This is a response to an opinion piece by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez published in the Irish Examiner: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/catalan-separatism-is-a-challenge-for-europe-962357.html
Pedro Sánchez says Europe is freedom. Spain is certainly not that. Not for Catalan political prisoners: political leaders, civil society leaders and activists. Not for political exiles: political leaders, activists and rappers. As for Europe, three Catalan MEPs have not been allowed to take up their seats in the European Parliament, leaving over 2.2 million European voters disenfranchised.
Pedro Sánchez says he cannot accept the unilateral breach of Spain’s integrity. But Pedro Sánchez, like Mariano Rajoy before him, can ignore the 80% of Catalan citizens who wish to vote on their political future in a referendum.
Pedro Sánchez says he rejects nationalistic ideologies and extremism. Using State security forces to intimidate and beat up voters and protesters in the name of Spanish unity is extreme nationalism. Holding political opponents in arbitrary detention (see the two corresponding opinions issued by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention) in the name of Spanish unity is extreme nationalism. Subjecting political opponents to a show trial and handing down draconian sentences in the name of Spanish unity is extreme nationalism. Closing down websites and censoring artists in the name of Spanish unity is extreme nationalism. Pedro Sánchez does not reject nationalist ideologies and extremism but rather he embraces them, when they are Spanish.
Pedro Sánchez says the majority of Catalans are against independence. He cannot know this because he refuses to sanction a referendum. Catalonia has had pro-independence majority governments for the last several years. That is what Catalans have said at the ballot box. There are also many Catalans who are against independence but in favour of voting on the issue. Pedro Sánchez silences them. That is undemocratic.
Pedro Sánchez says 90.5% of Catalans backed the Spanish Constitution in 1978. Pedro Sánchez does not explain what the alternative was for a people oppressed by 40 years of dictatorship. Catalans were not offered a range of options. It was a case of “take it or leave it”. And leaving it meant what? More Francoism? Franco’s Bourbon successors were included in the Spanish Constitution package. Today, over 75% of Catalans reject the monarchy and would prefer to live in a republic. Can Pedro Sánchez really beat them with the stick of what the Catalan population voted for over 41 years ago? Not if he is a democrat.
Pedro Sánchez boasts about the levels of regional governance in Spain. The fact is that any law of substance passed by the Catalan parliament (gender equality, climate change, energy poverty — i.e. helping people who are struggling to pay Spain’s high energy costs) is immediately appealed by Spain before the Constitutional Court and struck down. The Statute of Catalonia is not even a shadow of the document approved by the Catalan and Spanish parliaments and ratified by citizens in a referendum. Following an appeal by Mariano Rajoy’s PP before the Constitutional Court, it was watered down to such an extent that it is simply not the document that Catalans voted for. Pedro Sánchez has announced his intention this very week to intervene in the Catalan education system, with the introduction of a subject aimed at making Catalan children Spanish patriots. He has also pledged to intervene in Catalan public media.
Pedro Sánchez says that Catalan leaders held an illegal referendum in 2017. Catalan society held a referendum in 2017. A referendum organised from the ground up, involving millions of citizens. What he does not say is that holding an illegal referendum is not a crime in Spain. It was decriminalised by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s previous socialist PM, in 2005. The October 2017 referendum was not a crime, according to the Spanish criminal code, yet draconian punishments have been handed down to nine leaders. This week Pedro Sánchez also announced his intention to once again criminalise the holding of an illegal referendum, implicitly acknowledging that the actions of October 2017 did not constitute a crime.
Pedro Sánchez accuses the independence movement of propagating fake news. This claim is completely unfounded, which is why he gives no examples. Fake news is to deny the brutal State violence of 1 October 2017, which the whole world saw. Spain’s government at the time said many of those images were fake. This claim was patently untrue. For his part, Pedro Sánchez withdrew a request for Spain’s deputy PM Soraya Saénz de Santamaría to appear before parliament to answer questions on the State violence of that day. His government later awarded medals to all the outgoing members of the PP government and, in October 2018, appointed Saénz de Santamaría as member of the Council of State, the supreme consultative body for the Spanish Government.
Pedro Sánchez says his government puts the expansion of rights and liberties foremost. But Pedro Sánchez has failed to deliver his oft-repeated promise to repeal Spain’s chilling Gag Law, which he said was tailor-made to address Mariano Rajoy’s fears. Instead, he has continued to restrict rights and liberties. Only this week, his government passed a decree whereby it can switch off the internet in “exceptional circumstances” (national security, public safety issues, etc.). Who will be the arbiter of such circumstances? Pedro Sánchez? This is authoritarianism.
Pedro Sánchez accuses the Catalan president, Quim Torra, who represents the pro-independence majority government voted for by Catalan citizens, of causing pain and damage to peaceful coexistence in Catalonia with his views. Why? Because they are not Pedro Sánchez’s views? Quim Torra wants all Catalans to have their say on their political future. Pedro Sánchez does not. He thinks that Catalans in favour of independence do not deserve to be listened to. He does not know what the majority view is in Catalonia; there is only one way to settle that matter.
Pedro Sánchez says that the Spanish judiciary is independent but this very week Pedro Sánchez made an electoral pledge to bring Carles Puigdemont back from Belgium to Spain, a decision that corresponds exclusively to a Belgian court. When asked how he planned to deliver this promise, Pedro Sánchez said that the Spanish Office of the State Attorney depended on his government, thus implying that he and his government could influence judicial decisions. His deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, has publicly stated that if the Belgian authorities do not extradite Carles Puigdemont to Spain, there will be political consequences. Is this the rule of law that Pedro Sánchez is referring to?
Pedro Sánchez says that some people believe the sentences handed down to Catalan political and civil society leaders were not harsh enough. In Spain, where hatred against the pro-independence movement has been stoked by the media, aided and abetted by politicians, judges and policemen, this is certainly true. Outside Spain, on the other hand… maybe he should ask around.
Pedro Sánchez accuses Elisenda Paluzie (he doesn’t have the courage to name her), President of the Catalan National Assembly, of stating that violence “may be necessary” for the pro-independence cause in order to receive greater attention. Elisenda Paluzie said no such thing and the accusation is a disgraceful one.
Pedro Sánchez says that “no political ambition can ever justify resorting to violence, much less the normalisation of violence as a political tool.” The Spanish State has resorted to violence in Catalonia and normalised it. We have become used to seeing horrific injuries caused by the impact of rubber and foam bullets (lost eyes and testicles), along with heads cracked open by direct baton blows. This is real violence. Burning a rubbish container is not. Pedro Sánchez has never condemned police violence. He has even visited an injured police office in a Barcelona hospital but refused to visit three patients in the same hospital who had lost eyes to police violence. That is the normalisation of violence as a political tool. That is the dehumanisation of victims. What it is not is “proportion and control”, another of Pedro Sanchez’s laughable claims. “Restraint is our strength” is his Orwellian boast. Make no mistake, Pedro Sánchez: inflicting life-changing injuries on protesters is not one of the duties of the police force; at least, not in a democracy.
Pedro Sánchez calls on Quim Torra to engage in dialogue with the Catalans who do not want independence. Quim Torra has always been ready to talk. He has tried, in vain, to engage in dialogue with Pedro Sánchez several times in the last month. But instead of engaging in dialogue with Quim Torra, Pedro Sánchez has refused to answer his calls, a fact he has boasted about repeatedly and humiliatingly in his election campaign. Is this the attitude of a statesman? Of someone with a real interest in dialogue? When is Pedro Sánchez going to listen to the Catalans who want independence, to those who do not share his political beliefs?
Pedro Sánchez says he will not allow another “extreme nationalist outbreak”. But what we are seeing in Spain is exactly that, and the rise and rise of Vox is part of it. What is undermining Spanish democracy is the extreme Spanish nationalism (right, left and centre) that refuses to listen to those who wish to decide their own future. It is time for Pedro Sánchez to grow up, time for him to sit down and talk. Mariano Rajoy’s fuelling of the Catalan crisis was his political downfall. The Catalan crisis will be Pedro Sánchez’s downfall as well if he insists on following the same course of action.
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