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IPFS News Link • European Union

The Future of the EU at At stake in Catalonia

• https://www.lewrockwell.com

Fascist Franco may have been dead for more than four decades, but Spain is still encumbered with his dictatorial corpse. A new paradigm has been coined right inside the lofty European Union, self-described home/patronizing dispenser of human rights to lesser regions across the planet: "In the name of democracy, refrain from voting, or else." Call it democracy nano-Franco style.

Nano-Franco is Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose heroic shock troops were redeployed from a serious nationwide terrorist alert to hammer with batons and fire rubber bullets not against jihadis but … voters. At least six schools became the terrain of what was correctly called The Battle of Barcelona.

Extreme right-wingers even held a demonstration inside Barcelona. Yet this was not shown on Spanish TV because it contradicted the official Madrid narrative.

The Catalan government beat the fascist goons with two very simple codes – as revealed by La Vanguardia. "I've got the Tupperware. Where do we meet?" was the code on a prepaid mobile phone for people to collect and protect ballot boxes. "I'm the paper traveler" was the code to protect the actual paper ballots. Julian Assange/WikiLeaks had warned about the world's first Internet war as deployed by Madrid to smash the electronic voting system. The counterpunch was – literally – on paper. The US National Security Agency must have learned a few lessons.

So we had techno power combined with cowardly Francoist repression tactics countered by people power, as in parents conducting sit-ins in schools to make sure they were functional on referendum day. Some 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who made it to the polls ended up voting in favor of independence from Spain, according to preliminary results. Catalonia has 5.3 million registered voters.

Roughly 770,000 votes were lost because of raids by Spanish police. Turnout at around 42% may not be high but it's certainly not low. As the day went by, there was a growing feeling, all across Catalonia, all social classes involved, that this was not about independence any more; it was about fighting a new brand of fascism. What's certain is there's a Perfect Storm coming.

No pasarán

The "institutional declaration" of overwhelming mediocrity nano-Franco Rajoy, right after the polls were closed, invited disbelief. The highlight was a mediocre take on Magritte: "Ceci n'est pas un referendum." This referendum never took place. And it could never take place because "Spain is a mature and advanced democracy, friendly and
tolerant". The day's events proved it a lie.

Rajoy said "the great majority of Catalan people did not want to participate in the secessionist script". Another lie. Even before the "non-existent" referendum, between 70% and 80% of Catalans said they wanted to vote, yes or no, after an informed debate about their future.

Crucially, Rajoy extolled the "unwavering support of the EU and the international community". Of course; unelected EU "elites" in Brussels and the main European capitals are absolutely terrorized when EU citizens express themselves.

Yet the top nano-Franco lie was that "democracy prevailed because
the constitution was respected".

Rajoy spent weeks defending his repression of the referendum by invoking "the rule of law such as ours". It's "their" law, indeed. The heart of the matter are Articles 116 and 155 of a retrograde Spanish constitution, the first one describing how states of alarm, exception and siege work in Spain, and the latter applied in "order to compel the [autonomous community] forcibly to meet … obligations, or in order to protect the … general interests."


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