Only accepting the visceral opposition of the Spanish left to the independence of Catalonia, and also the absence of political leadership, one might understand, without saying another word, and following the politics of Mariano Rajoy, how Spain is entering a dangerous drift in which collective freedoms that end up being basic in a democracy - the freedom of expression and of demonstration - are being seriously compromised with the sole objective of preventing the referendum of 1st October.
What is happening these days is of enormous gravity and the Spanish democrats should see it loud and clear, since the opposition to the independence of Catalonia cannot be a kind of free bar, where the basic principles underpinning a democracy are unfulfilled. So, the police are confiscating election posters, collecting material of every type from the booths and stands of perfectly legal political parties, cutting the power at the venues where events are convened by political groups so that they can't be held, entering printers and newspaper offices and intimidating the workers, forbidding events not only in Catalonia, but also in Madrid, and are watching out for demonstrations in support of the referendum - and the last example of this was on Friday in Bilbao. And, in the middle of it all, the Spanish prime minister emerges and congratulates the Civil Guard for confiscating posters from a printer. As if they'd arrested a terrorist cell or a group of drug traffickers! And the dozens of people attending start to applaud furiously, as if their lives depended on it. And this is happening by order of the government in the fourth economy of the euro zone, and the fifth of the European Union.
If that was not enough, without any legal basis and simply as a strike of authority, the Spanish Treasury minister, Cristobal Montoro, decides to supplant the Catalan vice president and minister of Economy, and take control of the budget of the Catalan government. And the Spanish politicians, the socialists and the citizens, all keep quiet and remain in a shameful silence! To not defend, to not even defend the Statute of Autonomy, where no article allows for such nonsense. Spain has entered in a dangerous drift of erdoganisation, and without any part of its politicians worrying that this behaviour is pushing aside normal democratic behaviour. To see a state practising a guerrilla war against a democratic process is more difficult to understand than the fact that it has not wanted to sit down and negotiate.
And this is not just said by a part of the Catalan society, this Spanish repression is also already being spoken about in the international media. And that Rajoy is advancing to where he does not want to arrive. And in the meantime, neither the gathering of more than 700 mayors under investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office in the Plaça Sant Jaume - 75% of the Catalan mayors - makes the Spanish government reflect. A government that is confident there will not be a vote on 1st October because of its tactics of repression, and if there is one, it would have generated such fear in Catalan society that the participation will be very low, and it will then serve as a platform to finish off the very diminished Catalan economy.