Eyewitness from Catalonia PART 2
Enemy at the gates
Article by Alejandro García, member of the Communist Call and Communist for the Yes, for the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
This weekend in Catalonia momentum continued strongly towards the October 1st referendum, which is unstoppable at this stage, both at the mass popular and institutional levels, despite all the attempts to discredit and destroy it by the Spanish state.
An example of this is the great mobilisation of agricultural workers on Saturday – with long lines of tractors in the cities, such as Lérida. The Sunday Democracy Marathon, which has concentrated thousands of people in the squares of all the cities of the country, or the permanent acts held by students in Barcelona and other universities, such as the distribution of one million ballot papers in the streets.
There are also huge groups of popular agitation who put up posters every night throughout Catalonia, despite having the material seized or activists being identified and harrassed by the police.
A situation, therefore, of permanent and massive struggle that is breaking the repressive rule of the State, which sought to dismiss the referendum and thus avoid October 1st without having to openly confront the Catalan people.
The Spanish regime knows this and is ready to raise the level of attack even further, launching an offensive in the coming days. The Spanish occupation forces are already prepared and as the latest reinforcements arrive: up to 12,000 agents of the Spanish Civil Guard and the National Police will be active from Wednesday 27th of September.
On the other hand, recently the Spanish Government has launched a campaign to take control of the Catalan autonomous police – the Mossos d’Esquadra – to disrupt these troops and prevent them from being a pillar of a free Catalonian republic.
The Mossos ‘ ( Catalonia Police ) own commanders have refused to put themselves at the Spanish service, but it is yet to see the consequences or their role in the new repressive offensive of the Spanish State.
It should be noted that the Spanish chief constable of the Mossos is the Colonel of the Civil Guard, Diego Perez de los Cobos, involved in torture against an ETA militant, the Basque prisoner Kepa Urra, during the 1990s; his brother was president of the Constitutional Court and his father candidate of the ultra-right Fuerza Nueva in the first elections after the Franco regime.
On the other hand, it is possible to emphasise the increase of presence and activity of the extremist Spanish unionism and fascists, they have full co-operation and blatantly fraternise with the forces of Spanish occupation.
Some examples to prove this: last Saturday we seen a concentration of Spanish unionists at the headquarters of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) – the main organisation promoting Catalan independence – that ended with some altercations in the streets of Barcelona. After the Spanish unionists had attacked independence activists and created disruption they then moved to the barracks the Civil Guard in the neighborhood of Gracia, where agents and right-wingers greeted each other with in solidarity for a job well done.
One of the Spanish unionist instigators was a former combatant of the Blue Division, who fought against the Soviet Union in the service of the Nazis. There has also been a fraternisation in the port of Barcelona, where thousands of police sleep on huge ships that the regime has commandeered; a small group led by the Falange Fascists in a campaign called “Socorro Azul” (like the campaign of fascist solidarity during the Spanish Civil War) has tried to seek alternative mooring for the Spanish ships, since the dockers of Barcelona port have denied them food and supplies.
Last but not least, this afternoon in Zaragoza (Aragon, Spain) we seen tense moments when hundreds of Spanish right-wingers have blocked the “We elected Assembly” (Spanish alternative party) with thousands of aldermen and deputies of all the State, as they debated the necessity for a referendum for independence of Aragon region, and sent solidarity to Catalonia.
The police have done absolutely nothing to stop the Spanish unionists and right-wingers, arguing that they had no reinforcements – as they are all in Catalonia.
Thus, this weekend has shown once again that we have a democratic revolution under way against the 78 regime, which maintains a clearly post-Franco political structure, and will not hesitate to use all the repressive tools, including, as we see, the role of Fascism to land in the streets, in alliance with the occupation forces.
Finally, I include last-minute information that affects our dear comrades in Poble Lliure, a revolutionary independence organization, the Spanish occupation forces are accusing four of its militants – its national spokesman, Guillem Fuster, to his national deputy for the CUP Albert Botran, and its activists Toni Casserras and Ferran Dalmau, for terrorism for their part in commemorating of the Catalan revolutionary Julià Babia who died in 1987.
It is clearly part of the regime’s repressive spiral against freedom of expression and against the Catalan independence movement. Before this, they will find us more united than ever against their rotten regime.
Seguimos
