Opinion

Long-term resident

Matthew tree

Barefaced

Indeed, Madrid is now playing with its own laws like a cat with a mauled mouse. Anything it doesn’t like, it makes illegal by giving what are virtual orders to the courts.

The Oc­to­ber 1st cam­paign of po­lice bru­tal­ity against civil­ians who were pas­sively block­ing ac­cess to polling sta­tions around Cat­alo­nia, in­clud­ing women over 75 and chil­dren under 12 (there were 1.066 peo­ple con­firmed in­jured, in­clud­ing one man who lost an eye and an­other who sur­vived a heart at­tack) first as­ton­ished me, then left me de­pressed. As­ton­ished, be­cause I had never ex­pected such a wave of or­gan­ised sav­agery (we know it was or­gan­ised, be­cause once the im­ages of the beat­ings, kick­ings, rub­ber bul­lets and so on had been railed against by media com­men­ta­tors around the planet, putting Spain in a worse than bad light, in the early af­ter­noon the vi­o­lence ceased as swiftly as a tap being turned off). And de­pressed, be­cause it showed what Madrid - mean­ing the Span­ish po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment - re­ally thinks of Cat­alo­nia: namely that it can be tol­er­ated - de­spite it hav­ing a non-Castil­ian lan­guage and cul­ture, which Madrid grudg­ingly puts up with but never em­braces - as long as it shuts up and pays up (hav­ing as it does the high­est fis­cal deficit of any re­gion in Eu­rope). But if it gets se­ri­ously up­pity, its cit­i­zens will be pum­melled and pounded, its civil so­ci­ety lead­ers will be ar­rested (only two, so far) and the leader of its po­lice force - a Cata­lan na­tional hero, thanks to the ef­fi­ciency with which he dealt with Au­gust’s Ji­hadist at­tacks in Barcelona and Cam­brils - will be ac­cused of sedi­tion. And this is just for starters. The main course, some of which we will have sam­pled by the time this goes to print, will con­sist of mass ar­rests (a well-in­formed lawyer I spoke to reck­ons on a min­i­mum of a thou­sand: 750 pro-ref­er­en­dum May­ors, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment, the di­rec­tors of var­i­ous Cata­lan pro-indy media, more civil lead­ers and a sprin­kling of jour­nal­ists). There is also a strong pos­si­bil­ity that Cata­lan schools will be taken over by Madrid, which has al­ready spo­ken of a ’sin­gle com­mand struc­ture’ to be im­posed on Cat­alo­nia for an in­def­i­nite pe­riod.

If Cata­lan elec­tions are ever held again, it will only be when all the pro-indy par­ties - now in the ma­jor­ity - have been ei­ther fined out of ex­is­tence or il­le­galised. As I write, po­lice he­li­copters are cir­cling in the sky over Barcelona, on the look­out for any­thing re­sem­bling spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tions, which have been banned.

In­deed, Madrid is now play­ing with its own laws like a cat with a mauled mouse. Any­thing it doesn’t like, it makes il­le­gal by giv­ing what are vir­tual or­ders to the courts. Any­thing it deems nec­es­sary to do - such as raid­ing Cata­lan gov­ern­ment of­fices, or using rub­ber bul­lets (banned in Cat­alo­nia), or, in­deed, pulling women along the floor by the hair - it does with­out wor­ry­ing if it’s break­ing the law or not. All of which makes us ut­terly vul­ner­a­ble, un­less we get some sup­port from abroad. And so far, abroad has been as silent as stone. And yet, de­spite every­thing, we’re still lis­ten­ing.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.