A FEARFUL REGIME

As the say­ing goes “he who has noth­ing to hide, has noth­ing to fear”. The facts show that the Span­ish regime is ter­ri­fied of dis­sent, so it must have a lot to hide. Some ex­am­ples fol­low.

Pablo Hásel, a Cata­lan rap singer, was sent to prison over the lyrics of his songs, con­victed for “of­fences to the crown” and “glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of ter­ror­ism”. He stands to stay in prison for six years! For singing! One of the judges who con­victed Hásel stood as a can­di­date for the fas­cist party Falange Española in the first Span­ish con­sti­tu­tional elec­tions.

In­deed, the con­cept “ter­ror­ism” has been in­cred­i­bly lightly used by Span­ish judges to jus­tify all types of abuses. In 2019, nine young men and women were bru­tally de­tained after being ac­cused of “prepar­ing ter­ror­ist at­tacks”. These are civil pro-in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers with no prior crim­i­nal record, who could face up to 15 years’ jail time with­out hav­ing com­mit­ted a sin­gle vi­o­lent act in their lives. Their ar­rest was or­dered by Supreme Court judge Manuel García-Castellón, who is known for hav­ing re­leased more than 275 of­fi­cials be­long­ing to the con­ser­v­a­tive PP party who had been ac­cused of high-level cor­rup­tion. This judge, who at 71 is well over the legal re­tire­ment age, is also pros­e­cut­ing for­mer Cata­lan pres­i­dent Car­les Puigde­mont for ter­ror­ism. The judge ac­cuses him of or­gan­is­ing some pop­u­lar protests, thus in­con­ceiv­ably equat­ing le­git­i­mate and peace­ful demon­stra­tions with vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ties such as bomb­ing or shoot­ing peo­ple with the aim of killing them.

The panic to change also reaches the very or­gan­i­sa­tion in charge of su­per­vis­ing the in­de­pen­dence of judges and nam­ing high-court judges, the Gen­eral Coun­cil of the Ju­di­ciary (CGPJ), whose man­date ex­pired over five years ago and now re­sists its legally re­quired re­newal.

Con­tra­dict­ing its very mis­sion, the CGPJ has no qualms about in­ter­fer­ing with pol­i­tics. Re­cently, these judges openly and fiercely crit­i­cised the so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to ap­prove an amnesty law, be­fore it even was de­bated in par­lia­ment, de­fin­i­tively drafted and passed.

An­other of many ex­am­ples of the lack of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers is that not long ago the Span­ish pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor lodged a com­plaint against the Pres­i­dent of the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia for hav­ing au­tho­rised a par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and the ques­tion of monar­chy.

The Span­ish monar­chy, ap­pointed by fas­cist dic­ta­tor Fran­cisco Franco, is to­tally free from any sort of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, and is un­der­stand­ably fear­ful at the slight­est hint of change. Re­cently King Fe­lipe VI vis­ited Cat­alo­nia. To­tally peace­ful demon­stra­tors were not al­lowed within 200 me­tres of him, God for­bid he might even see them. I envy re­publics, or even not-so-ter­ri­fied monar­chies such as in the UK, where pro­test­ers can get rel­a­tively near to their king. A pro­tester was even able to throw some eggs at Charles III re­cently and re­ceived only a light pun­ish­ment.

The Span­ish regime is ter­ri­fied enough to in­stall the spy pro­gram Pe­ga­sus on the mo­bile phones of Cata­lan politi­cians, civil ac­tivists and even lawyers, thus en­abling it to mon­i­tor all of their con­ver­sa­tions and deny­ing them of basic human rights when it comes to pri­vacy. It has even used a wire­tap on the tele­phones of a jour­nal­ist, Al­bano Dante and his wife, based on ac­cu­sa­tions of “ter­ror­ism” for his opin­ions on so­cial net­works. And it is also scared enough of the truth to block a par­lia­men­tary in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the ji­hadist at­tack that took place on Barcelona’s Ram­blas in 2017, or­gan­ised by a con­fi­dante of the Span­ish Na­tional In­tel­li­gence Cen­ter (CNI), thus pre­vent­ing rel­a­tives of the nu­mer­ous vic­tims to ever known who was re­ally be­hind those acts.

In short, an end­less list of facts that re­veals a fear­ful regime. The kind of fear that char­ac­terises a group of cor­rupt in­di­vid­u­als and a head of state who was never elected, but hand­picked by a fas­cist dic­ta­tor, mean­ing he lacks true de­mo­c­ra­tic le­git­i­macy.