Some news stories are important for what they say, and some are equally important for what they hide. The case of the Spanish Senate and its opposition to creating an investigating commission over the police violence during the Catalan independence referendum on 1st October has a lot to do with the latter. PP (Popular Party), PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and Ciudadanos (Citizens) joined forces to block the commission that the other political parties want to create, from EAJ (Basque Nationalist Party) and Podemos (We Can) to ERC (Catalan Republican Left) and PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party). It's hard to imagine in any other country that, after a police action seen around the world and results in a thousand people injured to varying degrees, it would be impossible to clarify in a legislative chamber what happened.
Not just that, but those opposed to the proposed commission argue that the intervention was appropriate? Appropriate for what? According to the dictionary, "appropriate" means suitable in specific circumstances. And it would be good to know in what circumstances a thousand people being attended to by the emergency services is appropriate. Because the reality is that we don't have parameters from other parts of the world where this has happened in the queue at a polling station to go vote. The second argument used by PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos is related to the need for decisive policing in defence of the rule of law. Neighbouring countries were scandalised by this supposed defence of the rule of law and democratic quality, absolutely out of place. Because what there was was disproportionate violence, clearly unjustified, and carried out by an operational command which should have been terminated already. The clearest example of the police errors on that day is that the morning's interventions weren't repeated in the afternoon after a change in the agents' orders.
The Senate's choice doesn't bury the last chance to clarify the truth. A court in Barcelona has proceedings open into the issue and it remains to be seen how far that investigation goes in the coming months. And I'm sure that when the Parliament of Catalonia, currently shuttered by the Spanish government, reopens and the Catalan legislative chamber is again the meeting place and debate circle for Catalan politics which is cannot currently be, one of its first decisions will be to create an investigating commission. Those injured on that day deserve it and the two million voters who weathered all types of threats and violence on that historical day deserve it too. Because we all deserve to know the truth of those dramatic hours.