sunday was regrettable, but none of that happened. He did not mention the violence. He didn't even use the word "dialogue" at all. He talked about concordia, and he talked about Catalonia being a part of Spain, but he also, in very harsh terms, condemned the politicians in Catalonia who have been organizing the referendum and pushing for independence. He said they were breaking Spain apart and they were breaking the law. It sounded to me like the king was preparing the ground for an even heavier intervention from the Spanish state, which could easily take the shape of revoking Catalonia's autonomy.

AARON MATÉ: What do you think was behind the decision to crackdown so harshly on Sunday's vote? What was the calculation there?

S. FABER: Honestly, it's really hard to say because from a PR perspective, from a political perspective, from an international image perspective, the crackdown was really bad for the Spanish state. This has been a standoff between Madrid and Barcelona and both sides have tried to rally public opinion both in Spain and abroad behind them. In that game, in that competition, the Spanish state really shot itself in the foot on Sunday. 

The only justification, the only political motivation that I can think of for this harsh crackdown on the voters on Sunday could've been to please that part of the Spanish constituency, the conservative voting block that supports the ruling party in Spain and that part of that block that really wants to see the Catalans punished for daring to even suggest that they don't belong in Spain or daring to even threaten with the breakup of a unified Spanish nation.

AARON MATÉ: What are the key issues that undergird the Catalan desire of independence? And is there anything that the Spanish government could do in theory, in your view, that could bridge those differences, bridge that divide?

S. FABER: Yeah, I think that the main underlying issue has to do with the fact that an increasing number of people in Catalonia don't feel that Spain has anything to offer them. What that means for people is different according to the people. It's important to understand that the push for self-determination or for independence has the support in Catalonia both of the conservative Catholic right and of some of the radical left. 

Understandably, the right has a different image of what an independent Catalonia might be able to do than the radical left has. For the left, it's an opportunity to found a progressive, independent republic that will have an easier time implementing more just policies, better labor conditions, more democracy than the Spanish state has. For the Catalan right, the Catalan right is not anti-capitalist at all. It wants to have a modern European nation, and it feels probably that it can fare better economically when it's independent from Spain than it does now. 

There's also some reason to believe that what's currently the PDeCAT, their right-wing conservative Catalan party, which is pushing for independence, that it might not really actually want independence. That all it's going for is a more advantageous relationship with Spain in economic terms and that the threat with independence has all this time really been an empty threat meant to force Madrid to the negotiation table. Yesterday, the current president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, said as much: "I will not yet declare independence. I'm inviting Madrid to sit down and dialogue without any preconditions." 

To go to the second part of your question, I think that kind of dialogue would also be really the only way to defuse the situation. I think the only way to do that would be for Madrid and Catalonia to sit down and to contemplate the possibility of a serious reform of Spain's Constitution, which clearly is not working for Catalonia anymore. 

However, I don't see the current Spanish government, the current Spanish leadership, Mariano Rajoy, the current prime minister, I don't see them capable psychologically or ideologically of taking that step. And I think today's speech by the king, which fully endorsed the position that the Spanish government has taken to heart, which is a zero-tolerance approach and come down with the full force of the law as harshly as possible on anybody who tries to go against what's formally in the Constitution, I think the speech by the king has further pushed that possibility of a negotiated solution farther into the distance even.

AARON MATÉ: The way you describe it, it sounds like the struggle for independence has very different meanings to the different political factions inside Catalonia. What about inside Spain on the left? Podemos arose just a few years ago against austerity, challenging right-wing policies. How do they feel about the Catalan independence movement?

S. FABER: Their official position for a long time has been that they support the Catalan right to self-determination, so they are in favor of an actual referendum held with the approval of the government in Madrid, a binding referendum. At the same time, they have said that they sincerely hope that should that referendum happen, that a majority of Catalans will decide to remain in Spain. 

They have also said that they fully understand that Catalonia doesn't want to belong to a Spain ruled by the current government but that they could become part of an alternative government, a progressive government in which Catalonia would feel much more at home and wouldn't have the same issues that they have currently. That's been the official line.

That said, within Podemos there is a wide range of positions, and the relationship between the Madrid section of Podemos and the Catalan section of Podemos, Podem, has been strained and has been complicated and has caused splits actually.

AARON MATÉ: Do you think that there's a credible case for the Spanish left to make to the Catalan left to convince them to want to stay?

S. FABER: That all depends on their actual options for government. If the Catalan left believes that Podemos has a real chance of entering the government, that might be the case. On the other hand, there's real suspicion and distrust in Catalonia of any politician from Madrid, however left they might be.

AARON MATÉ: In the final minute we have, the key issues that you're looking at going forward.

S. FABER: The keys issues I think are, is this going to further escalate? Like I said, it sounded me the king was making sort of preemptive excuses for a further crackdown. The Spanish Constitution allows for the autonomy of an autonomous region to be revoked if the autonomy poses a serious threat to the country's interests. There's also an article in the Constitution that charges the army with protecting the territorial integrity of the nation. 

So far, some people have said before we know it, tanks will be rolling down the streets of Barcelona. I've always thought that was a little bit exaggerated; now I'm not so sure. I'm really worried that this will further escalate, and I hope that the politicians that have been calling for dialogue and for a diffusion of the tension among them, Ada Colau, the mayor or Barcelona, I really hope that they'll have enough sway to force the different parties to the negotiation table.

Finally . . .  Fresh off the presses, here's DQ on the question: HTF did we get here?


How Did Things Get So Bad in Catalonia? by Don Quijones 

Will Spain trigger Article 155 of the Constitution?

Unless concrete measures are taken to calm tensions between Madrid and Catalonia, one of Spain’s richest, safest and most visited regions could soon be plunged into chaos. With neither side willing for now to take even a small step back from the brink, the hopes of any kind of negotiated settlement being reached are virtually nil, especially with the European Commission refusing to mediate.
Since Sunday the Spanish government has even ruled out dealing with Catalonia’s president, Carles Puigdemont, and its vice president, Oriol Junqueras. In other words, the communication breakdown between Madrid and Barcelona is now complete.

But how did things get so bad in Catalonia?

The answer, to borrow from Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, is “gradually, then suddenly.” While the standoff between Madrid and Barcelona has been on the cards for years, it’s been brewing so slowly that many people were caught off guard when riot units of Spain’s National Police and the Civil Guard began using brutal violence to prevent people from voting in Catalonia’s banned referendum.

Now, what we have on our hands is a full-frontal clash between two diametrically opposed nationalisms that has roots dating back centuries. The most recent tensions were inflamed in 2010, when Spain’s highly politicized Supreme Court, at the urging of the now governing People’s Party, annulled many of the articles of Catalonia’s recently agreed Statue of Autonomy, effectively stripping the agreement of any meaning. Gone was any chance of any fiscal autonomy. That this happened just as the Financial Crisis was beginning to bite in Catalonia hardly helped matters.

Since then, the Rajoy administration has refused to offer greater fiscal autonomy for Catalonia, or the chance to hold a legitimate referendum on national independence. The argument is always the same: the 1978 constitution forbids it from doing so and it can’t change the constitution, although the Rajoy’s party voted to change the constitution to enable Spain’s bailout of its savings banks while in opposition in 2011.

Catalonia’s regional government, the Generalitat, in the face of such intransigence and seeking to deflect public attention from the brutal austerity cuts it was making, began to take matters into its own hands. Little by little, disobedience became defiance, which gradually evolved into open rebellion.

The Generalitat created its own laws to allow it to hold a referendum on national independence as well as declare unilateral independence in the event of a large enough majority. It’s even set up a parallel tax system that has already enabled 145 state-owned companies to pay their taxes into Barcelona’s coffers rather than Madrid’s.

Now, the spirit of open defiance is spreading to the general populace. Since Sunday’s dreadful violence, local communities have begun locking out National Police officers from the hotels they were lodged in. The Catalan police and firefighters who fought under heavy blows to shield voters from the beatings of Spanish police officers on Sunday are also being applauded in the street.
On Tuesday, in protest at the police violence that marked Sunday’s vote, the Catalan government declared a general strike that brought the region to a shuddering halt. Over 50 major roads were blocked, public transport and shops were closed, fire-fighters and healthcare workers downed their tools and millions of Catalans flooded the centers of towns and cities.

As always, the atmosphere was one of resolute but hopeful indignation. But as alone in Europe as Catalonia is right now, there is little reason for hope. And dashed hope can be a dangerous thing, especially in a region with depression-level youth unemployment (35%).

Even after the brutal attacks on voting stations by Spain’s National Police and Civil Guard on Sunday, the cards remain overwhelmingly stacked against Catalonia’s regional government. The EU refuses to mediate in the crisis, insisting time and again that it is an internal matter. Brussels must abide by the decisions of the Spanish government and Spain’s constitutional court, says Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president.

The King of Spain, Felipe II, speaking in a televised address on Tuesday night, was no more conciliatory. Rather than offering the Catalan government an olive branch or even twig, he admonished it for its “inadmissible disloyalty” and called on the Spanish state to restore constitutional order in Catalonia.

The Rajoy administration will be happy to comply. For years it has been threatening to trigger Article 155 of the Constitution, which allows the central government to force a region to obey laws when disobedience “gravely threatens the general interest of Spain.” In the next day or two, it will no doubt get the chance.

The article has never been used and no one has a clear idea what its consequences would be. One glaring flaw in the plan, however, is that Catalonia’s government stopped obeying Spain’s constitution some time ago. Even after King Felipe’s stern warning tonight, Puigdemont continues to insist that he will declare unilateral independence in the coming days.

As such, for Madrid to unseat an elected regional government that no longer obeys it in a region where it has alienated over half of the local population, it will need a lot more manpower than it had on Sunday, especially if it follows through on recent threats to arrest Puigdemont and other Catalan politicians for sedition. And if the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, allies with the pro-independence parties, it will also need more firepower too.

And that could mean sending in the army. In other words, the once unthinkable — the sight of Spanish tanks rolling down Avenguda Diagonal and Gran Via — could soon become a reality, in 21st century Western Europe. But don’t worry: as the EU says, it will only be an internal matter. By Don Quijones.

It isn’t just about what happens on Sunday; it’s about the ensuing days and weeks.


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