Eusko Flickr: Getaria

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Eusko Flickr: Ikurriña

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Winds of Freedom in Catalunya

It started in the tiny town of Arenys de Munt, know its all over 100 towns across Catalunya. Madrid spends millions of euros each year making sure that the main stream media portrays the political conflicts in Catalunya, Nabarra and Galiza as something of no consequence when in reality Spain fails to comply with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that demands self determination for all nations that endure colonial occupation.

So you can imagine just how angry Spaniard must be to see that the international community is learning about the call for independence in Catalunya. Here you have one example, an article published at Bloomberg:

Catalan Mayors Plan Independence Vote in Challenge to Zapatero

Emma Ross-Thomas

Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- More than 100 towns in Catalonia voted to hold referendums proposing independence from Spain, an attempt to press national leaders to heed their views.

The 117 unofficial referendums will take place on Dec. 12, Feb. 28 and April 25, Jordi Fabrega, spokesman of the Decidim.cat initiative said in a telephone interview after a meeting of around 100 mayors and municipal representatives near Barcelona on Oct. 3. The movement includes representatives from all political parties except the People’s Party, the biggest national opposition group, he said.

“As the constitution prohibits it, we decided to do it ourselves in a very democratic way,” Fabrega said. Private entities will organize the voting to avoid legal problems for the town halls, which are not allowed to hold referendums. “There’s no stopping us now.”

The polls, which have no legal weight, are an attempt to exert pressure on the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to allow Catalans to decide whether they want to remain part of Spain. They will follow a similar poll in the village of Arenys de Munt on Sept. 13, where 96 percent favored independence. Described by the government as illegal and unconstitutional, the referendums may also stir unease in the capitals of other European countries such as the U.K., France and Belgium where separatists are pushing for more autonomy.

“It may cause a frisson of concern if they seem to give others what would be perceived to be false hope,” said Hugo Brady, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think-tank.

Autonomous Regions

Spain’s 1978 constitution ended an almost 40-year dictatorship and established a system of autonomous regions with varying degrees of self-government, including Catalonia and the Basque Country, both of which have their own police and use co- official languages. Rather then defuse nationalism, the return to democracy and entry into the European Union fueled tensions. The Basque terror group ETA has killed more than 800 people in its campaign for independence.

Catalonia’s economy is the biggest in Spain, accounting for almost 20 percent of gross domestic product. Its capital, Barcelona, is home to Spain’s largest gas company, Gas Natural SDG SA and third-largest lender by assets, La Caixa.

Joan Costa i Font, a lecturer in European social policy at the London School of Economics, said the referendums were a “laboratory experiment to test the central state reaction,” and a “first step towards a large-scale referendum backed by the Catalan parliament.”

Independence Favored

More than half of Catalans favor some kind of break with the central government, according to a poll in July by the regional government. Nineteen percent backed outright independence with another 32 percent saying it should be a state within a federal Spain, the poll said.

The regional government is a coalition including Socialists and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, a republican party which favors independence from Spain and counts Welsh, Corsican, Flemish, and Scottish nationalists among its allies in the European Parliament.

The Scottish administration, led by the Scottish National Party, intends to hold a referendum on independence for 2010, which First Minister Alex Salmond said Sept. 23 may include an option allowing voters to opt for greater autonomy rather than full independence from the U.K.

We want to remind Emma Ross-Thomas that Catalunya, Nabarra and Galiza are not mere "regions", they are nations.

Oh, and maybe she could venture telling us how many Basques have been murdered since the XII century when Castile started the invasion and colonization of Nabarra (the Basque Country).

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Eusko Flickr: Urbasa Zuhaitz

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Eusko Flickr: Muskilda

MUSKILDA
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Eusko Flickr: Euskadi

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Eusko Flickr: Zarautz

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Eusko Flickr: Untitled

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The "Black Hole"

You are not going to read about this note in the main stream media for one simple reason, the Spanish state enjoys the benefits of being considered one of the darlings on the eye of the news industry moguls. So lets get to it.

Amnesty International has issued yet another statement demanding for Madrid to stop with the incommunicado regime against alleged "suspects of terrorism", a label that pretty much applies to any Basque working in behalf of the cultural, linguistic and social identity of Euskal Herria, let alone in behalf of the right to self determination.

"They disappear as swallowed by a black hole". Amnesty International can not be more specific when it comes to referring about the detainees who receive the incommunicado regime while they remain in police facilities to be interrogated. They are also quite firm when they demand from the Spanish Parliament to void a law that "violates the rights of individuals to their freedom" and that fails to comply "with a total of seven pacts, agreements and international laws that guarantee the rights of the detainees".

The human rights NGO released to the public yesterday an inform in which it portraus the incommunicado regime as a common practice: the police requests it by default and by default is conceded by the judges, judges who had little or no interest with what goes on during detentions and interrogations at police facilities.

From then on, the detainee is not only deprived of his own defense lawyer, but soon the detainee realizes that the one assigned by court has very limited duties; its not allowed in certain "casual" interrogations (despite the fact that the content is later used in formal accusations) and never allowed to talk in private with the defendant who is supposed to be representing. The detainee can neither request a medic that he trusts, and any medical evaluation is conducted in the presence of police officers, with the degree of intimidation involved. More so, independent inquiries have shown that the majority of those "medical evaluations" do not comply with, by far, the international standards and protocols in the subject.

The rigorous inform by AI highlights the complex structure developed in the Spanish state throughout the years to make the incommunicado regime into a fool-proof system that bestows with complete freedom of action to the police officers conducting the interrogations, a system that also guarantees complete impunity. A "black hole" to swallow each and very single one of the violations to the rights of the detainees, defenseless before an all too powerful state.

Here you have a video released along the inform entitled "Spain: out of the shadows":

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Trapped in the Past

Scotland and Catalunya are two European nations with a strong sense of identity. Both have very long historic legacy. Their respective populations are very similar. And they share one more trait, their respective societies are not settling down for with the info we just enunciated, they want more, they want for their nations to achieve statehood, just like the English and the Spanish states. Then again, that's when they become really different from each other: while London seems to see as democratic "fair play" the possibility that the Scots make an statement regarding their independence in a referendum set for 2010, when it comes to Spain it takes just a consult that involves no more than 7,000 people for all the red lights to go off, something that includes judiciary vetoes and the Phalanx's street violence.

Yes, Madrid has real reasons to worry about. "El País" reminded its readers just yesterday that the polls in the Generalitat showed an increase of six points for those who support independence since 2005. And "La Vanguadia" stated that the street polls show that the support for independence could easily reach 40% if was actually an option on election day. More so, the pro-independence Catalans gathered yesterday in Arenys de Munt constantly shouted in support of Euskal Herria, where the polls throughout the last few years locate the support for independence above 30%, despite the frustrating fact that such option is not something that will be allowed any time soon.

To the self-determination exercise in Arenys the Spanish state answers by dispatching the Phalanx, a political party that has not been outlawed as opposed to those within the abertzale left (Batasuna, ANV, EHAK, D3M), and with a judicial ban directly inherited from the "Spain one, great and free". We have the very same recipes used almost a century ago on plain sight. A period in which the Spanish state has not only been unable to eliminate the pro-independence camp but has also been unable to offer any democratic alternatives.

Madrid is running out of time. The referendum in Arenys de Munt is undeniable proof that the pro-independence Catalans are more that ready to make Catalunya happen, and perhaps quite soon Euskal Herria too.

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