COURTROOM CARNIVAL

Feb­ru­ary is car­ni­val month, the time of year that is all about spec­ta­cle and peo­ple on the streets, a time when it is okay to make a noise and draw at­ten­tion to your­self. So, the ideal month for the trial of Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence lead­ers. You hear the term ’media cir­cus’ a lot, re­fer­ring to the des­per­ate feed­ing frenzy for in­for­ma­tion shown by the press when a big issue is in the news. You can bet we are going to get one of those this month, as Spain’s Supreme Court tries for­mer of­fi­cials and civil lead­ers for their part in the 2017 in­de­pen­dence bid. (Check out our cov­er­age of the trial on pages 18 to 25.)

The trial has been de­scribed in hy­per­bolic terms – the trial of the cen­tury, and so on – and that seems about right. It is a big deal. While I won­der how things ever got this far, I sus­pect the an­swer lies in the spec­tac­u­lar (that word again) mis­han­dling of the whole po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Cat­alo­nia by both sides.

Then again, what’s to won­der at? A show­down in the form of a show trial fits with how things have gone so far. First we had years of hun­dreds of thou­sands flood­ing the streets in Cat­alo­nia dressed up in bright cloth­ing, wav­ing coloured plac­ards, ju­bi­lant at the chance to openly ex­press their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the es­tab­lish­ment, rev­el­ling in a shared ex­pe­ri­ence that al­ways had a car­ni­val at­mos­phere to it. Pol­i­tics can be all about spec­ta­cle and the de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence in the Cata­lan par­lia­ment on Oc­to­ber 27 fol­low­ing the ref­er­en­dum was an­other ex­am­ple, with smiles and hugs and more peo­ple cel­e­brat­ing on the streets. What could go wrong?

One as­pect of car­ni­val is it is sup­posed to be a time when the es­tab­lished order is turned up­side down, when the elites are mocked and the plebs get to run things for a while. No need for cool heads dur­ing the car­ni­val, it is time for so­ci­ety to let its col­lec­tive hair down and throw cau­tion to the wind. But if car­ni­val served a pur­pose in the me­dieval so­ci­eties in which it de­vel­oped, it was as a valve to let off steam. After a year of being bossed around and liv­ing in a house made of mud, this was a time to show the high-ups the mid­dle fin­ger and get away with it. But the catch is that once it’s over you go back to the plough and tug­ging you fore­lock when­ever your bet­ters pass by.

Now we face months of a real-life tele­vised court drama, like the OJ Simp­son trial on steroids. While it’s likely that the image of the Span­ish state will not come out of the whole spec­ta­cle un­scathed, it could not pass up the op­por­tu­nity to make an ex­am­ple of those who defy it. Pub­lic hang­ings used to be as pop­u­lar as foot­ball matches, and just think about ’crim­i­nals’ thrown to the lions in the Colos­seum while the crowds munched on the an­cient equiv­a­lent of hot dogs. These pub­lic spec­ta­cles or­ches­trated by the au­thor­i­ties are worth the risk of falling foul of the media and pub­lic opin­ion be­cause they send the most im­por­tant mes­sage of all from the point of view of the au­thor­i­ties: don’t even think about it or this is how you’ll end up. Now shut up, fin­ish your hot dog, and get back to work .