Spanish views from a small town

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...

This morning, as I was perusing Facebook, I discovered a nugget of history hithereto unknown to me. Much as Catalunya declared independence in 1934, unhappy that the government in Madrid was becoming too conservative, (It only lasted a few hours and ended with the detention and imprisonment of Lluis Companys, regional president, who later fled to France and was eventually handed to Franco by the collaborators. He was then shot.) Galicia also declared independence in 1931. Our problem was the railroad to Zamora, work on which had just been cancelled, and around twelve thousand men sentenced to unemployment.  The Second Republic had recently been proclaimed in April, 1931, with parliamentary elections to follow at the end of June. The new Republic, trying to make do with little money, decided that finishing the railroad line from Zamora to A Coruña was too expensive due to the geography of the area. It cancelled the funding, which it then dedicated to the port of Bilbao, considered...

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...

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...