💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › crimethinc-catalunya-a-week-of-escalation.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:24:36. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Catalunya: A Week of Escalation Author: CrimethInc. Date: October 18, 2019 Language: en Topics: catalan independence, nationalism, Spain, riots Source: Retrieved on 17th June 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2019/10/18/the-catalan-independence-movement-a-new-chapter-of-unrest-chronicling-a-week-of-escalation
Starting Monday, in response to draconian sentences imposed on
politicians who promote Catalan independence, tens of thousands of
people across Catalunya have engaged in sustained rioting and
disruption. Although the majority of the movement remains pacifistic, a
few thousand participants have rejected the leadership of political
parties and organizations, opting for open confrontation with police.
The various mobilizations are still taking place in confluence, however,
making it very difficult for the police to control. Protesters have
reportedly used caltrops, Molotov cocktails, and paint balloons to
disable police riot vans, while keeping individual officers at a
distance with lasers and slingshots and driving away helicopters with
fireworks. In the following report, we review the events of the past
week and explore what is at stake in this struggle.
As anarchists, we have a more robust conception of self-determination
than mere national sovereignty. All governments are based on the
asymmetry of power between ruler and ruled; nationalism is just one of
several means by which rulers seek to turn us against each other so we
don’t unite against them. We consider it instructive that the Catalan
police have worked closely with Spanish national police throughout the
last several years of repression; even if Catalunya gains independence,
we are certain that independent Catalan police and courts will continue
to repress those who fight against capitalism and seek true
self-determination. At the same time, there is a longstanding tradition
of anarchist and anti-state activity in Catalunya, and we are inspired
to see some of this coming to the fore in resistance to the violence of
the Spanish state. It is possible that the latest escalation of conflict
in the streets of Catalunya will be a step towards the radicalization of
the entire movement and the delegitimizing of state solutions.
Let’s look closer to see.
---
In retribution for the 2017 referendum and subsequent declaration of
independence, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced former Catalan vice
president Oriol Junqueras to 13 years in prison; former ministers Jordi
Turull, RaĂĽl Romeva, Dolors Bassa, Joaquim Forn, and Josep Rull were
sentenced to between 10 and 12 years apiece. Former parliament speaker,
Carme Forcadell, received 11 and a half years for sedition. Activists
Jordi SĂ nchez and Jordi Cuixart were sentenced to 9 years each, also for
sedition.
Several independence groups called for demonstrations and blockaded
major roads in Barcelona. Early Monday afternoon, the Tsunami DemocrĂ tic
group called for demonstrators to blockade the Barcelona airport. There
were also blockades on train lines and many highways.
Showing the integrated functioning of all the different subsections of
the state, the Catalan and Spanish police—the Mossos d’Esquadra and
Policia Nacional—worked together to repress the demonstrators. They
brutally attacked a large number of people. While the majority of
demonstrators remained “nonviolent” in response, as they had in 2017,
some built burning barricades and pelted police with bricks, fire
extinguishers, and luggage carts from the rooftops. It took the police
hours of violent attacks to evict the airport. One clash in a parking
deck started around 9 pm and continued until nearly midnight.
Afterwards, thousands of people continued to resist; some erected
burning barricades on the interstate.
On Tuesday, the blockades organized by “Tsunami Democrà tic” continued on
a largely “nonviolent” basis, slowing and in some cases paralyzing rail,
car, and air transit. More protests broke out that night. Goaded by
police violence, more and more people began to fight back, throwing
heavier objects and setting fires in the streets.
The Assemblea Nacional Catalana (“Catalan National Assembly,” ANC) and
various political parties had convened columns to march from across
Catalunya starting Wednesday, taking the highways and thus blocking
them, in order to arrive in Barcelona on Friday for a general strike and
protest. The plan was for this action to be totally pacifist. This was
basically a repetition of their 2017 strategy, in which they organized
demonstrations on October 3, two days after the massive police beatings
that occurred during the referendum on October 1, waiting an extra day
before holding the protest in response to government repression so that
people wouldn’t be reacting immediately to the violence without a chance
to calm down.
Yet they also gave their approval to Tsunami DemocrĂ tic, which had
planned all along to organize flash-mob-style protests immediately
following the verdict. These protests, too, were intended to be
completely nonviolent, but to take a more effective approach—targeting
infrastructure rather than merely symbolic points. Either the organizers
underestimated how many people would show up and stay into the night, or
they overestimated their ability to impose pacifism after the 2017
experience.
Starting Tuesday night, events were clearly out of their hands. In
Catalunya, the extent to which people employ combative and destructive
tactics is generally a useful indicator of the autonomy of a particular
demonstration, even though in and of itself utilizing more
confrontational tactics doesn’t necessary imply a radical agenda. The
parties have always insisted that everything must be peaceful, just as
they have watered down the meaning of “independence,” using
nationalistic discourse to and suppressing the anti-capitalist
objectives that used to characterize the movement.
It’s not easy to summarize the political ideas of people fighting in the
streets on the basis of their conduct, but it seems that the pacifists
remain under the ideological dominance of the parties and “civil
society” organizations like ANC and Omnium, whereas those putting up
barricades appear to be open to a much wider vision of what the enemy is
and the objectives of the actions could be. The former tend to be
middle-class (or aspiring middle-class) and exclusively Catalan
speakers; the latter group is much more diverse, including Spanish
speakers (though still mostly Catalan speakers), immigrants, and others.
When the more confrontational demonstrators express themselves, they
tend to express opposition to the police, “the fascist Spanish state,”
and to mention more economic issues.
We should always challenge the assumption that a movement is about one
thing. A movement is only about one thing where there is an effective
leadership controlling it. Left to themselves, people don’t tend to
reduce their concerns to single issues. Reality is intersectional.
Hats off to the anarchists and other anti-authoritarian activists who
have spent the last two years spreading non-statist, non-nationalist
perspectives and analysis relating to this issue and creating the
autonomous, horizontal spaces that have cropped up in this movement
since 2017, outside the dominance of the political parties and the
Marxist-Lenininsts who dominated the indepe movement before 2013. The
emergence of this autonomous space is the key difference that
distinguishes what is happening today from what happened in 2017—and
we’re seeing its fruits in what is taking place in the streets.
Another major factor in the way that people in Catalunya have behaved
ungovernably this week is that the Spanish state was stupid enough to
imprison the pacifist politicians and “civil society” activists who had
effectively pacified the movement in 2017. The ones who had already
effectively killed this movement, it seemed, until now.
Never underestimate states. Also, never underestimate statist stupidity.
On Wednesday, high school and university students declared a strike,
which continued through Friday. ANC marches and highway blockades set
out from many major cities. In the evening, people engaged in very
serious rioting in Barcelona; substantial rioting took place in all
three other provincial capitals, not to mention smaller cities like
Manresa. Many of the clashes occurred outside the Delegations of the
(Spanish) government or Guardia Civil barracks. There had already been
significant rioting in Lleida and Tarragona on Tuesday night.
Catalan president Quim Torra and ex-president Carles Puigdemont declared
that the rioters were “infiltrators,” but only the immediate followers
of those politicians were stupid enough to believe this. The usual
absurd conspiracy theories spread across social networks about masked
protesters getting paid in envelopes of cash.
In Madrid, a fairly large anti-fascist, pro-Catalan demonstration took
place at the same time as a fascist march against independence. The two
demonstrations clashed and police separated them.
ANC marches continued. Rioting took place again that night in Barcelona
and other three provincial capitals. Fascists marched in favor of
Spanish unity in Barcelona, attacking some protesters in favor of
independence.
Today, the general strike is taking place in Catalunya. A Spanish judge
has ordered that webpages linked to Tsunami DemocratĂc must be shut
down—something similar to China forcing Apple to shut down an app used
by demonstrators in Hong Kong.
The conservative People’s Party (PP) is calling for the application of
the National Security Law—essentially, martial law. Meanwhile, it
appears that a new political consensus may be forming. For a couple
years Spain hasn’t been able to form an effective majority government;
elections took place earlier in the year, but will have to take place
again in November, because disagreements prevented the Socialists from
forming a coalition government with Podemos. The fighting in Catalunya
is driving a wedge between Podemos (which takes a soft approach based in
dialogue, potentially open to a “legitimate” referendum) and Socialists
(who take a hard approach rejecting any possibility of dialogue or
self-determination). This creates the possibility of a coalition
government involving the Socialists and the PP—assuming the PP,
Citizens, and Vox parties don’t get enough votes to comprise the
majority on their own, which they very well might not, as Spain remains
majority left.
The riot cops are exhausted, probably only running on cocaine at this
point. There are videos circulating of riot vans carousing down the
streets with the cops using their sound cannons to shout “Som gent de
pau.” This means “we are people of peace”—it is the slogan of the
independence parties, but the cops mean it in a mocking, provocative
tone. There are cases of the Mossos discipline breaking, of individual
officers being isolated and beaten up, which never happened during the
strikes of 2010 to 2012 or even the week of the eviction of the
anarchist social center Can Vies. Several times, police were forced to
retreat by combatants hurling rocks and even some Molotov cocktails.
Even at the high point of the resistance defending Can Vies, it was rare
to see police retreat; they just had to work really hard to advance, at
which point rioters simply went elsewhere.
A mainstream newspaper reported today that fully half of the police riot
vans have been decommissioned by damages, primarily to tires. It’s
unclear how quickly they can repair them. If they lose their vans, they
will be powerless; there are too many people in the street, using too
much force. The state would have to send in the Guardia Civil or the
military proper to maintain what they call “order.”
The real question is what will happen on Saturday. Today could serve as
a catharsis, ending the unrest; it could be effectively repressed, if
police bring in new resources and tactics; or it could be the day that
the state recognizes that it has lost control and has to esclate
repression. During the riots defending Can Vies, it was after the fourth
day that the state recognized it had lost; on the fifth day, everyone
was exhausted so the march was just a victory lap. But now, with perhaps
double the number of police but several times as many participants,
spread throughout Catalunya, the movement won’t tire as quickly. Though
the pacifists condemn the rioting, they’re still marching and blocking
highways, thereby adding to the difficulty for the state.
The Iberian peninsula has seen conflict between monarchists,
capitalists, fascists, and proponents of state democracy, on one side,
and anarchists and other proponents of liberation since long before the
Spanish Civil War. It’s important to remember that the independence
movement only took center stage in Catalunya after countrywide
anti-capitalist struggle reached an impasse, undermined by many
participants’ erroneous belief that democracy—direct or otherwise—could
bring about the changes they desired.
In 2011, the 15M movement, a forerunner of Occupy, broke out in Spain,
occupying plazas and clashing with police. That was just one chapter in
a phase of struggle arguably peaked on March 29, 2012 with massive riots
during a nationwide general strike. All around the world, this was a
high point of grassroots struggle against the inequalities of capitalism
and the violence of the state.
Yet rather than continuing to invest energy in grassroots direct action
as a means of enacting change, many who had promoted direct democracy in
the plaza occupations shifted to trying to rehabilitate state democracy
via new parties like Podemos. Ultimately, as we chronicled here, the
results were disappointing, serving to pacify the social movements
without achieving their original goals.
In the ensuing vacuum, the independentista movement gained momentum,
proposing a referendum as a way to make Catalunya independent—promising
a state solution to the problems that had originally inspired people to
mobilize against capitalism and government oppression. When Spain
cracked down violently on the referendum, this left anarchists in an
awkward position, wanting to oppose police violence but not to endorse
national independence as the solution to the problems engendered by
capitalism and the state. Of course, it wasn’t just Spanish police
participating in the crackdown—it was also Catalan police. All the
institutions that would supposedly serve the people after independence
were already being used against them, as they surely will continue to be
if Catalunya does at some point become an independent state.
All this shows the problems with nationalism and democracy. We support
people in Catalunya defending themselves from police, courts, and other
institutions of power; this is why the events of this week have been
inspiring. But ultimately self-determination means abolishing these
institutions, not reforming or reinventing them. The question remains
whether the current struggle in Catalunya will radicalize more of the
participants towards anarchist solutions or simply towards more violent
means of pursuing national sovereignty. But those at the forefront of
events will surely have disproportionate influence on the answer to that
question.