Whilst Mariano Rajoy held his sinister meeting to launch the 'no' campaign in a Barcelona hotel this Friday, two civil servants of the Civil Guard, two employees whose salaries are also paid by the "independentists", that is, the citizens of Catalonia in favour of independence who, just like those who don't want independence, currently contribute their taxes to supporting the Tax Agency of the Kingdom of Spain, two Civil Guard, as I say, dressed in civilian clothes, rang the bell outside the El Nacional newsroom to notify the management and editorial staff of the judge's order that the newspaper cannot publish adverts for the 1st October referendum. And that, if they ignore the order, the people in charge of the newspaper could incur criminal responsibility.
Whilst the two guards were doing their job, we continued doing ours: informing our readers in real time that we had the Civil Guard with us, as El Punt Avui and Vilaweb had just had and Racó Català and Nació Digital were about to have. Next time it could be that the level of de facto suspension of the constitutional guarantees that Mariano Rajoy's Spanish government has started to apply in Catalonia to stop the 1st October referendum, the closest thing to a open state of emergency that has been declared in Spain since the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, is one notch higher still... and that instead of El Nacional you see the symbol of that armed gendarmerie: the royal crown, the sword and the lictor's bundle entwined with an axe, as the new administrator of the site, as has started to happen to the referendum websites run by the Catalan government and pro-independence organisations.
Whilst Mariano Rajoy held his sinister meeting to launch the 'no' campaign in a Barcelona hotel this Friday, escorted by the Defence minister, Dolores de Cospedal, the Health minister, the Catalan Dolors Montserrat, and the staff of the local PP (Popular Party), before an auditorium of old glories, like the minister implicated in Operation Catalonia, Jorge Fernández, and a few dozen senior citizens, the Civil Guard confiscated 100,000 'yes' campaign posters from a printers in Poblenou. After a week touring round from Valls to Sant Feliu de Llobregat via goodness knows where, the long-suffering guards could finally make an offering at the altar of the homeland. Arresting jihadis, it seems, is left to the Mossos Catalan police. And, the same way that not that long ago Spanish prime ministers, including those from PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), exhibited the successes of the fight against ETA's Basque terrorism (an arrested commando, a cache full of weapons and/or "abundant documentation" in the phrasing always used by the Interior ministry's press releases), Rajoy is now showing off the 100,000 posters for the 'yes' campaign confiscated from Catalan president Puigdemont and vice-president Junqueras. Rajoy is applying to "indyref" Catalonia the scheme used by his predecessor José Aznar in the Basque Country at the end of the 90's against ETA and their civilian support. Not for nothing; in the current climate, ballot boxes and voting slips can do substantially more damage than explosives and machine guns.
Whilst Mariano Rajoy held his sinister meeting to launch the 'no' campaign in a Barcelona hotel this Friday where he, shaken, warned the Catalan president and everyone following him to "not force him to do what he doesn't want to do" (in other words, arrest him), the citizens of Catalonia started to realise that the PP government had intervened in the finances of Catalonia. The Spanish prime minister was right this summer when he said that he didn't have to apply article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, giving broad powers over rebellious autonomous communities: too complicated. Unlike Puigdemont, from whom any disconnection law or decree is annulled ipso facto by the Constitutional Court at the request of the PP, Rajoy doesn't have anyone who appeals his unconstitutional acts, like now, the preventative annulling by decree of the financial autonomy of an autonomous community (and without a debate of any kind in the Spanish Congress or any parliamentary chamber; right, Miquel Iceta?)
Rajoy has suspended de facto the rights of expression and meeting of everybody, not just in Catalonia but in the whole of Spain
With the prohibition of the referendum campaign, Rajoy has also de facto suspended the rights of expression and meeting of everybody, not just in Catalonia but in the whole of Spain, as demonstrated by the banning or suspension of pro-referendum events in Madrid, Gijón and Vitoria. I've said "of everybody" and not just "of independence supporters" because if my 'no'-supporting friends and even those against the referendum change their minds, for whatever reason, they'll also be at risk of being incriminated if they accept to help run a polling station or, simply, take part in the vote or go to a meeting like those already suspended by order of the police. It's from here on, when the step is taken, that the police, not just the Civil Guard but all the forces, including the Mossos, have orders to "distinguish" between those for and those against independence. As the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben teaches us, at the heart of "the law", there's always a mechanism of exclusion/inclusion which delimits the state of emergency. It's "outside of the law", in the areas where the law is suspended and, at the same time, included in it. "Don't make me do what I don't want to do."
When they send the Civil Guard to your house, it's difficult to maintain equal separation between journalism, politics and your life
This Saturday I've not been able to find in El País or any "serious" Spanish newspaper an editorial talking about "Rajoy's coup" as they talked two weeks ago about "Puigdemont's coup". But we already know that, in circumstances like these, when they send the Civil Guard to your house and the debate starts to shift from 'yes' or 'no' to independence to 'yes' or 'no' to democracy, it's difficult to maintain equal separation between journalism, politics and life. I talked about this with a couple of friends, independence supporters. I told them that part of the independence movement underestimated not the ability of the Spanish state, that is, the fourth or fifth economy of the Eurozone, to respond, but that of Rajoy. Rajoy has crossed his (suspected) red lines and isn't at all scared by the photo of the Civil Guard taking ballot boxes away on the front cover of The New York Times because, if the referendum goes ahead, Spain and he are screwed.
Rajoy isn't at all scared by the photo of the Civil Guard taking ballot boxes away because, if the referendum goes ahead, Spain and he are screwed
As we were going to say goodbye, in the middle of the street, my friend looked around discreetly that no one was listening and told me, in a whisper, "tonight people will hang posters". In a whisper. And it inevitably made me think that we've gone back 40 years; it inevitably made me relive the ghosts of my parents' and grandparents' time; of that Spain which always expels far away half of itself. That sinister Spain like the meeting Mariano Rajoy held to launch the 'no' campaign in a Barcelona hotel this Friday. As Sartre said, we're condemned to be free. Because of that there will always be those who would prefer to continue being slaves.