The Spanish Government’s Own Goal


Few images circulating globally from earlier yesterday (October 1)  seemed to risk being  more damaging to the Spanish government’s attempts to woo over a majority  of Catalans to its concept of a lawful constitutional democracy than that  of helmeted Civil Guard officers using a hammer to break a window and a lock cutter to break open a door at  a sports centre near Gerona.

Tougher tactics  have been used before by British and other European  police including Catalonia’s own force the  Mossos D’Escuadra to deal with violent protestors, criminals, and terrorists.

But this was a non-Catalan police force ordered by Madrid  to act against a peaceful civil protest expressed by Catalans claiming to exercise  their right to vote for or against independence. The action, followed by other examples of heavy-handed tactics by the Spanish national police, and magnified by wide coverage in the international media,  has  played into  Catalan nationalism’s historic  sense of victimisation  at the hands of Madrid.

In the town of Sitges,just south of Barcelona,  yesterday  morning the majority pro-independence local town council gave the green light to activate various voting centres around town. I watched hundreds of civilians, growing in number in response to the news coming in from  Gerona,   lining up to vote in various polling stations,  with the only security presence that of  two Mossos  d’Esquadra assigned to each. During the day I interviewed Catalans who were voting yes; Catalans  who were voting no; and Catalans  who were not voting because they thought the referendum a sham. and did not agree with the way the Catalan government was radicalising politics.

Looking and acting very much in the style of the traditional  community based English village ‘bobby’, the most senior of the two Mossos d’Escuadra read out an official order declaring the referendum unlawful before asking everyone to abandon the vote and to be allowed in the premise to withdrawal of  the ballot boxes This was rejected by the crowd, and the peaceful voting was allowed to go on.

A similar pattern was repeated in other voting locations around Catalonia in what the Mossos claimed was proportionate policing as compared to the tougher tactics used by other forces.

When the Mossos  did put on their riot gear and adopted a  less passive attitude was when they moved in to  separate a group of extreme right Spanish nationalists who had briefly clashed violently with pro-independence radicals and anarchists in Barcelona’s iconic popular square,the Plaza de Catalunya, itself another disturbing image of how emotionally charged  the Catalan issue has become.

Later the Madrid headquartered Spanish Federation refused a request from  FC Barcelona  that a League match scheduled for the afternoon be cancelled  in solidarity with the injured victims of the police violence used against Catalan voters. Instead the match against Las Palmas was played bending closed doors.The club denied reports that the main reason was because of  security concerns that the  match might be disrupted by angry pro-independence  fans .

It was surreal to be among a few dozen journalists allowed to watch the match live.  A heavy sense of mourning as well as defiance seemed to hang about some of the players as they pursued a 3-0 victory amidst the cavernous silence of the 98,000 seated Camp Nou .

Fourty years ago I sat in the same stadium and watched the stadium filled with Catalan and Basque flags for the first time since the Spanish Civil War as Johan Cruyff led out Barca and Iribar, Athletic Bilbao.  Catalonia’s  exiled regional president Josep Tarradellas was on his way back to Spain after  striking  a pact with Spanish prime-minister Adolfo Suarez .  Spain’s transition to democracy twould include a new constitution giving Catalonia and other regions of Spain autonomous powers  under the unified nation state headed by the Spanish Crown.

Fourty years on, the empty Camp Nou stadium testified the extent to which many Catalans feel that Spanish democracy, as interpreted by the current centre-right Popular Party government in Madrid, has failed them.

After the match against Las Palmas , the  Catalan nationalist   player who plays in the Spanish national squad Gerard Pique made   an emotional statement in support of  the people of  Catalonia  and in  denunciation of police tactics. Yes, FC Barcelona has a civic conscience. Barca es Mes que un Club.

So where does this leave Catalan  politics?

In desperate need of statesmanship in Madrid, moderation and pragmatism in Barcelona,  and the kick-start of serious  political dialogue that a majority of Spaniards can support and which can connect  with Catalans who have a strong sense of  their  cultural identity  but do not necessarily want to be independent from Spain.

The current polarisation between the Spanish right and Catalan nationalists  will only lead to increasing violence. Pehaps its time for an external mediation to identify Spain’s common good lies in dealing with Catalans  with more respect , and that includes engaging with those who did not vote today because they thought it unlawful and those who voted because they thought it their right.

 

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Comments

  1. Charles Soden-Bird says:

    It seems to me to have been a colossal error by the Spanish government to send in the Guardia Civil to try to prevent the consulta. All the government has achieved is exacerbate the feeling of grievance in Catalonia, and create division in the whole of Spain. All the government needed to do was to ignore the consulta and be indifferent to its outcome, given the fact that it had no legal effect.

    The result of the decision to send in the GC will have consequences which are unknown but the best the government could now do would be to recognize its mistake. There appears to be no chance this will happen, and indeed the speech of the King today criticising the Govern will do nothing to heal the wounds.

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