strangest things

Two uniquely un­usual events that took place in Spain and Cat­alo­nia just a few weeks ago raised not a squeak out of the Eng­lish lan­guage media. No sur­prises there. Event One took place on the last day of Feb­ru­ary. Two for­mer min­is­ters of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment, Clara Pon­satí and Toni Comín, plus the for­mer pres­i­dent of the same, Car­les Puigde­mont - all of them cashiered by Madrid in 2017 - were able to re­turn to Cat­alo­nia for the first time in over two years, thanks to the im­mu­nity re­cently con­ferred on them by the Eu­ro­pean par­lia­ment. But they were only able to make it as far as Per­pig­nan (Per­pinyà, in Cata­lan) the cap­i­tal of that slither of Cat­alo­nia on the Gal­lic side of the Pyre­nees which Philip IV of Castile and III of Aragon and Por­tu­gal ceded to France in 1659. If any of the three had crossed the bor­der into the state whose name is stamped on their pass­ports, they would have been ar­rested im­me­di­ately. Their first joint po­lit­i­cal rally was in­tro­duced by the North Cata­lan writer Joan-Lluís Lluís, and watched by be­tween one and two hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple - de­pend­ing on whether you be­lieve the or­gan­is­ers or the local Pre­fec­ture - who had flooded into Per­pig­nan (pop­u­la­tion 120,000) from south of the bor­der by train, bus, car and car­a­van. So here was the re­mark­able spec­ta­cle of a legally elected but de­fen­es­trated gov­ern­ment (the other part is also in exile or in jail) being re­ceived with all the ho­n­ours by the Mayor of Per­pig­nan and then tak­ing part in the biggest po­lit­i­cal rally ever held in that city, whereas over the bor­der Span­ish union­ist par­ties (and not a few judges and po­lice­men) were fum­ing at their in­abil­ity to have pre­vented this snook cocked at them from within spit­ting dis­tance of Spain. How­ever, the Span­ish po­lice did make an ef­fort to stop or slow in­com­ing traf­fic at the bor­der: my own jour­ney, which nor­mally would have taken just over an hour, took just over four. And the strict­ness of the French po­lice, who made it im­pos­si­ble to leave until over three hours after the rally, also tried the pa­tience of the pas­sen­gers - but, as­ton­ish­ingly, not that much: even el­derly demon­stra­tors, and there were a lot of them, took these de­lays on the chin; most peo­ple, in­deed, were in a cel­e­bra­tory mood when they fi­nally got off the bus. Or maybe we just all needed a drink.

Event Two took place in Madrid three days later. Laura Borràs, a Cata­lan pro-in­de­pen­dence MP in the Span­ish par­lia­ment, had to get a taxi to the air­port from the par­lia­ment build­ing. But the street was oc­cu­pied by a demon­stra­tion (over wage is­sues) of Span­ish Na­tional Po­lice and Civil Guards, wear­ing Anony­mous masks, bran­dish­ing Span­ish flags and (some of them) lit torches. As soon as they recog­nised Borràs they shouted that she was a ’Cata­lan whore’ or, al­ter­na­tively, a ’daugh­ter of a whore’ (na­tion­al­ity not spec­i­fied). The par­lia­ment’s se­cu­rity de­tail said they didn’t have enough staff to help her, so she and her press chief had to run a five-metre gaunt­let of threats be­fore they could reach a taxi, which the same demon­stra­tors then started hit­ting. Here was an­other re­mark­able spec­ta­cle: a large group of masked-up po­lice­men, shout­ing xeno­pho­bic and sex­ist abuse at an elected MP and her as­sis­tant in the con­text of an or­gan­ised protest.

The demon­stra­tion of tens of thou­sands of pro-in­de­pen­dence Cata­lans in Per­pig­nan was peace­ful. The tiny one by mem­bers of the Span­ish forces of law and order in Madrid was any­thing but. Both events were ex­cep­tional but then again, if you live in or come from Cat­alo­nia, the ex­cep­tion has been the norm for many years now, whether the Eng­lish lan­guage media choose to re­port it or not.