By
Vicente Serrano
–
October 18, 2019
They can no longer be called “politicians in prison” or “political prisoners.” They are seditious. Period.
The ruling. The legal truth
What is verified and why is the criminal degree reduced? Those who know the law better than me tell me that the sentence includes proven facts where violence and rebellion are a proven reality; however, in the final degree assigned to the crimes it makes a vertiginous leap to define them as sedition.
It
is clear that the sentence for sedition responds to a political, not legal,
need: the unanimity that prevents the Strasbourg Court from finding fault with
it in the future, and, on the other hand, it seemed to pretend to calm the
spirits of secessionism, which evidently it was not going, in any case, to
achieve. Absolution was impossible in a rule of law, and if it had happened it
would not have been able to calm the mood of secessionism anyway. Surely the
acts of violence this week would have been the same, as victory and verification
of their impunity.
It is not the same being seditious than rebellious. The rebellion has always had a positive aura socially, which includes courage and justice. On the other hand, the sedition has very negative connotations. A gift from the Supreme to qualify both the condemned, the escaped and the hordes burning Barcelona.
The political truth
It is time to establish the political truth. It is evident that there was an attempt of coup d’etat, rupture of the Constitution and secession of Catalonia. Obviously there was violence, effectively not enough to achieve the objectives. If that violence had been enough, the condemned and the escaped would never have been tried.
But to establish the political truth it is necessary that politicians have the level, seriousness and courage to act as such. The reality is that most of them take care only of not risking their power positions. Little or nothing can we expect from them.
It will be history and citizens who will establish that truth.
The continuation of sedition and violence.
Barcelona is burning. Over the week of October 14 to 18, herds of raging lunatics have intimidated and violated the coexistence in Barcelona. Someone tried to match it with the facts of the “Tragic Week of Barcelona” of 1909; nothing to compare with: that was the response of the working classes to the obligation of their children to go to the war in Morocco while the bourgeois avoided it through payment of important amounts of money. As I said in my writing about rebellion, it needs a just cause.
Today, Friday, we will relive the entrance of the ‘nationals’ to Barcelona as in January 1939. In orderly columns and blocking the circulation, they will arrive by way of the most important access roads to the city. And the State Security Forces have not prevented it.
Nothing to do with the marches of retirees who have traveled over half of Spain without hindering the traffic to claim for a just cause. Nothing to do with the different media coverage of both marches. The march of the retirees almost ignored – and their cause is a fair one – while that of secessionism magnified and extolled. There is media responsibility and not only in the Catalan media…
Violence is not a matter of infiltrators, it is the soul of sedition. As a friend says, they consider themselves the “fucking chosen people” and think they have bulls for everything; they even think they have reasons for violence.
There is violence in burning containers and street furniture; and why not when a community is blocked in an organized and coordinated way? Is there no violence in that? There is political violence.
When they intimidate the citizens so they don’t go to work, is it a strike or rather a violent intimidation?
The appearance of rebellion only hides totalitarianism. The “march on Barcelona” is closer to Mussolini with its “March on Rome” and the violent demonstrations this week are more like the “Night of BrokenGlass” than the struggles of Gandhi or Martin Luther King.
The weakness of the State.
The blindness of the national political leaders, the inability of the Government of Pedro Sánchez (and Rajoy before, when the illegal referendum of 2017) to anticipate the events that come upon them is disturbing. At this point nobody believes that everything is planned, the facts surpass them. The exercise of power isolates from reality!
It’s time for statesmen, where are they?
The time of politics.
Dialogue? With whom?
To establish a dialogue you have to have an interlocutor who wants to dialogue and in the dialogue all parties must be present. And, above all, the dialogue framework must be established. And that is none other than the Spanish Constitution.
Conclusion: Dialogue is not possible, since the secessionist side does not accept the framework and neither the interlocution of the other majority half of the Catalans, whom it despises. Can the state debase itself to talk on the same level with the secessionists? No. Because they do not represent all Catalans. Because an institutional hierarchy must be maintained.
Can an internal dialogue be established in Catalonia?
Yes, provided that the electoral system is previously reformed and the representation in the Parliament is proportional. Yes, as long as it is accepted that the limit of the dialogue is the Constitution and the Statute. Yes, provided that this dialogue serves to make visible the plural reality of Catalonia. Yes, as long as the unfair laws that nationalism has imposed … linguistic immersion, Aragonés law, obligation of labeling in Catalan, health privatization, etc. could be questioned in full.
Only option: Defeat nationalism. We can only get out of this perfect storm with a decisive and capable Spanish Government, which today it seems we don’t have. Sooner rather than later, we must put the mossos under the direction of the Ministry of Interior – violence is the exclusive patrimony of the rule of law – and begin the process for a new, deeper 155 that eliminates the entire nationalist framework.
sooner rather than later, without rest.
The books, the songs, will return
burned by the murderous hands;
my people will be reborn from its ruins
and the traitors will pay their guilt.
It is essential to recover some competences that ensure the equality of all citizens in the state. Education, Health, Prisons and Justice, at least.
Another Catalonia is possible. Another Catalonia where social and political hegemony is that of the majority of Catalans, not that of nationalism – they are a minority.
NO, not to a dialogue that brings us back to pujolism, that’s what Rajoy wanted and now wants Sanchez.
Bad times for democracy!
Nou Barris, Barcelona. Friday, October 18, 2019
Vicente Serrano
Member of the Board of Directors of the Progressive Citizen Alternative Association.
Author of the essay THE REAL VALUE OF VOTE. Editorial El Viejo Topo. 2016
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