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Seated at a cafe table shaded by a plane tree in the Passeig de Lluis Companys, an independentist President of the Generalitat of Catalonia who was convicted of rebellion and executed by firing squad at Montjuic Castle in 1940, I was quietly recovering from the alarums and excursions of my very first Catalan insurrection by slaking my thirst with a cool beer from a large glass while perusing the Madrid newspapers and occasionally glancing over at the sumptuous ornate splendour of Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas’ incomparable Arc de Triomf when all of a sudden it dawned on me, as yet another police vehicle wailed by, that a highly handsome building in that very thoroughfare houses the Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya, an institution which is playing a central role in the present constitutional crisis.
In particular, an unfortunately named TSJC judge, Mercedes Armas, who is in charge of proceedings against the present independentist President of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, and his entire administration, for alleged « disobedience », has required Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, who was in charge of the unsuccessful operation aimed at preventing the October 1st independence referendum, to submit a report as soon as possible on the plan which was scheduled for that operation, detailing the tasks entrusted respectively to the Catalan police (Mossos d’Esquadra, who are subject to the authority of the Catalan Government), the Spanish Guardia Civil military police and the Spanish Policía Nacional, and assessing their degree of compliance with it, its effects and its outcome. What this boils down to is that the chief of the Catalan police, mild-mannered Josep Lluis Trapero Álvarez, is perceived to have sabotaged the operation and Madrid wants his head on a plate.
Events have subsequently moved on rapidly, as they do in insurrections, it seems, in so far as the Audiencia Nacional (the Spanish High Court) has now cited Major Trapero as one of the people being investigated for sedition. Shortly after this became known the president of the Catalanist civic body known as the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sanchez, who is also cited on this charge, offered up the interesting opinion that the Spanish state has « definitively gone mad », adding that he might not attend the preliminary hearing to which he has been summoned. Such disobedience would presumably result in further judicial proceedings.
If the Spanish state should be thought of as having gone mad, then what of His Majesty the King? Felipe VI has enraged Catalans by actually turning himself into a mouthpiece of the Spanish Government in a televised address such as our own dear Queen in dear old Blighty would never have made in a million years, and no one would ask her to. Instead of presenting himself as a neutral, understanding and sympathetic paterfamilias, as any responsible and sane constitutional monarch would have done, this Bourbon puppet of a repressive and inflexibly callous regime has seemed to condone its crass and inhuman ineptitude and even compounded it.
What of the Spanish constitution? The foundation law of the present-day Spanish state proclaims inter alia the absolute indivisibility of the sovereignty of the people of Spain, which is taken by the Spanish Government and its Constitutional Court to mean that the people of Catalonia, who consider themselves to be a nation with corresponding rights of self-determination and indeed sovereignty, are not entitled to determine the constitutional future of that territory. Ergo, no referendum on that subject can be legal. Therefore, if the rule of law, on which democracy is based, is to be maintained, democracy in Catalonia must be crushed in view of the direction which it has taken. The Spanish Government offers dialogue with Catalonia « within the law », i.e. within the framework of this elegant constitutional prison, and has rejected constitutional reform which might allow a legal Catalan independence referendum to take place.
What of Catalans in the street? Instead of the madness and deranged unreasonableness which inhabits the mind of the Spanish state and leads it into acts of repressive violence, there is endearingly sweet reason, it seems to me . . . and frustration beyond endurance. We have seen over and over again what Catalans make of demonic Castilian constitutional and indeed judicial rigmarole. They have had enough of being blocked and frustrated by it and so appear to be ready to push it out of the way. Over here in the street someone says, « They say we should enter dialogue with them, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. » Over there someone else says, « They say we should obey the law, but laws should be made for the people, not people for the laws. »
It should be self-evident that in a democracy government requires the assent of the people and that government which does not have the assent of the people but seeks to impose its will on them is not democratic. But who are the people whose assent is required? The state of which Catalans are currently citizens does not define them as the people whose assent is required so far as the constitutional future of their country, Catalonia, is concerned. The people of that country, with about 80% supporting the concept of an agreed independence referendum and opposing the state’s opposition to that, define themselves as a nation, a sovereign people, but the state says they are not allowed to do that. The people reply that, on the contrary, they themselves have allowed themselves to do that. Enter insurrection and sedition, followed by a risible quantity of lawyers.
Further measures which may be taken against this state of affairs by the Spanish Government are unclear and will probably remain so until the unilateral declaration of independence which President Puigdemont has spoke of to the BBC and which the Catalan Parliament now looks as if it may be going to announce to the world on Monday, after all the overseas referendum results have been counted. However, what does seem clear is that at that point Article 155 of the Spanish constitution might well be suspended, removing the devolved authority of the Catalan Parliament and paving the way for fresh elections to a reformed devolved legislature, with large numbers of people removed from office and committed for trial for disobedience and sedition.
If this is democracy in the 21st century as defined by the Kingdom of Spain and approved by the European Union, it should hardly come as a surprise if whatever chance there might have been that Brexit could be reversed is now sunk irretrievably.
As for the Catalans, it is clear that their consciousness of being a nation is a reality which, like all reality, should not be denied, I venture to suggest, and should certainly not be outlawed. For a state to attempt to outlaw an incontrovertible reality is hardly reasonable. It is indeed mad.
« Une nation est une âme, un principe spirituel. Deux choses qui, à vrai dire, n’en font qu’une, constituent cette âme, ce principe spirituel. L’une est dans le passé, l’autre dans le présent. L’une est la possession en commun d’un riche legs de souvenirs ; l’autre est le consentement actuel, le désir de vivre ensemble, la volonté de continuer à faire valoir l’héritage qu’on a reçu indivis. […]
L’homme n’est esclave ni de sa race, ni de sa langue, ni de sa religion, ni du cours des fleuves, ni de la direction des chaînes de montagnes. Une grande agrégation d’hommes, saine d’esprit et chaude de cœur, crée une conscience morale qui s’appelle une nation. »
(Ernest Renan, in a lecture on March 11th 1882 in the Sorbonne)
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