Diary of a mere mortal in Catalonia
Tuesday, 17th of October, 2017. Just when it seemed that the impasse was breaking; a short pause to allow everyone to take a breather… Shazam! The Spanish government imprisons two of the leaders of the biggest separatist organisations: Omnium Cultural and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez respectively. I wanted to take a break from demonstrating, so much banging pans on the streets, but there’s no way I can. Darth Rajoy is engaged in spreading fear regardless, so there’s nothing else for it than to go back to protesting.
They have been imprisoned for sedition! What?? It makes them sound like Guy Fawkes! The dictionary says that sedition is “a collective and violent uprising against authority, public order or military discipline, less serious than rebellion.” It sounds terrible, right? I’ve seen it in films, but of course what is happening on Catalan streets these days is very far from being “a violent uprising against authority”. It’s rather a “nonviolent resistance against the truncheons of authority.”
It’s said that the facts of the case took place on the 20th of September when the Guardia Civil (Spain’s national police force) entered the Economics Ministry and arrested some officials (who were released one or two days later). On that occasion Omnium and the ANC appealed for a demonstration outside the building to protest the detentions and this is what set the starting gun for police action in Catalonia. Those who have detained the two Jordis are the same ones who beat their breasts when, in Venezuela, opposition leaders were arrested for organising demonstrations. Of course in Venezuela those demonstrations often ended up in deaths, while the victims of the Barcelona protests have been three police cars plastered in fly-posters. What over there was abuse of human rights, here is the triumph of the State of Law.
It seems that we’re living in a back-to-front world. The police beat a defenceless population on the 1st of October (following the orders of very elegant people, of course) and they end up charging the only police officer who didn’t execute repression that day, the head of the Catalan Mossos J.L. Trapero, a modern-day, Catalan Clint Eastwood, with no need for Dirty Harry’s gun.
I never imagined that Catalans, by birth or adoption, by residency or by patience, would end up embodying a nonviolent fight for freedom. The first thing I will do when we’re independent is take a siesta. In the meantime, in the biggest cities they’re already choosing which streets and squares will be renamed in honour of Rajoy, the great architect of the new Catalan Republic.
Those over 50 remember the times of their youth when they ran away from Franco’s police dressed in grey, while today… Wow!!! What a coincidence… While those even older start to stockpile oil, sugar and rice in case of what could happen.
Thank goodness that the big European leaders will rescue us from the Spanish government’s perfidy, such is the case of the Catalan Gaul, Manuel Valls[1] (not to be confused with Asterix); according to him, as long as there are no dead there is not much to worry about.
Well, today we have to demonstrate again, this time to ask for the immediate release of the poor Jordis. I don’t believe (or expect) that they’ll be in prison for long, because otherwise they’ll become the new Saints George, killing the right’s brazen and ugly dragons (we don’t know if the supposedly-left socialists will play the role of the helpless princess, the dragon’s squire or just the rose).
[1] Former French Prime Minister, born in Barcelona.
