Spanish views from a small town

Plenty of protest has gone up among the conservative politicians of a possible pardon of those condemned for the Catalan independence referendum. They were condemned to prison for sedition for going ahead with the independence referendum a few years ago, even after the central government (in the hands of the conservative Partido Popular, then) had nixed the idea. The present Socialist coalition government would like to pardon these Catalan leaders to try to weaken the independence cause, and start talking with the Catalans. It's the first step toward bringing them back into the national fold.  But the conservative parties see this as anathema, and are raising their voices in holy anger, claiming that Prime Minister Sánchez is bowing to the independents' attempts to destroy Spain. Even the Supreme Court has recommended that the Catalan leaders not be pardoned.  How quickly we forget things. Back in 1981, on the 23rd of February, Lieutenant Colonel of the Guardia Civil, Antonio ...

Back in 2017, on October 1st, the Catalans held what the Spanish government termed an illegal referendum to decide whether or not to declare independence. While true validity could not be determined, because the police went from polling station to polling station to confiscate ballot boxes, and there was no electoral supervision, it was estimated that about ninety percent of the votes were for independence. Independent opinion polls say that the population is evenly divided, half for independence, half for continuing the status quo.  In the days and weeks leading up to the referendum, people gathered in the streets. The leaders, mindful of consequences, always and continuously asked the public to avoid violence and to demonstrate peacefully. There were a few spates of reactions that might be termed violent, and some government officials from Madrid found themselves fearing the mob, though nothing happened to them. When everything was over, independence declared and then independe...

Things in Catalunya haven't turned out like the conservative government in Madrid would have liked. After the declaration of independence in October, the central government declared the Catalan govern null and void, and sent out an arrest warrant for its president, Carles Puigdemont, accusing him of rebellion and sedition. Puigdemont, however, found refuge in Belgium. In the meantime, Madrid ordered new regional elections, which turned out more or less like the previous, with the majority of votes going to the independence parties. A new govern has been set up, with the exception of the president, who is again Puigdemont, except if he comes to Spain to be sworn into office, he goes to jail. While things are still in the air, Madrid rules the roost in Barcelona. Madrid is angry at the results of the elections. Madrid is trying to exact its pound of flesh in the meantime by making changes to the educational system in Catalunya. Upon dissolving the Catalan govern , and taking char...

The deed has been done, on both sides. Independence was declared yesterday by Catalunya, at around three thirty in the afternoon. About five hours later, the Senate voted in a measure based on a constitutional article to intervene the regional autonomy, and the Prime Minister declared the suspension of the entire Catalan government and the regional police, and regional elections on the 21st of December.  How are things going to go now? If cool heads prevail, nothing will happen until people go to the polls in December and usher in a new regional government. Otherwise, things are up in the air. Last night, a crowd of several thousand people remained in the Plaza Sant Jaume outside the building that houses the Govern in Barcelona, celebrating the independence. About half the Catalan population were in heaven yesterday. But it was an independence no one recognized. There was not one government in power that recognized an independent Catalunya. Everyone recognized Madrid's sovereig...

A long time ago, I read Joan Didion's collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem . They were written in the 1960's and were a comment on the tearing, shifting, changing society of that time. The title of the main essay comes from a poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming , and it is an allegory of the enormous change in society after World War I. The old is gone, a strange, new, menacing future is arriving. The first stanza goes: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. In Spain today the centre is beginning to fail. Increasingly, people are becoming polarized. Either they are ranting against the "Spanish oppressor...

Yesterday was the decisive day. It was the day Catalunya held a referendum on independence. The referendum had been declared null and illegal by the central government in Madrid, led by the conservative heirs of Franco and his stultifying regime. They declared it illegal because in the Constitution of 1978 Spain is said to be "indissoluble," therefore, no region can declare independence legally. As if a declaration of independence is ever legal and welcome by the ruling government of any nation. Scotland was allowed to hold a referendum because it was clear to Parliament in London that the majority of voters would vote against it. In Catalunya earlier this year, it was clear that most residents were fine with being Spanish. If the referendum had been allowed to go on with little fanfare, the NO vote would have won, this would have gone away, and cool heads prevailed. But, the ruling PP (Partido Popular), with the inimitable Mariano Rajoy at its head as the Prime Minister ...

There is an immense political hullabaloo going on this month in Spain. The central government, run by the conservatives, is butting heads with the Govern, the regional government of Catalunya. The knocks are becoming more serious as the month progresses and October 1st nears. I fear that one of those knocks might leave one, the other, or both unconscious. For some time, the parties that promote Catalan independence have been gaining ascendancy in the autonomous region. Catalunya has always felt itself to be separate, and merely allied to the central government of Spain. It was independent once upon a time, though some may dispute that. From the tenth century until the twelfth, the counties that made up the Spanish March once established by Charlemagne owed allegiance to no king. The counties were loosely allied under the Count of Barcelona, who was the feudal lord until his marriage with the daughter of the King of Aragon in 1137. From then on, the feudal lord was the King of Aragon,...

Tomorrow (today, rather, as it's after midnight already) there are regional elections in Catalunya. The party in power at the moment, as well as some other independent-minded Catalan political parties, are taking these elections as a sign of whether or not the regional population wants independence. If the ruling nationalist party and its allies win a majority of seats in the Catalan parliament, within eighteen months a plan for independence will have been implemented. Could Spain be falling apart again? Catalunya has always been slightly different from other Spanish regions and ancient kingdoms. It was liberated from the Moors by the French, and formed into different counties, that owed allegiance to the French kings. (You don't bite the hand that liberates you.) In the tenth century, however, the French kingdom became debilitated and the Count of Barcelona did not renew allegiance with the first king of the Capet dynasty. Catalunya became a collection of counties with the C...