Police violence in Catalonia

[soubresauts]

... Of course the next step will be to make it illegal to have the app on your phone, and then start arresting people and imprisoning them for having the app. And I believe that those who run Spain are that way inclined.

Who runs Spain? It's a socialist government, with the support of minor parties. It looks like continuing to be that way after the election. And those socialists maintain close relationships with most of the governments of Europe, including Ireland's, not to mention the European Commission. It's a bit soon to be calling them "totalitarian". Aren't you getting a bit carried away, Barroso?

 

[Barroso]

Who runs Spain? It's a socialist government, with the support of minor parties. It looks like continuing to be that way after the election. And those socialists maintain close relationships with most of the governments of Europe, including Ireland's, not to mention the European Commission. It's a bit soon to be calling them "totalitarian". Aren't you getting a bit carried away, Barroso?

Who runs Spain? The banks, a group of oligarchs from the Franco regime, several huge landowners. The Socialist party? Do you mean the people who murdered a girl in cold blood in the Basque country while lying wounded on the floor where they shot her through the back of her head? Who kidnapped Lasa and Zabala in France, brought them to Spain and tortured and murdered them? The people who tortured and murdered Mikel Zabalza?
This was Spain's dirty war against ETA. Fought from "the sewers of the state".

While the events above relate to the Basque struggle in the 1980s and 1990s, is there any reason to believe that the PSOE has changed?
Gonzalez is still hanging about in the wings; Borrell, a minister in one of Gonzalez' governments, has recently been a minister in the current Spanish government, and was even more recently nominated for a post as EU commissioner. The Spanish deep state remains, and continues Franco's regime; from the shadows when necessary, but recently more openly - at least in Catalonia.
Many people in Catalonia remember the violence in the Basque country, and are at pains to use only non-violent means. They logically fear the Guardia Civil and the Policia Nacional, and in the last couple of weeks have come to fear "their own police", the Mossos de Escuadra.
If you have been following events in Catalonia over the last two years, you might ask whether - in view of the police violence in October 2017 and also these last couple of weeks - the Catalans are right to want to escape from this fascist prison.

 

[soubresauts]

Who runs Spain? The banks, a group of oligarchs from the Franco regime, several huge landowners. The Socialist party? Do you mean the people...

Ah Barroso, that's too much whataboutery for me to digest this November morning.

 

[Barroso]

Ah Barroso, that's too much whataboutery for me to digest this November morning.

Sorry to hear that; nonetheless, all of what I wrote is easily verifiable by a review of the (Spanish) newspapers.
Strangely, you refuse to accept statements and promises made by the Authorities in relation to vaccination, but here you are swallowing what the Spanish Authorities in relation to Catalonia. A sort of a double-think, methinks.

 

[Barroso]

Usually governments claim, or at least pretend to believe, that there is clear line of division between the judicial and executive branches of the State.
In a radio interview during the week though, the Spanish prime minister, Pedo Sanchez, was asked how he was going to bring Puigdemont back to Spain. In response, he claimed that he controls the actions of the Public Prosecuter.
See the article (in English) here.

This is the Deep State in action. All sections act in concert to hold Catalonia in thrall, just as they did in the Basque country until ETA gave up their struggle.

 

[McTell]

Usually governments claim, or at least pretend to believe, that there is clear line of division between the judicial and executive branches of the State.
In a radio interview during the week though, the Spanish prime minister, Pedo Sanchez, was asked how he was going to bring Puigdemont back to Spain. In response, he claimed that he controls the actions of the Public Prosecuter.
See the article (in English) here.

This is the Deep State in action. All sections act in concert to hold Catalonia in thrall, just as they did in the Basque country until ETA gave up their struggle.

I don't know if its that deep, as its so visible.

Cat does most of spain's business and pays more tax per head, so the rest of spain has a good old-fashioned selfish interest in keeping them on board.

Likewise the EU is silent because a weaker spain will be more of a burden. So they are sticking to eu members keeping to their exact borders, which is bad news for SNP-scotland but, strange to say, good news for gibraltar.

 

[Barroso]

I don't know if its that deep, as its so visible.

Yes, but if & when the matter arrives in Strassburg or Luxemburg, the visibility will be pointed out, and the conclusion that the trials are political will be that bit easier to argue. I say nothing about any eventual sentences, though. There will almost inevitably be a political element to them.

Cat does most of spain's business and pays more tax per head, so the rest of spain has a good old-fashioned selfish interest in keeping them on board.

Absolutely. And as I've pointed out in other places, the taxes paid include taxes reported as Spanish (because many companies are based in Madrid, particularly the old government monopolies and electricity suppliers, and their offshoots) but collected on business done in Catalonia. So in fact, taking this into account, the Catalan proportion of Madrid's income is very likely much under-reported.

Likewise the EU is silent because a weaker spain will be more of a burden. So they are sticking to eu members keeping to their exact borders, which is bad news for SNP-scotland but, strange to say, good news for gibraltar.

Yes, and no.
A weaker Spain may be more of a burden, but easier to control. I'd say Angela would be happy either way. Of course she supports the status quo, but if the situation changed, she'd be equally happy with the change.

 

[Barroso]

The Catalan nationalists have cut the motorway leading out of Catalonia to France; and more symbolically, have arranged with Basque nationalists to do the same there.

Meanwhile, the Vanguardia newspaper in Catalonia has interviwed Manuel Valls, ex-Prime Minister of France who has moved back to Barcelona (he is Catalan) and tried to resuscitate his career there.
He joined C's, and was elected on their tickt to Barcelona city council.

In his interview, he calls for "a forceful response" by the French and Spanish police forces to the closing of the motorway.
He also calls for a coalition between PSOE and PP; and reading between the lines, for central control of the Catalan education system and Catalan TV.

Most surprisingly, he claims that if this is not done, Catalonia will be independent within a decade.
Of course, this could have a knock-on effect to the north: France has its own Basque country, and its own part of Catalonia; it has German-speaking Alsace, Brittany and the Corsican independence movement, and a growing regional movement in Occitania.

He is beginning to look like a French envoy sent to stem the tide before the breakup of Spain crosses over the Pyrenees and infects France.

 

[Barroso]

Ten years ago, Michael Dwyer was killed in Santa Cruz in Bolivia.
As the story unfolded, it turned out that a company called something like IRMS here in Ireland was training people in "security" - incuding arms training.
It seems as if they might also have been training and recruiting people as mercenaries.

Now, a magazine in Barcelona has discovered that a company in Catalonia is organising this sort of training - on this occasion, for various Catalan and Spanish police forces and other security personnel, public and private alike - apparently on an individual basis.
In order to get around legal restrictions in Spain, the training is carried out abroad - in Israel, Brazil, Peru and Poland, according to the magazine. By law, only certain elite units are permitted this type of training in Spain, which is why the training is not carried out there.

Among the documents the magazine has accessed is a list of Spanish police in several different forces, including Catalan and Basque forces, municipal forces, and special police units.

One question here is whether these are paid for by the individuals themselves, or via some slush fund.

The more important question, though, in view of the level of violence used by Spanish police forces on both 1 October 2017 and in the wake of the sentences handed out to several of those involved in organising that referendum - has Spain been encouraging policemen and women to participate in this type of course; have they been subverting their own laws to do so?

Either way, the training has been carried out by dubious people. Israel is definitely not where you would go to learn humanitarian policing methods. Nor is Brazil. According to the magazine, Spanish police have been trained in Brazil by the elite corps of Rio de Janeiro's militarised police, often denounced for human rights abuses.

It is believed that this Rio de Janeiro corps was involved in the murder of Marielle Franco; for those who aren't familiar with the case, I quote from Wikipedia:

Marielle Franco
Marielle Franco ... was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human rights activist. ... she served as a city councillor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) from January 2017 until her death.

On 14 March 2018, ... Franco and her driver were shot multiple times and killed by two murderers in another vehicle, North in Rio de Janeiro. Franco had been an outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings, as well as the February 2018 federal intervention by Brazilian president Michel Temer in the state of Rio de Janeiro which resulted in the deployment of the army in police operations. In March 2019, two former police officers were arrested and charged with the murder of Marielle Franco.

 

[Barroso]

It appears that the international observers who attended the showtrial of Catalan politicians earlier this year were unimpressed with the process.

Specifically, according to the platform, the trial violated the independence leaders’ right to the principle of criminal legality, right to liberty, freedom of expression, freedom of ideology, the right to peaceful assembly, political participation, as well as the right to a process with all the guarantees. The report was produced as a result of the presence of 62 observers from 17 different countries in the trial .

According to the conclusions of the document, the Supreme Court trial was a “violation of human rights” collected by treaties and conventions ratified by the Spanish State, that are part of its internal legal system. “It is a clearly ideological resolution aimed at replacing the political solution that is needed in the conflict in Catalonia,” reads the document.

 

[Barroso]

The City of Madrid has decided that people murdered by Franco after the Spanish civil war do not merit being remembered.
The city council has started to remove memorial plaques for the victims.
The city is governed by a coalition of PP, C's and Vox. This is the sort of situation that the people of Spain face when the next rightwing comes to power in Madrid; and actions like this multiplied by 10 are what the Catalans want to escape from.

 

[Barroso]

I see that finally, more than two months after the Spanish general elections, a new Premier has been voted in. By just two votes, and with around 20 abstentions (which were themselves the subject of long negotiations.)

The rightwing - known in Spain as the trifachito, the "three fascists" - tried every trick in the book to stop this government coming to power, including calling on socialist MPs to vote against it in the name of Spanish unity. They failed, fortunately.

One of the stories around the vote for a new premier was that of "Teruel Existe". For those who don't know, Teruel is one of the least favoured Spanish provinces, large in size, small population, high, mountainous, dry and considered backward. In the elections, they voted in an independent MP to draw attention to their situation, and he agreed to vote for the new Socialist premier, Pedro Sanchez. In response he received over 8,000 threatening emails. He has also been given police protection, as threats of this nature are not to be taken lightly in Spain. As anyone who remembers the events of October 2017 during the Catalan referendum on independence will remember.

In other news, the European Parliament has recognised 3 Catalan politicians as MEPs, including two exiled Catalans - Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comins, and also the imprisoned Oriol Junqueras. It remains to be seen whether Junqueras will be freed to take up his seat in time for next Monday's session, but if not, it is simply a question of time as European law trumps Spanish law in these circumstances.
In a further slap in the face to the Spanish deep state, the Greens have named Junqueras as vice-president of their group in the European parliament.

 

[Barroso]

Not quite police violence, but the lawyer of the exiled Catalan leader Puigdemont, one Gonzalo Boye, has had his bank accounts frozen in relation with a case affecting him back in the 1990s.

This is on top of an accusation of money laundering against him last November, and his office being broken into and his office server being destroyed the night before he was due to file an important legal document with the courts.

It seems unlikely to be chance that all of this has happened to just one man in a period of just a few months.

 

[Barroso]

After months of saying NO, the Spanish prime minister Pablo Sánchez finally visited the head of the Catalan government, Quim Torra, in Barcelona last Tuesday.
He arrived in a cavalcade of 9 cars, and it seems that just as the last time he visited Barcelona, his bodyguard travelled in the cavalcade, with windows down and at least one of them was showing his sub-machinegun.

It's hard to know what Sánchez is playing at - is he trying to demonstrate that Catalonia is an occupied country? Does he want to show the floating Spanish voter that he's a hard man, like Felipe González was - you might remember that Gonzalez told the Basques "We'll stop killing you when you stop killing us", and his men killed plenty of them, which along with his government's corruption led to his undoing.

One way or the other, he is acting in a way that is certain to disgust the average Catalan, as well as many Spaniards.

 

[Barroso]

I see that in response to the Catalan government's request that Spain seal off Catalonia entirely in order to stop the spread of covid19, they have instead deployed the Army to Catalonia.

On top of this, it seems that the UN has written a report severely criticising Spanish treatment of Catalans and the Catalan-speaking regions.

You will find an article here, in English.
The UN report can be found here.
The Spanish government's rejection of the report is available here.