Catalonia erupts in protest against Spanish state repression

Text of a Socialist Party Scotland leaflet

Catalonia has, in the last few days, erupted again in protest against the brutal Spanish state clampdown on democratic rights. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets, blocked motorways and defended themselves from brutal police violence.

This is in reaction to the semi-dictatorship which has been imposed on Catalonia by the PP in government in Madrid. The revolutionary crisis of last October to December – when millions in defiance of terrible state violence voted for independence for Catalonia, took part in general strikes and mass demonstrations – is not over.

The ruling elite in Spain, backed by the European Union, suspended the Catalan parliament, called new elections and then lost them in December when pro-independence parties won a majority.

This new round of Francoist repression must be met with a general strike and mass mobilisations to win the Catalan republic that would, if based on socialist policies, end repression, poverty and the social and economic crisis.

Repression

The reactivation of the European Arrest Warrant for Carlos Puigdemont, the former Catalan president, led to his detention by the police in Germany. The former vice president of Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras, is still in ‘preventative’ prison for the ‘crime’ of ‘rebellion.’

The pro-independence parties, who won the December 2017 elections, put forward a new candidate for president, Jordi Sánchez – a leader of the civil independence movement. He was also imprisoned but lawyers argued he should be able to be a candidate.

Last week a Spanish judge refused to allow Jordi Sánchez to participate and sent another five elected deputies to prison, without bail, on charges of rebellion – which carries a possible sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

Other deputies have gone into exile. The former Catalan education minister, Clara Ponsati, who is currently working as a professor at St Andrews University, is also facing extradition from Scotland to Spain for trial.

The Spanish State, through the offices of a loyal PP judge, is rejecting any candidate they do not find acceptable.

The PP and the right wing party Ciudadanos are in effect trying to overturn the December 2017 Catalan elections using methods of fascism and the rigged 1978 constitution.

People are being charged for ‘promoting hate’ and ‘rebellion’ when in reality they are exercising their right to free association and speech. The same rights to organise, free speech and right to strike could be taken away in the rest of the Spanish State if these attacks on basic democratic rights are not defended now.

The parliamentary manoeuvres have reached a dead end. The Spanish State is prepared to suspend democracy itself to maintain the “unity” of Spain. It is clear now it is impossible to negotiate with a political class who answer the democratic demands of the Catalan people with more repression.

Large demonstrations in Catalonia against the incarceration of elected representatives have been charged by the police. Democratic rights were won in the whole of the Spanish State on the streets in struggle against the fascist Franco regime by the working class. Today, they can only be defended on the streets with mass mobilisations.

SNP sit on their hands

Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government have said they oppose the attempts to extradite Clara Ponsati under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) scheme. However, at the same time, they also say “our justice system is legally obliged to follow due process in the determination of extradition requests and “government ministers cannot intervene.”

This scandalous position is rooted in their support for the anti-democratic bosses’ EU. They have shockingly only expressed “regret” that a European Arrest Warrant has been used to try to ensnare Clara Ponsati.

They should instead:

• Refuse to recognise the EAW and demand its rescinding and the dropping of all charges against Catalan representatives
• Call for the release of all the political prisoners from jail
• Condemn the PP government’s use of Article 155, that allows for the complete denial of self-determination for the people of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia.
• Demand the ending of the use of the EAW to criminalise and arrest political activists
• Offer Clara Ponsati political asylum in Scotland

Many of the European Union’s statutes and treaties are inherently anti-working class and exist to promote the interests of the ruling elite and big business.

The EU establishment backed the PP government and Rajoy to the hilt last year in its repression against Catalonia and are doing so again. That’s why we oppose the EU and fight instead for a socialist Europe.

For a socialist republic

Revolutionary Marxists support the struggle for a Catalan Republic but from a totally different class standpoint to the pro-capitalist political leaders in Catalonia.

We defend a Republic of the people, the workers and youth which ends with the social injustices and opens the way for socialist transformation in Catalonia, breaking with the power of the political and economic oligarchy which has ruled for decades.

The events in Catalonia have tested all so-called Left organisations, provoking bitter debates crises and even splits. Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE, the Catalan PSC, the bureaucratic leaders of the trade unions CCOO and UGT have been dragged behind Rajoy supporting article 155.

The leaders of CCOO and UGT in Catalonia, who were forced from below to support the general strike on 3 October 2017, opposed the general strike of 8 November and are using all sorts of excuses to not fight against article 155.  

By dismissing the struggle of the Catalan people against national oppression and for the Republic the leaderships of PSOE, CCOO and UGT have widened the abyss separating them from the more advanced sections of the working class and the vast majority of youth and the impoverished middle classes.

Their conservatism and material interests pushes them to merge with the capitalist state, convinced that their destiny is linked to the stability of the system.

At the same time, forces that call themselves Republican and transformative like Podemos and Izquierda Unida, instead of defending the legitimacy of the referendum, explaining to the workers of the rest of the Spanish state what is at stake and organising in the streets against repression, have defended the strategy of a “legal and guaranteed referendum” agreed with the same state and parties who viciously repress the movement.  

Esquerra Revolucionaria (CWI in Catalonia) calls for the defeat of the parties who support the repression of the Catalan people and for CUP, Podemos, En Comu, Som Alternativa etc, to establish a united front of the Left in struggle against the regime of 1978.

A united front based on the organisation and extension of the Committees in Defence of the Republic (CDR) to organise a generalised, continuous and powerful movement on the streets until we achieve a workers’ republic of Catalonia.