Perhaps some of you have heard that in Spain there are protests by citizens, professional associations and public organizations against a law that the current provisional government intends to approve to gain the support of other parliamentary groups. Many say that this law would de facto abolish the division of powers in the Kingdom of Spain and would put us at the level of a banana republic where politicians from certain parties can commit whatever crimes they want and trample on the rights of citizens with impunity. Fasten your seatbelts, because this is completely true and I'm going to explain you why...
The story of Pedro Sánchez and Catalan separatism is so long and winding that it would require several articles to explain it in detail, but I will do my best to summarize all the most relevant points here, although feel free to ask me for more details. In simple terms, the following is happening: the current acting Spanish president lost the general elections, but since he came in second place he can repeat his term if he obtains enough support from other political parties present in the Congress of Deputies. To achieve this, he intends to approve an anti-constitutional law that not only grants amnesty to politicians convicted or fleeing from justice abroad, but also completely abolishes judicial independence and grants criminals all available resources so that they can commit crimes again, intention they have already expressed on repeated occasions. In fact, not only will they be given those resources, but they will be forgiven for the titanic debt they incurred due to their abysmal management by taking that money from the rest of the Spanish regions.
The beneficiaries of the amnesty will be the Catalan politicians who called an illegal independence referendum in 2017. The Catalan independence movement (“Procés”) has a decades-long history of media gaslighting and propaganda; But for the sake of space, here I am only going to focus on the events that led to the conviction of its later instigators.
Before beginning I must make it clear that although I am strongly opposed to Catalan nationalism, I consider the existence of independence parties is perfectly legitimate. What is not legitimate is that in order to achieve their objectives, these parties or those of any other ideology commit crimes, especially when there are legal channels to pursue their ultimate objectives. It is also important to say that not all of the Catalan population (not even half) is in favor of independence or even has a nationalist ideology. In fact, many people are disgusted that their political representatives and neighbors march with torches like the Nazis did, or that they make perverted use of the law to try to prevent Spanish from being spoken in schools. That is why a large part of the secessionist media apparatus has also made an effort to exploit the disenchantment and indifference of the population with Spanish politics in general, something undoubtedly shared in other regions that have to suffer the same as them. The success of these disinformation media has been to make the population believe that local politicians are the lesser evil, when in reality they are at the center of their problems... and those of the rest of the nation.
THE SECESSIONIST PROBLEM
After being warned many times that a regional government organizing a binding vote to unilaterally separate from Spain was illegal, Catalan secessionists turned a deaf ear and on October 1, 2017 organized a illegitimate referendum. Illegal voting was carried out in schools, using children and the elderly in meatshields and coordinating with various foreign disinformation media. Unlike most of the innocent people who voted (if we are to believe the irregular census provided, only two million of the five million local population voted), the politicians who organized it knew that they had no serious chance of achieving anything, but they went ahead anyway to force the hand of the State, which could not sit idly by in the face of such a challenge. They avidly sought one thing: photos of martyrs and repression for the international press. The Catalan population, even those who were not in favor of independence or were indifferent to it, were deceived by the local media into believing that a legitimate vote was taking place, after months and years of ideological bombardment.
The situation was so serious that there were even fears of subversion in the regional police (yes, the “oppressed” Catalan Generalitat has its own police force), which went so far as to destroy incriminating documents and confront other police forces. In fact, the central government had vetoed the shipment of new ammunition for months, since said force had tried to buy weapons more suitable for war than for police functions. It was later discovered that the Generalitat even had considered the possibility of obtaining support from Putin by creating a military base in the port of Barcelona. Apart from that, there were serious riots in the region by the most radical elements of the independence movement and all types of sabotage were also carried out. Fortunately, many terrorist acts were stopped before they could take place, but their planning has been amply proven judicially.
At this point it is important to explain several contextual elements that totally refute the secessionist argument that Spain refuses to dialogue peacefully with them:
Before the illegal referendum was consummated, the then-regional president Carles Puigdemont (successor of Artur Mas, who initiated the secessionist process) was invited twice to the house of Spanish sovereignty - the Congress - and on both occasions he abruptly refused, claiming that he did not want to participate in an open debate: he just wanted to make a speech, without a response or question round. Precisely one of the reasons why all this is happening is that many territorial issues in Spain are discussed behind the scenes: the politicians of the large national parties have a long history of granting privileges and concessions to nationalist local governments in exchange for their support in Congress. All this would change if the Senate fulfilled its function as a chamber of territorial representation, that is, a place where the representatives of the various Autonomous Communities of Spain could openly say what they think about themselves and their neighbors... Perhaps this is how the the international press would see once and for all the hatred, classism and nineteenth-century supremacism of the ideologues of the independence movement when they talk about the ideological basis of their projects.
The Spanish Autonomic (territorial) system is imperfect, but it is also much more decentralized than that of many federal states. Our Constitution does not have perpetual articles, and in fact it contemplates legal means to alter it or convene a new constituent process. Following the appropriate channels and with a valid majority, the Spanish monarchy could become a republic and the debate on territorial secession could even be opened. However, the leaders of the independence parties and their staunchest followers opted for unilateralism, fake victimhood, and when all that failed, violence; because as their president has already demonstrated, the mask of the peaceful victim quickly slips when they are offered the possibility of having a public conversation about their ideas and they reject it. All of these crimes were financed with public money, that is, with corruption not only towards their own citizens (which would be serious enough) but also towards the rest of the Spaniards whom they claim to hate so much. In fact the unfortunate slogan “Spain steals from us” could not be more false: Catalonia has long been one of the richest regions in Spain, home to many multinationals, with a vast industrial infrastructure, and the seat of many important cultural events; and despite this, it is proven that it is one of the territories where public funds have been managed the worst and money is wasted the most. Despite this, the ex-president of the Catalan Generalitat Artur Mas (convicted of corruption) invented a story of economic grievance with respect to the rest of Spain to try to counteract the massive mobilizations against him during the economic crisis that began in 2008, and in the process attract to the independence movement to non-nationalist citizens, in many cases “charnegos” (i.e. descendants of emigrants from other regions, especially Andalusians) that Catalan nationalist elites have always treated as subhuman.
But returning to the events that occurred after the illegal vote, the central government chose to apply Article 155 of the Constitution in the most lax and brief way possible, that is, without actually suspending Catalan autonomy when it was legal and appropriate to do so. In my opinion that was a serious mistake. Some "Procés" leaders alleged that they would stay in their positions to resist until the end, deceiving their allies and followers while they fled out of the country, with the intention of internationalizing the conflict and creating problems within the European Union. Precisely this escape precipitated the immediate arrest of those who had stayed behind, so that they would not decide to flee as well after risking the integrity of the people they had deceived.
The trial of those responsible for the "Procés" was long and complex, but so that there were no doubts about the court's proceedings, there was total transparency, it was followed minute by minute by all the media and live by the citizens. According to proven facts, if we examine the penal code clearly the worst crime committed by the Catalan leaders was rebellion. In fact, the conviction for rebellion was what the state attorney's office and the prosecutor's office requested, and according to judicial sources it was also what the Supreme Court judges saw. Except for the flight of Puigdemont, who lost much of his power, the Catalan issue seemed, if not completely resolved, at least contained and on the right track. A conviction for rebellion could later have been used to outlaw pro-independence parties for crimes in a fair way: for their crimes, not for their ideas or desires.
THE ARRIVAL OF SÁNCHEZ
But this is where the man called Pedro Sánchez comes into play. Sánchez is a politician from the PSOE -Spanish Socialist Workers' Party- who had been expelled from the leadership of his party for his dubious democratic conduct, among other things. However, what the old guard of the PSOE did not count on was that part of the party's bases (those responsible for choosing the candidate) had gradually become more and more populist. Sánchez took advantage of this to, in an unexpected (almost Trumpian) turn of events, be re-elected as a socialist candidate against all odds. Once settled in that position, he called a successful motion of no confidence against the government of Spain at the time (marred by cases of corruption in the conservative party) and called a general election.
At that time there was a lot of fear that Sánchez needed the independentists, other nationalists and the communists of Podemos to govern. But Sánchez said that there was nothing to fear because he would not agree to anything with them in any case...
The first thing Sánchez did was change overnight the representative of the State Attorney's Office in the trial of the secessionists. The said body immediately went from requesting a sentence for rebellion to one for sedition, and both it and the Government (in a totally illegal and undemocratic manner) exerted great pressure on the court so that this was finally the sentence, with the most lax punishments possible. It should be said that one of the main differences between rebellion and sedition is the use of violence, and this had been widely proven during the trial. At this moment many people downplayed the issue, despite its seriousness. They believed that it would be a momentary measure to ensure the investiture and calm Catalan politics. But Sánchez obviously did not stop there, because although politicians are generally ambitious liars, Sánchez is willing to transcend all the limits of what is acceptable in broad daylight.
After this attack on the rule of law, the leader of the PSOE and his psychophants said many times that they would NEVER pardon the secessionist leaders... only to be proud of doing just that a few months later, when they needed their votes to stay in power. Not satisfied with this, and seeing that with the 2020 pandemic (during which the government stood out for its incompetence and illegalities) their position was weakened, they decided to give another gift to criminals: they eliminated the crime of Sedition from the Penal Code, and reduced the penalties for embezzlement of public funds; crimes for which the secessionist leaders had been convicted. And they did all this while the secessionists repeated the same thing over and over again: that they did not regret the damage caused and that they would do it again. Not content with this, Sánchez ignored the pressure from the European institutions, which demanded that the various bodies of the judiciary should be chosen entirely by the judges and placed a majority of his supporters on the constitutional court, foreseeing that at some point he would need them.
After all these terrible decisions and many others on issues unrelated to this is when we arrive at the current moment. Sánchez and his supporters, before this year's general elections, repeatedly insisted that they would NEVER grant amnesty to pardoned independence leaders (to erase their crimes) or to those who carried out or planned violent acts in Catalonia, much less to the politicians who had fled abroad to avoid being judged. And now, months later, not only are they going to amnesty them all... but they are going to force the judges to close all related cases, they are going to allow those convicted not to return a single cent of the five million euros they stole (only for the illegal referendum, without counting other things) and they are going to forgive all the debt of that regional administration (the result of decades of bad management) with money from the rest of Spain. In fact, Sánchez has already showered the criminal parties with tons of subsidies, and plans to give them control over strategic infrastructure and the total money collected through taxes in the region... so that they can repeat their coup d'état again, but with a greater chance of success and harm for innocent people. But the worst thing, by far, is that the PSOE has included in the pact document the seccesionist claim that in Spain there was lawfare against the independentists, and that for this reason POLITICAL COMMISSIONS WILL BE CREATED TO CONTROL THE JUDGES; just destroying the Separation of Powers, one of the foundations of democracy.... in fact, the key element to preventing tyranny.
Needless to say, all of this is anti-constitutional in a way so obvious that it hurts the eyes... but do you remember what I said before about the Constitutional Court?
Faced with this, not only have the constitutionalist political parties and more than a million people demonstrated in the streets of the entire nation last Sunday, but also countless civil servant bodies, associations, professional associations, bodies of the judiciary, employers' associations and many more. But Sánchez is not going to give in because the only thing that matters to him is staying in power at whatever price is necessary. He is not going to call elections now because the veil of falsehood has fallen and he would have to admit his intentions during campaign. If nothing changes, he will call elections in four or five years. His plan: seeing the economic storms on the horizon, let the economy collapse and subsidize large percentages of the population with public money to create a captive vote. The ultimate goal: for Spain to become something similar to certain Latin American republics that Sánchez has as a model, “democracies” where everyone with half a brain knows the corruption of the ruling party but fears losing subsidies. And if he is still voted out of power, then his radical allies (not just the Catalan secessionists) will seriously and perhaps fatally destabilize a new government trying to fix what the PSOE has destroyed.
This is the most serious challenge that Spanish democracy has suffered, even more so than the attempted coup d'état of 23-F, at the end of the last century. The situation is so serious that only the perseverance of constitutionalists, international support or a miracle can save us. They say that “the price of Freedom is eternal vigilance”, and it is so true that in Spain it was enough for us to fall asleep for a few moments for democracy to crumble. Perhaps we are already lost, but I hope that my story of what is happening here will help open eyes abroad, to prevent the rise of other maniacs blinded by ambition.
