Last Wednesday, Spain's royal decree-law number 14/2019, signed by the acting Spanish prime minister and countersigned, as the text shows, by "Felipe R.", came into force. The decree has arisen, according to the explanation on its first page, because "the recent and serious events that have taken place in a part of Spanish territory have highlighted the need to modify the current legislative framework to deal with the situation." That is, legislation is being made based on a specific case (understood as the "situation" in Catalonia) to apply to the whole Spanish state. Ad hoc legislation is, as is known, a perversion of the separation of powers since the executive arm thus acts as a legislature and invades the interpretation which judges must make of a general law. Conclusion: on page one, the separation of powers disappears.
The royal decree assigns to the government, "with exceptional character", "the intervention of electronic communications networks and services in certain exceptional cases that could affect public order, public security and national security." With this move, the Spanish state continues its authoritarian escalation and enters, via the legislative door, into the disturbing club of states which, in the name of "national security", can close down websites and can also treat as terrorism the free exercise of the rights to assembly and protest. Without consulting anyone or passing through any checks, the decree law allows the government to restrict the constitutional rights of citizens.
The publication of this norm has raised alarms among some media and experts, who have denounced the parallels between this type of action by the Spanish government and steps taken by countries such as Turkey, China or Russia which have rather weak democratic foundations. The frustrated attacks on the Democratic Tsunami website and mobile application reinforce these theses.
We know from experience that the classic mechanisms of repression, based on police violence and the generation of fear among the population, have always been met and, above all, overwhelmed by the response of the people. And one doesn't need to be a prophet to guess that now, as repression reaches the new information technologies, these attempts at repression will undoubtedly be overcome by the new organizational methodologies of the people based on new techniques of non-violence.
The Democratic Tsunami application gives ordinary citizens the ability to exercise non-violent and massive civil disobedience in defence of rights and freedoms, and to guarantee the exercise of these rights and freedoms in the face of the government's intention to restrict and limit them. The application should allow people from a particular territory to get in touch with one another in order to gather and combine their wills so they can meet and act in precisely the areas where the repressive legislation seeks to paralyze possible citizen responses.
In addition, this tool is and will be useful in the case of Catalonia, clearly so, and imminently, but it could also be so in Hong Kong, Madrid, Chile, Lebanon or Puerto Rico, wherever the exercising of fundamental rights and freedoms is subject to attempts at restriction and persecution by executive, legislative or judicial powers. Its power derives from its technological strength. And this power and strength are at the service of citizen empowerment.
In the coming days, Democratic Tsunami will make new proposals for mass civil disobedience, until now not put into practice. Catalonia is learning a great deal about what is happening around the world, but this is no barrier to having an aspiration to make contributions arising from the specific repressive context that Spain has provoked. The Democratic Tsunami application has to serve to extend and coordinate struggle and activism with a transformative goal, but it will never be able to replace trust and solidarity among people, since coordination at street level is and will continue to be essential. The technology is at the service of the defence of the public space, from which it is nourished and of which it is the foundation.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that mobile phones are a tool of social control, based on the suspicion that "they know everything about us." With this application, Democratic Tsunami wants to reverse this principle: the mobile phone can also be a liberating and extraordinarily powerful tool. From Democratic Tsunami, with the conviction that true power emerges from an organized populace, people are encouraged to think, reflect, contribute, build. To look ahead. Especially now, when it seems, due to the repressive context, that there is no escape from the State's authoritarian attack.
States in decline always try to believe that they have everything under control, that everything "is tied up and well tied up", that there is no alternative. They do so, however, from the rubble into which they have limited the foundations of democratic systems, reducing them to simple mechanisms of representation that are already dangerously anachronistic. Democracy is not just voting every 4 years (or every 6 months), greater ambition and exigency are needed, the future depends on it as do the opportunities for all.
Democratic Tsunami is a campaign with closely defined objectives and methods. However, what really matters is that the struggle for self-determination and fundamental rights is not subordinate to a brand: those who head the movement are the people. And that cannot be stopped. This is the strength of people. And tomorrow will be a new example of that.