Theatre of cruelty

Every Cata­lan knows we’re in for a rough ride in Oc­to­ber. There’ll be the an­niver­sary of the Oc­to­ber 1 2017 ref­er­en­dum, in which large num­bers of peace­ful vot­ers were punched and bat­tered by Span­ish po­lice es­pe­cially im­ported for the oc­ca­sion; and above all, there will be the sen­tenc­ing of the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, some of whom have been in pre­ven­tive cus­tody for nearly two years, de­spite calls from the UN, AI and HRW to re­lease them. The sen­tences are ex­pected to range be­tween 10 and 12 years, the prin­ci­ple charges being vi­o­lent re­bel­lion and sedi­tion for hav­ing helped or­gan­ise or pro­mote a ref­er­en­dum on in­de­pen­dence (al­though there was no vi­o­lence on any of the pro-indy demon­stra­tions or the ref­er­en­dum day it­self — ex­cept that gen­er­ated by the forces of law and order). This Oc­to­ber, then, we can ex­pect protests and strikes, and so forth. But with their usual flair for am­a­teur the­atrics, the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties have ac­tu­ally suc­ceeded in pro­vok­ing dozens of protests around Cat­alo­nia be­fore Oc­to­ber. They achieved this by ar­rest­ing nine peo­ple in three dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions on Sep­tem­ber 23, no­tably Sabadell. The peo­ple con­cerned be­longed to their local Re­pub­li­can De­fence Com­mit­tees (CDRs, in their Cata­lan acronym). They have been ac­cused of be­long­ing to a ’Cata­lan sep­a­ratist ter­ror­ist group’ and charged with vi­o­lent re­bel­lion and pos­ses­sion of ex­plo­sives.

Be­fore we move on, a word in your ear about the CDRs. They are spon­ta­neously or­gan­ised, non-hi­er­ar­chi­cal, po­lit­i­cally di­verse groups of cit­i­zens who use non-vi­o­lent means to protest against the heavy-handed au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism of the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties in Cat­alo­nia on the one hand, and to de­fend the idea of an in­de­pen­dent Cata­lan re­pub­lic, on the other. Their most rad­i­cal ac­tions have in­volved the block­ing of roads and train lines, but mostly they do things like tying yel­low rib­bons wher­ever they can, spray­ing graf­fiti, or stand­ing on bridges in yel­low hats hold­ing ban­ners. They do not allow their mem­bers to wear masks. Many of them are in mid­dle to old age.

The ar­rests them­selves, per­pe­trated by the Guardia Civil, con­sisted in the knock­ing down of doors of flats that the in­hab­i­tants would have opened had any­one thought of ring­ing the bell. The flats were then ’searched’ (one of them — the footage is on vi­laweb.cat — was left look­ing as if it had been trashed by venge­ful, booze-fu­elled foot­ball hooli­gans whose team had just lost). On the same day, a mys­te­ri­ous video was broad­cast by the Guardia Civil show­ing their masked para­mil­i­taries stalk­ing through an uniden­ti­fied cel­lar aim­ing sub-ma­chine guns from the hip and then dis­cov­er­ing a blue rub­bish bag that con­tained what looked like crushed dog food. Two of the nine de­tainees were re­leased on the same day. De­spite the se­ri­ous­ness of the charges, Spain’s an­titer­ror­ist law was not ap­plied to any of the rest, no ex­plo­sive ma­te­ri­als were lo­cated, and no ’tar­gets’ of any sup­posed ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties have been named (and, of course, no ter­ror­ist at­tacks have taken place). De­spite which, the seven have been held in­com­mu­ni­cado, have been im­pris­oned in Madrid with­out bail, and two of them were in­ter­ro­gated for six solid hours — with­out their own lawyers pre­sent (this is il­le­gal) — until they ad­mit­ted that in cer­tain cir­cum­stances they might re­sort to vi­o­lence (name me any­one who wouldn’t). In a nut­shell: given that the Cata­lan pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment is non-vi­o­lent, this is the umpteenth at­tempt by Madrid to in­vent a nar­ra­tive in which the Cata­lans are com­pa­ra­ble to ETA or worse. A nar­ra­tive, as al­ways, scripted by func­tionar­ies who couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag.

Mean­while, in Barcelona, on Sep­tem­ber 25, con­tain­ers la­belled ’TNT’ and ’Am­monal’ were placed at the doors of the HQs of three pro-in­de­pen­dence par­ties and two pro-in­de­pen­dence civil or­gan­i­sa­tions. The Cata­lan po­lice’s bomb dis­posal ex­perts re­vealed them to be harm­less. But one thing is for sure: if it’s ever dis­cov­ered who placed these un­sub­tle threats, they won’t be barred from see­ing their lawyers, won’t be jailed with­out bail, and won’t be ac­cused of be­long­ing to a ’Span­ish union­ist ter­ror­ist group’.