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| Do not cry for a land that fights, fight for a land that cries! |
Today several Catalan politicians were jailed on accusation of "sedition" or "rebellion", what is a nonsense because they never used violence to overthrow the status quo but the Spanish Inquisition (Supreme Court in this case) is making things up and twisting the law all they can in order to step up the repression.
One of them, the Secretary General of Catalan Republican Left (ERC), Marta Rovira, chose to exile herself to Switzerland, joining a growing number of Catalan political leaders in exile, either in Switzerland or in Belgium.
Another of those imprisoned today was Jordi Turull, who is the only candidate for the Presidency of the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya), vote that was being held today (he did not get enough votes because the decisive Popular Unity List (CUP) abstained on grounds of wavering republicanism and lack of a social program).
Also imprisoned were Carme Forcadell (former President of the Catalan Parliament), Raul Romeva (former head of the Republican unity list Together for Catalonia), Josep Rull and Dolors Bassa (former consellers or ministers).
This every day looks more like Turkey.
But the streets are angry, very angry.
Not only because of Catalonia, there are many other open conflicts feeding into each other, notably the retirees have been staging massive protests in the last weeks against the effective pension cuts while police salaries are increased, military expenditure doubled as Trump demanded, corruption cases keep showing at every corner like mushrooms and the illegitimate debt to save the Spanish banks and other private ventures like useless highways, i.e. to save German and other international banks for slightly longer, is being increased every day.
The Precariat is also angry and starting to get organized and protest. Also a synchronous conflict has been happening in Murcia City between working class neighbors and the state who illegally is imposing that the bullet train (TAV, another useless waste) goes through their neighborhoods, right by their homes in many cases, above ground, cutting the city in two. The government went so nervous that police was seen patrolling with loaded guns just a couple of days ago, something unseen since ETA began its disarmament process.
But where anger is really spilling over is in Catalonia, always in the nonviolent manner they have conducted their independence process so far. I do not have yet all the info but I know that semi-spontaneously, organized by the Comittees of Defense of the Republic (CDR, popular assemblies working in national network), there have been many demos and pickets. Notably they have cut the train traffic at the station of Lleida, the border with France at Puigcerdá, and have walked out in most towns across the country, in several cases suffering violent police repression.
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| Popular picket at Lleida train station (and some cops) |
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| demo in Barcelona |
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| police brutality today in Catalonia (credit: Jordi Borras) |
These images (from FB group We Stand in Solidarity With Catalans) aren't but a tiny relation of what has been happening today again in the forbidden Catalan Republic. And I suspect that it is only the beginning of something huge, because the general mood is clear: if they jail our leaders, they will have to jail millions of us.
There are informal calls for long-standing general strike, for repeated road, railroad, airport and harbor blockades. Not sure what exactly will come out of this but it looks that, once again, we are in a proto-revolutionary scenario, at the very least in Catalonia.
And let's not forget that Catalans are 7.5 million people, 16% of the population of the failed state of Spain, and also one of the most vigorous economic areas in spite of Madrid sucking every single large company or almost.
As a side note, the government can't even pass the budget, because they can't muster a majority to do so, they are resorting to pointless resistance by means of the state apparatus, dominated by fascist currents like the greedy Catholic order Opus Dei, but they lack any sort of coherent governance beyond last trench repression without any sort of compromise with common sense and social consensus.
The situation is anything but under control: the failed banana kingdom is one step or several closer to total collapse. And I will applaud when that finally happens, because in order to save the Spanairds (by force or grade) Spain must be destroyed, razed to the ground and power returned to the peoples.
Gora herrien borroka! Long live the struggle of the peoples!
