Necessary as it is to go after anything which hints of sovereignty in Catalonia, to not be left behind in the most Catalan Spanish election campaign in history, which if you didn't know started at midnight this Halloween, the acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced the approval of a decree by his cabinet to ban the Catalan digital republic, which he said didn't exist. In this way, the PSOE leader launches the persecution of the digital, in other words virtual, republic, as if it were as easy as that which his predecessor Mariano Rajoy achieved: to prevent it with the threat of greater legal and police repression than currently and the approval of article 1551. The digital world, Pedro Sánchez has perhaps not realised, gives the public unstoppable possibilities and which article 155 is useless against, however much they want to con their side, trying to make it seem that they're not even giving the Catalan independence movement room to breath. Catalan minister Jordi Puigneró has put a banana skin in front of Sánchez so that he slides, unstoppably, into ridicule.
And likewise, the Spanish government is penally going after the members of the Bureau of the Catalan Parliament, starting with speaker Roger Torrent, via the Constitutional Court, for allowing the consideration of a resolution which talks about the self-determination and which criticises the monarchy. Baseless and unprovable accusations of terrorism are thrown at Tsunami Democràtic, forcing Microsoft to block its application, and it achieves, for example, that the British broadcaster BBC should indicate that only China and Russia have done the same to force similar suspensions of things they considered contrary to their interests. And there are daily threats of the ten plagues of Egypt every time decisions are taken with respect to Catalonia's profile abroad. A battle which Global Spain has been incapable of even drawing with a multi-million budget.
And the saddest thing is that, for the Spanish parties, Catalonia is merely an electoral battlefield, not to win on 10th November here, but to win there. They've already given up on that in Catalonia, however much they deny it. What Sánchez, Casado, Rivera and Abascal are fighting for bitterly are the votes of Andalusia, Castille-La Mancha, Extremadura, Aragón, Galicia, Valencia, and Castile and León. For that reason, although the campaign will only last a week, they will all be more present than ever in Catalonia, but they won't experience it or touch it, nor will they grant interviews which are always uncomfortable with the Catalan media which doesn't buy the narrative of violence, or believe that the Supreme Court's verdicts had anything just about them and which defend an amnesty and a referendum. Catalonia is, for all of them, simply a television set from which some times they preach, others they insult and others they threaten. And so on, every day.
Translator's notes: 1. Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution was the one used by Mariano Rajoy's government to take direct control over Catalonia in 2017.