WE are grateful to Alfonso Valero and other signatories (Letters, April 27) for responding to our letter published in The National. Although most of the signatories are based in Spanish universities and therefore have complex allegiances, we are nonetheless appalled that our colleagues remain so complacent about, and are willing to dismiss as trivial, the state-sponsored political violence and repression that continues in Catalonia.
Our letter demands accountability for Spain’s violence, a modest demand that merely echoes Amnesty International’s recent statements on the situation.
We agree that Spanish democracy has gone through many dark times since 1978. The 1978 Constitution was drafted in a period of convulsion, where the threats of a return to a military dictatorship were, as the letter by Valero et al reminds us, very real. The 1981 coup, if nothing else, was a reminder of that threat. The current moment, which we described as the darkest since 1978, is precisely such a critical moment for Spanish democracy because it represents a culmination of the dark times they refer to.
We are particularly concerned that the signatories fail to acknowledge that the political strategy of the state has used an unacceptable level of violence – sometimes extreme violence – in its attempt to wipe out a peaceful and democratic movement in Catalonia. The Spanish judiciary and police have revealed their deep political allegiances in the past few months. Here are just a few examples:
One rapper has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, and another faces the same sentence for their anti-monarchy lyrics. A teacher was arrested for “hate crimes against the police” for criticising the Guardia Civil online. Several other teachers are currently facing public persecution after the newspaper El Mundo published their photos and names. Gang-rapists have been acquitted of rape of an 18-year-old woman (one of them a paramilitary police officer, the other a soldier in the Spanish army).
A judge ordered two arrests of ordinary people who had helped organise the referendum and “continued the strategy of Puigdemont’s government”. Those people are accused of the offences of “terrorism” and “rebellion”.
This repression is not only about high-profile establishment political figures, and we are deeply worried about the signs from Catalonia that the repression will now target ordinary, peaceful activists and community organisations. We therefore warn against the complacency that thinks it is normal that “political prisoners exist when people are prosecuted for their ideas.”
The political prisoners we refer to in our letter are not simply prisoners who happen to have been politicians. They have been imprisoned because of their use of a democratic process to express political opposition. Catalan government ministers, politicians and civil society leaders are either in prison or exiled in a European country in 2018 for following the democratic mandate they legitimately won in the ballot boxes in 2015.
It is unprecedented in modern times, but is now the norm, that the Guardia Civil and the Spanish National Police routinely patrol the streets of Catalonia, breaking up protests and confiscating pro-independence materials in public spaces (most notoriously from Barcelona fans at the recent Copa del Rey final). Fascist elements of the right wing have been buoyed by the extremist reaction of Rajoy’s government, and along with the deeply disturbing documented incidents of fascism within some elements of the police, there have been a spate of street attacks by racists and fascists wearing Spanish flags (often the non-constitutional Francoist version) from Valencia to Barcelona.
Our letter is not a letter of support of independence for Catalonia, as Alfonso Valero and colleagues claim, rather it is a letter which opposes the repression, and demands intervention to prevent it. Our call is the same as that made by the Scottish trade union movement at the recent STUC annual congress. While the signatories of our letter respect the right to self-determination, to defend that right is not to defend independence, but rather the right of a people to decide their own future.
Mònica Clua Losada, Texas
David Whyte, Liverpool
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