Catalunya and Constitutional Crisis

Global struggle for democracy has lessons to learn from brutality in Barcelona

Daniel Teruel ignores the rain as he walks through a pro-independence neighbourhood in Barcelona on Sunday, October 1st, 2017

Understanding the history of Spain is vital context to any analysis of the present situation. In 1936, the Popular Front, a coalition of leftist political parties including the Communist Party, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the Republican Union, and the Republican Left, amongst others, won national elections in Spain by a narrow margin, defeating the conservative Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing groups. Fearing that a democratic republic would lead to communism, masonic Jewry, and the destruction of the Holy Church, conservative political forces allied with the military conspired against the democratic result, resulting in the July Coup led by Generals José Sanjurjo and Francisco Franco that triggered Spain’s Civil War (1936–1939). At the cost of half a million lives, Franco won the Civil War with the help of Nazi Germany and Facist Italy and established a military dictatorship that resulted in a totalitarian state.

Resistance to Franco’s regime was concentrated in the Basque country and Catalunya, whose Peoples suffered incessant repression and violence for opposing Franco, taking the brunt of the government’s terrorist tactics, which included summary public execution and forced-labour in concentration camps. As the Second World War began to unfold, Franco cooperated with the Axis, in spite of Spain’s official position of neutrality, by providing harbour to German and Italian ships, importing war materials for Germany, passing military intelligence on the Allies to the Axis, and sending Spanish men to fight on the Russian front as part of the German army. Commentators have long debated the semantics of fascism versus totalitarianism in describing Franco’s regime, but there is little doubt that Franco was ideologically aligned and practically allied with nazism. This resulted in Spain’s isolation from the international community in the aftermath of the war once nazism’s global ambitions had been defeated. The nazi’s defeat precipitated a transition in Franco’s regime from an openly totalitarian to an authoritarian system. The differences between these systems of repression resulted in the economic liberalisation of Spain, and the nation’s recovery from chronic economic depression.

The capitalist west, which at first only had relations with Franco because he was an outspoken anti-communist, slowly began to accept Spain into the international community on the back of these liberalising reforms. In the hopes of securing the continuation of his dictatorship after his death in 1975, Franco restored the monarchy and appointed King Juan Carlos I as his successor. Carlos I instead led Spain in its transition to democracy, and after a referendum in 1978, a new constitution was adopted that transformed Spain into a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy. Although Franco failed in his efforts to extend his dictatorship, some aspects of Francoism were retained for the sake of national stability. The democratic transition in 1978 was built on two core compromises in particular. The first was that the safety and continuation of the monarchy would be guaranteed. The second compromise was the inclusion in the 1978 constitution of the following text,

The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common & indivisible fatherland (patria) of all Spaniards. It acknowledges and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities of which it is composed and solidarity among them.

This text was not in initial drafts of the constitution and was added only to break an impasse between the left and right. The sentence referencing the “indissoluble unity” of Spain was written to appease conservatives. Paradoxically, the very next sentence guarantees “the right to autonomy”, which was written to protect the political independence of leftists in Catalunya and elsewhere. These two sentences summarise the competing political interests that are at the root of the conflict between Catalunya and Spain.

The conflict has been brought to a boiling point in recent weeks, but the recent strength of the independence movement can be traced to the Spanish government’s handling of the 2008 economic crisis. Like other governments around the world, Spain forced austerity on its population in the middle of the Great Recession instead of increasing fiscal spending, effectively making the People pay the price for individual wrongdoing and corporate malpractice. The illogicality and immorality of austerity had the consequence of extending the duration and depth of the crisis, leading to high unemployment, which has a strong correlation with support for Catalonian independence. In response to these coercive policies from the government, the Government of Catalunya agreed a series of reforms with the central government to increase Catalunya’s sovereignty as enshrined in Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy, but these reforms were blocked by Spain’s constitutional court after a legal challenge by The People’s Party, the largest party in Spain’s current coalition government led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The inherent constitutional conflict between an indissoluble Spain and the right to autonomy for the nations comprising Spain thus reached its logical conclusion: there can be no greater autonomy or independence for Spain’s autonomous regions because to grant greater autonomy would be to undermine the compromises that provided the constitutional basis for the military, Francoists, and monarchists to tolerate Spain’s transition to democracy in 1978.

There was no purge of Francoist government officials after the end of the dictatorship, meaning that large segments of the Spanish population still hold extreme conservative or authoritarian views, and these elements of the population wield disproportionate power in Spain. The natural consequence is that institutions of government remain authoritarian in practice as well as in principle despite the veneer of democracy that constitutional reforms have given to the Spanish state. The Spanish national police force is deeply corrupt, as is Spain’s monarchy, and the ruling People’s Party, which was founded by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship. The clearest possible example of the institutional bias in Spain against democracy is the fact that the judge who is set to rule on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold the October 1st referendum was a police inspector in the Franco dictatorship. A judge who rejected investigating the Francoist far-right group called Falange y Tradición for damaging monuments in tribute to dictatorship victims, but who sentenced two puppeteers to prison for a performance in which a puppet showed a poster with a message that some people understood as defending the ETA Basque terror organisation, is obviously not a suitably impartial judge to be deciding cases concerning regional autonomy.

Having exhausted judicial and political avenues to increased autonomy, the Government of Catalonia unilaterally called a referendum for October 1st, 2017, and narrowly passed a law in the Parliament of Catalonia making the referendum legally binding with a simple majority regardless of the level of voter turnout. To be clear, this is not only unconstitutional under an explicit reading of the text of the Spanish constitution, but also illegal under Catalunya’s own laws, which require a majority of two-thirds in the legislature for any change to Catalunya’s autonomy status, according to the Catalan Statutory Guarantees Council. Regardless, the Catalan government appealed directly to the People’s inalienable natural right to self-determination and proceeded with the referendum in the face of concerted efforts from the central government to thwart it.

The central government was not successful in its efforts to prevent the referendum from taking place, despite Rajoy’s reality-denying claim that it had, and despite employing a wide range of violent and illegal tactics to this end. Section 155 of the constitution states that,

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, after having lodged a complaint with the President of the Self-governing Community and failed to receive satisfaction there, may, following approval granted by the overall majority of the Senate, take all measures necessary to compel the Community to meet said obligations, or to protect the above mentioned general interest. With a view to implementing the measures provided for in the foregoing paragraph, the Government may issue instructions to all the authorities of the Self-governing Communities.

The Spanish government’s efforts to derail the referendum involved arresting Catalonian officials, threatening poll workers with €300,000 fines, confiscating millions of ballot papers, blocking access to pro-independence websites, compelling MNCs like Google to hamper the referendum, spreading propaganda through the media and sports teams, sending 10,000 national police and Guardia Civil from around Spain to Catalunya, and, ultimately, beating old women who dared to vote until they were bloody. These exceptionally aggressive and violent tactics were not preceded by a majority vote in the Senate to authorise the measures taken, making the central government’s response to the referendum itself unconstitutional.

The effect of the government’s brutally repressive measures was predictable. They have inspired a new generation of political activists and Catalonian nationalists into action, and in the process have united the Catalan nation behind independence, as evidenced by the 92% of the 3 million Catalans who voted in favour of independence. My friend, Daniel Teurel, was initially against independence, but flew to Barcelona at the last minute so that he could vote Sí! Men, women, and children from all walks of life, including some so young that they could not walk, and others so old that they could not stand, joined together in a show of total unity across Catalunya. The headlines in El Pais and the chat on conservative radio that in the run up to the referendum had labelled proponents of independence as far-left quacks and young, internationally-based social anarchists was proven to be baseless propaganda. Even during the day of the referendum itself, when it had become clear to the everyone, including the international media present, just how widespread the independence movement had become, the concerted propaganda effort broadcast their fake news to unwitting Spaniards around the nation. This was the government’s strategy of choice, instead of simply allowing the referendum to unfold, which would have almost certainly resulted in fewer than 50% of the population backing independence, and then challenging the result through the judicial process. In the end, the government cut itself fatally wielding its own sword, deepening the crisis to the point of no return. There is no evading the fact that Prime Minister Rajoy chose to send men dressed all in black with balaclavas covering their faces to crush Catalans' spirit for freedom at all costs. The government has instead succeeded only in destroying their political and moral legitimacy in the eyes of world. After yesterday’s deeply horrific state violence, I doubt there is a single person who was actually in Barcelona who fails to recognise that a majority of Catalans see a permanent and irreconcilable split from the openly oppressive and anti-democratic Spanish government. The people under that delusion seem to reside solely in Madrid.