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incredifishface:
There is a referendum for independence in Catalonia today. The Spanish police in full riot gear are beating up people trying to prevent them from entering polling stations and seizing urns and ballot papers.
I wanted to explain a little bit where this whole thing is coming from.
The population of Catalonia, a 1000 year old historical nation, currently a region in North-eastern Spain since 1714, when it was defeated in war by the Spanish war of Succession, is called to vote in a referendum today to decide about our future, whether or not to continue belonging to Spain.
Catalonia is a relatively rich, industrialised region, progressive, pro-European, composed mostly of small and medium-sized enterprises. It could have been nurtured as economic powerhouse of Spain, and instead has been financially squeezed and strangled to irrational levels. Catalans have felt uncomfortable in Spain from the first day, for a variety of reasons. Effectively, Catalonia has been treated as an occupied territory and a colony, whose culture and language had to be stamped out, and its inhabitants assimilated, while remaining second class citizens. Spanish politicians of all colors have regularly used Catalans as scapegoats for everything, and nourished Catalanophobia to distract from their own shortcomings again and again.
The Catalan governments have attempted to bring Catalan dissatisfaction to the government in Madrid for years. After much struggle and popular mobilisation, there was an attempt to reform the Catalan autonomic regime 12 years ago, which took huge tact and renunciations from all sides, and was then approved in referendum by the Catalan citizenship. It was then brought before the Constitutional Tribunal by the Popular Party (currently in power in Spain), and there our Estatut d’Autonomia was cut from its most sensitive articles (those concerning language and identity as a nation), and of course economic provisions aimed at improving our finances (Catalonia contributes to Spanish economy over 10% of our revenue every year, meaning it gets sent to the common box and none of it returns in the form of investments, leading to a grievous deficit thwarting our capacity to prosper. 10% or our taxes. That’s twice as much as West Germany contributed towards rebuilding East Germany, and that was only for a limited period of time. Meanwhile, Spanish press and politicians regularly accuse Catalans of lack of solidarity with the poorer regions of Spain, or downright call us thieves.)
The Spanish government have declared this referendum is against the Spanish constitution, and it’s therefore illegal, although it was voted and approved by the majority of the Catalan parliament. The Spanish government has attempted to stop the vote from taking place by any means at their disposal, seizing urns, ballot papers, banning propaganda about the referendum (yes, banning! Bold-faced censorship! They’ve shut down websites, government and private owned, informing about it, breaking into the offices of newspapers, threatening public media…), they’ve charged town mayors, they’ve threatened civil servants with astronomic fines, they’ve arrested and put senior government officials in jail, they’ve broken into the quarters of Catalan political parties without warrants (trying to stir the shit and cause a reaction which would lead to violence, and failing), and they have tried to seize control of the Catalan police (that refused it), breaking their very own Spanish laws.
And then they brought in the Spanish civil guard, a para-military force, relic from the Franco dictatorship days. They have come in such great numbers, they had to lodge them in cruise ships (one of them had Warner Bros characters painted all over it. Tweetie has somehow become a symbol of the Catalans fight for freedom and democracy now.)
Hundreds of Catalans have spent the weekend in the polling stations to prevent the police from shutting them down. Today at 5 am, hundreds turned up to protect them (including me, my little girl, my mum, and many other members of family and friends in their own polling stations.) At about 11 am, we managed to cast our vote. We plan to spend all day there, to protect it, should the police turn up to try and seize the urns. We live in a small village of about 1500 people. There was a queue of hundreds waiting to vote when I left for a break. People are smiling, people took selfies casting the ballot, people applauded those who came out beaming because they had managed to vote.
Meanwhile, in bigger stations across the country, especially in Barcelona and other large cities (like Girona, where the current Catalan president is from) the Spanish police in full riot gear are charging, breaking doors and windows to seize urns and ballot papers, smashing with clubs people who are unarmed and sitting down, and shooting rubber bullets at citizens standing up to them. There are dozens of wounded already. All of that, to stop a fucking democratic referendum.
I am proud to say what we Catalans are doing today will go down in history as a peaceful revolution for democracy and fundamental rights. I am damn proud of my people today. We are standing up to the powers that be and state violence with nothing but ballots and urns and the beautiful stubbornness that defines us.
To this day, the Spanish insist the Catalan population in manipulated by the media and brainwashed by a few politicians, and that it’s all about covering for the supposed corruption scandals of our leaders. (The Spanish political caste across the spectrum sure know a lot about trying to cover for corruption scandals, that’s true.)
Please spread the good news. For now, Catalonia resists, we’re holding up, and the vote is taking place. We’re trending world-wide. Re-tweet and reblog. This is important, and it’s good. Wish us luck. Visca Catalunya lliure!
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