Catalonia’s response to terror shows
it is ready for independence
Luke Stobart
Their dignity in the face of horror –
in the run-up to the referendum – has shown Spain that Catalans deserve to run
their own affairs
Thursday 24 August 2017 15.10 BST Last modified on Thursday
24 August 2017 16.26 BST
Horrific events like the Barcelona and Cambrils terror
attacks now seem horribly familiar in the west (though worse examples are
regular occurrences in the global south). But this time there was one unusual,
and overlooked, factor: the territory that was targeted is the focus of a
national dispute that could lead to secession.
Escalating tensions between the Spanish and Catalan
governments over the latter’s “process” to create an independent republic are
one reason why few people have adopted the national Spanish flag to exhibit
solidarity with the recent victims – halting the pattern popularised in France
after the assaults of 2015-16.
A referendum on independence has been called for 1 October
by the Catalan parliament – fulfilling a pledge made by a majority of Catalan
MPs. Despite Catalan wishes, the referendum will be unilateral; the Spanish
government has vehemently opposed a bilateral vote, and it has also been
prohibited by the courts.
This has caused much resentment: over 70% of Catalans back a
referendum, and giant pro-sovereignty protests have been held for five
successive years. The bitter mood intensified after revelations about the
“dirty war” involving collusion between government, fraud officials and the
media – and the barring from office of a former Catalan president and three
colleagues.
While the roots of Thursday’s attacks lie elsewhere, the
Galician writer Suso de Toro has posed the logical question of whether the time
and location of the events – all occurring in Catalonia – were chosen to “rip
the skin on a graze”. The last major Islamist attacks in Spain coincided with
the 2004 general election that followed protests against Spanish support for
the Iraq war – and were interpreted as having altered the course of that
election.
At the very least, friction over the Catalan vote has shaped
responses to the violence on the Ramblas. The police officers praised for
killing six terrorists (regardless of whether this was required in all cases)
belonged to the Catalan “Mossos”. Madrid had excluded the Mossos from Spanish
and international security bodies – including Europol: something now seen as
irresponsible, and the decision has been reversed.
The central role of the Mossos in the recent crisis has been
received in different ways across Spain. While conservatives complain of
Spanish police being “discriminated” against in investigations, other sources
have applauded what Toro describes as “a state in practice”. Perhaps this
praise is sincere – however grudging. More cynically, it could be calculated to
encourage the Mossos to disobey political command and shut down the October
poll. Spanish rightists have been agitating for this to happen.
There is a further – encouraging – way in which the
grassroots origins of the independence process have surfaced in the past week:
the dominant local responses have eschewed a security-centred reaction of the
kind adopted by the French state, or the US after 9/11. The cries of “I am not
afraid” filling Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya last Friday were incompatible
with the politics of fear fuelling other conflicts in, and related to, the
Muslim world. When a fascist group tried to hold an Islamophobic rally on the
Ramblas they were ejected by a larger gathering of anti-fascists and locals.
Anti-Muslim hate speech on social media has been overwhelmingly in Spanish,
rather than Catalan.
There should be no downplaying of the potential for an
Islamophobic backlash – witness the vicious graffiti daubed on mosques in the
Catalan towns of Montblanc and Ripoll (as well as Granada and Seville). Yet one
factor that could limit it is the liberal atmosphere fostered by an active, and
largely leftwing, movement for independence. The progressive mood also
benefited greatly from the mass indignados occupations of city squares in 2011,
and the surprise victory in Barcelona of a new activist-led coalition in the
2015 municipal elections.
The dignified response of the people of Barcelona to last
week’s terror was witnessed across Spain. This has the potential to will help
to undermine widely held narratives of Catalan speakers as narrow-minded
nationalists. It cannot be ruled out that as a consequence, an authoritarian
state response to the referendum will now be politically more complicated.
However, some national divisions and related social and democratic
questions have resurfaced. Madrid rapidly took steps to reach a new anti-terror
agreement with parties from across Spain, and is attempting to turn Saturday’s
peace march in Barcelona into a march for Spanish “unity” against a “common
enemy” (a territorially limited initiative, bearing in mind that most victims
were non-Spaniards).
Conversely, the effect of protests led by the
pro-independence and anti-capitalist CUP party has been to relegate the Spanish
monarch, King Felipe, and members of the Madrid cabinet from the head of the
demonstration – to be replaced by public sector workers who rushed to help the
victims. A CUP MP noted that the monarch and government have developed strong
economic and personal ties with Gulf states that have funded Isis. “Bravo to
the CUP,” was the reaction of one Spanish leftist, and we could add a “bravo”
to the Catalan people for showing dignity in the face of adversity. Perhaps it
really is time they were given the chance to run their own affairs.
• Luke Stobart lectures in political economy at Birkbeck
College, London. He writes on new politics in Spain, and migration in Catalonia
and Europe. He has participated in the Indignados movement in Barcelona.
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