Disappointed but not surprised

I haven't written in a long time again, and also not about politics, because situation is shitty. But wanted to comment on a certain aspect of it. 

First, to say that the two majoritarian "independentist" parties, ERC and Junts, haven't done much at all lately. They've used elections just to get into power, get salaries, and then keep the status quo, making pacts with parties that, in theory, should never agree with them like PSOE/PSC and PP.

These two other Spanish parties have responded by betraying them at any chance too, so it's really really stupid that ERC and Junts still try to pact with them when there's solid proof their word is worthless and they will not fulfil what has been said. Although Junts and ERC are also very very guilty of that. 

So, people are pissed at these two independentist parties. The third big one, CUP, has acted much better in general while not being perfect, but has been added to the group for some reason(even though it never had enough power to act on much), maybe because people, once they distrust their original choice, apply the thought that "the rest are the same" when it's not actually true at all.

So now, there's an undercurrent of thought that these three independentist parties must be punished. And way too many people have decided that they will punish them by not voting at all.

That's the stupidest, STUPIDEST thing I've ever heard. 

For three reasons:

1-The less votes there are in an election, the more votes the right gets (and here I mean PSC/PSOE, PP and VOX. These three parties represent right-wing politics, from moderate on the first case to extreme in the second two ones).

Parties don't give a fuck that people didn't vote as long as they get representation. 

Basically, if there's 100 people able to vote and only 10 people vote, let's say, and they vote 4-PSOE, 3-PP and 3-VOX, these parties will not say "oh, why no more people didn't vote". They will say "oh yes, we won a lot of representation, we're the best!". And they will do whatever the fuck they want. And it will be BAD. 

These parties are the enemy of everything good. Simply put. Independentist or not, you should NEVER let these parties win at anything. If your actions are making their life easier for them, your actions are automatically BAD. 

2-Not voting doesn't give any power to your cause. 

If you want to change things, there's two options, revolution or voting for things that represent you in some way. 

To all these people that don't vote: will you automatically take arms and start a revolt in the streets? No? Then what you're doing is harming your cause. 

Nobody, nationally and internationally, gives a fuck about why you didn't vote. They only care about the people that voted. It's been proven time and time again. There's been lots of elections in the world where for several reasons people didn't vote that much. Nobody has ever commented. The final results were the only ones that counted, and that was taken as "the will of the people". 

I totally agree not voting should be considered as a bad sign. But nobody cares, so not voting will be ignored, and if something it will be considered as a fact that "independentism has lost strength, nobody wants it anymore". So, do with that what you will.

3-Dont vote for the parties that you don't like, but change your vote!

It seems like once there's a party that is yours, it's them or death. If they don't do a good job, lots of people stop voting altogether. A lot of people didn't change their vote from ERC to Junts or CUP or some other combination of this, they just stopped voting altogether. 

This is stupid! You don't like your last vote? Change it!

If people don't vote, less votes means more representation. Let's say that you have 10 people voting in total. 5 vote to ERC and 5 want to punish ERC. If the 5 that want to punish ERC don't vote, ERC gets 100% of the votes, so 100% of representation ->great success! We're on the right path, people love what we do!

Do you want that?

If instead, the 5 people that want to punish ERC vote Escons em blanc, CUP, PACMA, anything really that is not ERC, ERC gets 50% of representation ->they're punished. 

I will concede that there may be not many options available that seem good. But not voting will do NOTHING whatsoever to help you or your cause. 

See what the right-wing parties do.

They never, ever, miss a vote. That should give you a clue. 

...and the results are in

 Let's comment on the results of the elections for a moment here now.

The results are...not bad. Could be better, but well. 

First of all, more than 50% of the total votes went directly to parties that support independence. This is a big deal, because Spanish unionist never got tired of saying that independence supporters were never winning by counting the total votes and not the total representatives, and ignoring that there was a party were the votes could go either way. Now, even without counting that party, it's clear than more than half of the people voted for independence. 

Of course now unionist will say participation was low, at only 53%, compared to the previous 80% which was a record. While participation was lower, it's true, the fact remains that we're in the middle of a pandemic and it wasn't the best moment to vote, we were forced by the Spanish tribunals thinking the results would be "good" for unionism. They were not, so yeah, fuck them, that's a problem they created in the first place. And make no mistake, if they had won, participation would have never been commented as an issue. 

Then, the "winner" party: PSC, with 33 representatives and a bit more votes but barely, than ERC, and they both have the same amount of representatives. Here we can see the lack of democratic culture so often found in Spain: They claim PSC won. And while PSC did get more votes than any other, they got less than 25% of the total votes. This means it's irrelevant which party has more votes, what matters is which parties can work together. And unless ERC betrays all they've said during the campaign, PSC just doesn't have enough support among the other parties to win or rule.  

The independentist parties won, with 74 representatives, out of 135. ERC has 33 representatives, barely had more votes than JxCat, but JxCat has 32 representatives and has conceded, ERC will have the presidency. CUP has managed to get a respectable amount of representatives, 9, and they can condition the government and its actions, which is always good. In summary, it seems like these three forces could rule. However, negotiating may be difficult, since they tend to be very aggressive with each other. 

Ciutadans has crashed beautifully to only 6 representatives. PP is even worse, with 3 representatives. This is amazing news, because these two parties are a bunch of lying fascists. However what's not so good is that VOX has gotten 11 representatives. People are crying about this, and for sure it's bad, but as I keep saying, Ciutadans and PP are also fascist. It just happens that, when your voting base is fascists idiots, they tend to prefer the party that is openly fascist. So, fascism didn't grow, it's still there at the same level as before. And make no mistake, a lot of VOX votes come from rich areas, that's the elites defending the fascist control over Spain. However overall, these extremist parties are doing so much worse than before: Last time they had 40 representatives in total, and this time they have 20.

PDCAT disappeared and has no representation, which I also think it's beautiful. This party privatized a lot of healthcare in Catalunya, voted against protecting the vote of people living outside Spain and are guilty of destroying public education and healthcare, which means they're guilty of plenty of deaths during this pandemic. Their support was inflated, and now that they had to defend themselves with no protection under some other name or cause, the real result has shown nobody wants them anymore.

En Comú Podem (ECP) didn't do very well and has only 8 representatives. As I said, their problem is that they don't get at all Catalunya, they say things like independentism is racist and excludes people, which are not true (apart from some idiots on twitter, and all sides always have a minimum of them, no side is free of that) , and because they don't get how society works here very well, they keep losing votes and support. What is a shame is that PSC voters should vote them instead, they defend much better the people that are voting PSC than what PSC will ever be able to do. Having said that, they insist again and again that PSC is left-wing, when it's not, and they're not considering CUP as another left-wing option, and they keep being quite hypocritical and misunderstanding everything. As long as they make these serious mistakes and they keep some questionable people inside the party, they deserve this too. 

So, the possible combinations are as follows: 

1-ERC+JxCat+CUP: The "easiest" option and more reasonable, with these it's possible to control the parliament and the government. 

2-ERC+JxCat+ECP+CUP: That would be weird, but ERC wanted to "open their hand" to ECP. Problem is ECP keeps repeating JxCat are right-wing extremists and cannot pact with them, but then again this is not true at all, JxCat are center-right at max, and more to the left than PSC actually. 

3-ERC+PSC+ECP: The preferred option for ECP and probably PSC too, ERC has given doubts they could accept this but lately they repeated they would never pact with PSC, so to do that now would be quite damaging to their image. 

4-PSC+ECP+C+PP+VOX: This one is the nightmare situation where the independentist parties would fight enough that they didn't agree to rule, and then ERC didn't vote against this for some reason/allied with this somehow and let this happen. Highly unlikely because it needs an independentist party to betray all their voters and that would be suicidal. This would also be damaging for ECP and PSC, since they would have to ally themselves with VOX, although they have allied themselves with Cs other times and they're also pretty fascists...

Overall, not bad results. Catalunya is moving towards a strong independentist center-left, where the Catalan "right-wing" is actually left from the "leftist" traditional parties in Spain.

Now expect the Spanish tribunals to start bullshitting and creating charges against the independentist politicians, it will happen soon enough...

Elections Once More

I'd like to make a little break from Resident Evil posts to talk again about Catalunya's elections. 

So, as usual, a judge decided that the previous Catalan President was unfit to rule because he put up a sign talking about freeing political prisoners before the Spanish general elections. Because apparently this was giving support to some specific parties and wasn't allowed. The whole thing is ridiculous but that's what happened. 

So, new elections had to be organized to select a new president, earlier than it should have happened and while in the middle of a pandemic, but these judges don't give a crap about that and would be happier if all Catalans just died, so yeah, they did this anyway. They will occur on 14th of February, but with the pandemic every party said to adjourn them till later. But again a judge decided that this was not legal and they had to take place. This is presumably because there's a candidate that the Spanish government is backing that has chances to have good results right now, while it's unclear if he will also have good results later, and Spanish judges are so corrupted that they're happy to oblige with actions that help the unionists and the status quo of Spain, still ruled by Franco's heirs in lots of positions of authority, like the higher tribunals of the Spanish judicial system. 

All quite normal for Spain, really. I think that the tribunals that decided it was ok to vote in a pandemic should be part of the organizers that sit and take the votes of people at the election points, since it's a very safe activity, yes? Of course they won't, but they totally should...

Anyway, people are tired, from the pandemic and from the constant struggle, plus of the fact that traditional parties that were supposed to advance in independence work have not done anything in 3 years. I believe independence is possible but it's clear some of these parties don't believe it anymore or are not willing to do what they say they will do, at least. In this situation a lot of people are afraid to vote or don't know who to vote or want to punish the parties and will not vote. 

This is bad. 

We must always remember that the most right-wing and conservative, because of their nature, will not doubt. They will go to vote thinking the pandemic is a scam. Or they will go to vote just because their leader has asked them to. Or they will go to vote for some other reason, but since right-wing is big about accepting authority without question, they will just go and vote for bastards. So if people that do try to think a bit don't vote, there will be an over-representation of idiots. And this is bad. 

So yes, go to vote. It sucks, it's dangerous, and the parties don't convince you. Doesn't matter, go to vote. Just pick your less bad choice. Or you'll be responsible for all the bad that the really worse parties can do.  

Now, a little summary of the parties involved:

VOX: The far-right wing party, they're openly fascist. Fascists should not be part of elections but in Spain they won and they're allowed. 

PP: The far-right wing traditional party that is not openly fascist but are fascist anyway. Founded by fascists, ruled by the children of fascists after some of them died, and used to steal public money without shame and maintaining status-quo. Again, in a civilized country they wouldn't be allowed to run either.

Ciutadans: Another far-righ wing party, not openly fascist but fascist anyway, although their focus is more on being ultra-neoliberals and fucking with workers as much as possible. Basically PP with a cleaner record in corruption, just because they didn't control much power yet and then it's hard to be corrupted if you don't have any, but would do the same as PP if they could. 

Now, wait a sec, you may say, you cannot accuse everyone, that is not following your ideals, of being fascist! 

Well, of course not. But these three are. Like, really. As I said, the members of these three parties and the founders very often had ties with Franco's old government, by being part of it or being friends with part of it or being relatives. These parties have again and again defended Franco's dictatorship, monuments and legacy, and have been again and again saying it was not that bad during this time and the real problem was the republic before that. And they pact together and rule together every time they can do so, in every region and city hall in Spain where they had enough votes for this. They're fascist, as clear as day, and they're in it together, just fighting to see who's at the top and can control the others and steal the most.

Let's talk about the not-fascists ones:

PSOE: Traditional Spanish party that is center-right. The problem is that they say they're center-left and progressive, and they're not. They're happy with certain authoritarianism, with helping the big companies and fucking medium and little ones, to support the king of Spain, and they've been for too long ruling too so they also have corruption, but in subtler ways. They have no word, have not fulfilled lots of pacts and acted on self-interest and for the benefit of the elites. And occasionally, they've given support to social causes, nothing too problematic for the elites but enough that they may appear as "progressive". PP-VOX-Ciutadans will punch you in the mouth and spit on you when you're down. PSOE will instead clap you in the back and stab you oh-so-politely when you don't expect it. In the end you're still hurt, but yeah, the style is different. The current Spanish regime and elite is maintained thanks to PSOE, giving legitimacy to them by defending them the same as the fascist trio but without being as over-the-top evil as them.

Unidas Podemos/En Comú Podem: New party that appeared as the counter for the traditional ones, but has been slightly corrupted by power and by including people from an old party too, Izquierda Unida. They're the best that Spain as a country can offer, but they're simply not enough. They have good ideas and good proposals, but they lack power to implement real changes without more votes in the rest of Spain. They have two big faults: 1-They want to pact with PSOE as if it was center-left when it's not, and PSOE will fuck them constantly because that's what they do with anything that is left-wing. 2-They do not understand Catalunya's situation nor understand that the right-wing parties in Catalunya are, at max, as bad as PSOE and in the same ideological compass regarding economy, if not more left-wing than PSOE. I wouldn't mind them ruling Spain, I think they would do a much better job than anyone else available with chances, but they're not perfect and fault 2 makes them not ideal at all for Catalunya. 

ERC: Traditional Catalan party, in theory left-wing but in reality very very very much center more than left at this time. They are in theory independentist, but lately they've been forgiving too much to PSOE's government, thinking that by being moderate they can attract more support to independence, but by doing this also recognizing that they don't want independence right away and something in the middle would work for them. This may attract some voters, but lots of other voters may feel repelled and betrayed by them now. Also, as I said, they're trusting they can pact with PSOE, but PSOE has shown again and again that whatever they pact, then they decide to ignore if it fits them better or protects the elites.

JxCat: Kind-of new party that resulted from a division inside the old Catalan party Convergencia. Convergencia ruled for many years here, was right-wing, corrupt and did quite bad things to the average person, especially when it comes to healthcare. When independence became popular they joined the train and tried to steer it towards more power for them. This failed because of the aforementioned corruption, I think. Since then they changed names several times (last official one was PDECat) while keeping the same people, with mixed results. In the end, a group inside that defended more democracy, transparency and real independence made a "coup" and stole this name, that they had used in the past, to create a new party. The old Convergencia is still participating but they've been forced to use their proper name, PDECat, and this other group now has the people that were more committed and more open to changes. This new party seems in the center, and it has defended proposals that are more to the left than PSOE (although this is not very hard). Still, it tends towards a more conservative vision of politics, that is true. 

PDECat: The party mentioned before. They may end up with no representation in these elections, and I have no sympathy for them. Their party did quite horrible things in Catalunya. They tried to hide under other names and ride the independence train to keep relevant but finally they've been forced out in the open and to go as they are, and I'm quite happy if they don't get results, as long as the voters go to some better independent party.

CUP: Left-wing party in favor of independence. They're called "radicals" in this current world where not putting your tongue up the market's ass as deep as you can is considered to be extreme and anti-system. They're irregular and change opinion often, but that's to be expected because they're based in voting things instead of having a single leader that decides everything. They're not perfect by far and some of their actions could have been better, but seems to me they're the less bad option of the bunch, if you favor independence and want society to improve somewhat.

So, they don't feel exciting elections but there's also this detail: Maybe clear independence votes will surpass 50% of the total votes for the first time. Other times the votes for Unidas Podemos could be counted either way, and unionists always considered them to be in favor of remaining in Spain, although the people voting them had a mixed opinion. IF the other independent parties get more than 50%, some people won't be able to say anymore that this is not something that a majority of voters want. I'm not sure anything else will be achieved, but it's something...

Interesting Times

There's this English saying, with unclear origins (read more here), that says that there is this curse: "May you live in Interesting Times". Terry Pratchett used it in one of his books too. The idea, of course, is that the history moments that are most studied and explained are those of turmoil, chaos and strife.

We are indeed in one of these periods. and I'd like to talk about two subjects related to that, the election of a new President in Spain and the latest judicial verdicts and actions by the UE tribunals and parliament.

First, it seems finally a President has been elected in Spain. This President has been very difficult to elect, since the party he belongs to didn't have enough representatives in parliament to be elected on their own. This means the party needed to pact with others, and traditional parties in Spain are really against that. They're used to order around and dictate, starting from a clean majority, if possible an absolute one, to rule whatever they want, regardless of the program they had. This party, PSOE, is no different.

PSOE has been defended during this period as a leftist party, and the election of this president has been indicated as a triumph for progressive forces. However, this is totally false. For a long time now, all around the world, powerful forces (aka rich people and the newspapers and news agencies/broadcasters they buy) have been moving what is considered the centre of the political spectrum more and more to the right, to accept certain policies as "moderate" when they're clearly right-wing and conservative, and to promote neo-liberal economies. Because of this, PSOE is being considered as "left", but that's blatantly false (at national level at least. it´s different at regional or city levels).

PSOE has accepted authoritarian ways to rule, has maintained laws that restrict freedom of speech and has used repression as a tool while governing temporarily in this period without majorities. PSOE also reformed labour laws in Spain in favour of the big companies, have delayed retirement age and all around applied neo-liberal policies for some time now, refusing to act on things like house prices or bank control. PSOE has refused boats full of rescued refugees that were at sea. PSOE has done nothing to tax more or stop giving public money to the Catholic Church. Their attitude till now regarding Catalunya has been exactly the same as PP, the extreme-right wing party of Spain, of sending police and tribunals and twisting legislation to punish people. And so on.

The only thing that PSOE has done that can be considered more "leftist" has been defending abortion rights, defending LGBT+ rights and Women's rights, and proposing to legislate on issues like Euthanasia or drug use. While these are noble causes, these alone do not define a leftist party, and plenty of moderate or right parties in Europe nowadays defend some of these positions too, so it's not like revolutionary radical leftist of them.

What's more, PSOE had the chance of ruling with a true centre-left party, Podemos, since last elections, but because they're centre-right they wanted instead to pact with Ciudadanos (another right-wing party) or rule alone, which is why they repeated elections. Problem is they lost votes and Ciudadanos sank even more, so these two options were definitely not possible and they were forced to pact with Podemos instead and, all of a sudden, defend themselves as "progressives" when they're far from that.

Having said that, this is better than the alternative. The alternative was the three extreme-right-wing parties of Spain (yes, we have three of them, we don't have a "new extreme right wing" now, we always had it, it´s just now split in pieces and that's good) ruling together, but thankfully they have been fragmented and don't have a majority to rule even if they pact. PSOE alone will not do much, but since it will have issues governing, the fact that they need to pact and negotiate is a good thing. We will see if Podemos and the other leftist parties can twist its arm enough for them to actually act and do some progressive things.

There´s people in Catalunya that say that PSOE is the same as PP, and to let them rule is bad. This reminds me on the campaign started in USA to convince progressive voters not to go to vote Hilary using targeted ads, that infamous scandal. While I agree that PSOE is not good, the reality is that the possibility of the extreme right parties ruling again is catastrophic. I´m not sure whats the best course of action really, but seems to me a scenario where they need to pact with left and independentist parties is better than one where all right-wing parties ally themselves and rule.

However, as a final note: This government won't push leftist policies enough and will still pretty much protect the powerful. If you want real change, PSOE is not the party, you need to vote more left. There's several options there (which is a problem, when there's this fragmentation too), but there are better left options. It's a matter of selecting one. And yes, they're not perfect. The curse of the left is that there's no perfect ruler, instead of the right where this doesn't matter because you just obey your leader. But still, vote the best left option that there is, or change is impossible.



As per the second topic: The UE tribunals have ruled that three Catalan politicians that could not swear on the Spanish consititution because they were in exile or in prison are members of UE parliament, regardless of the fact that they could not swear on it becasue members are elected by people voting, not by posterior procedures, and therefore the Spanish tribunals cannot prosecute them without the approval of the UE parliament. Two of them are exiled and will join the parliament on 13th of January, and the third one is in prison in Spain, but this verdict makes his trial void (and would need, legally, to be repeated after UE parliament allows it).

This has been followed by the UE parliament ordering Spain to fulfil the law (indicating without explicitly saying that they need to liberate the prisoner), since the UE Tribunal is the highest instance and the Spanish tribunals need to follow it.

This links nicely with my previous post. The problem of how Spain reacted to the Catalan independentists is that it's not legal, it's not democratic, and in general it's not how a progressive democratic country works. Spain has acted like a dictatorship, has twisted laws, bypassed rules, done whatever they wanted however they wanted it, ignoring their own legislation and just going for punishment, revenge and blood. Anyone defending that doesn't understand about democracy, regardless of your opinion on independence, and that's something that I really hope that those who do not defend independence understand, finally, with he help of Europe: Every Single Time that Europe tribunals have been involved, since they're really independent and democratic, Spain has been shown to not follow the law and to act incorrectly. Every time. And there's more to come, once other sentences reach UE tribunals too.

What's more: For all the ones that say they defend legality: As per the law, this prisoner should be freed and given access to UE parliament. I'm not going to say all laws are just, because I've previously stated that you should always question them, because dictatorships also have laws. But if you're not hypocrites, now you should defend his liberation, and ask Spain to follow the law. Or ask for the Spanish Government and the Spanish Tribunals to be accused and judged, same way you asked for the Catalan politicians to be judged.

Or you truly, really, believe that Spain is a better democracy with a better judicial system than all the other UE nations combined?

Time for questions

So I haven't written in a while, especially about politics, because mostly the current situation can be summarized by screaming to the void at top volume for 4 hours....but I'd like to try to explain some things.

You probably have seen that the people that organized a referendum in Catalunya have been condemned by Spain to lots of prison years. And that people here got tired of this crap and started to protest in a more hardcore way, blocking roads and stations. And then police started to beat people up, and people responded by barricading and setting things on fire, and we're still in this situation.

So, let's start by saying that Barcelona is not a war zone, you can live perfectly well here unless you're right next to some  very conflictive point. So, yeah, newspapers are exaggerating the situation to make it look so much worse than it is.

However, it's bad what's happening yeah. And it's bad only when police act. Otherwise, there are no issues. So, police is doing a horrible job, because they're supposed to keep the peace, but instead they're guaranteeing there's problems and chaos. Police is used as a punishment for protesters instead of trying to establish normality, and it shows.

Anyway, I'd like to try to explain that what is happening should horrify a lot more people than it does, and why.

So, let's say you're not pro-independence. That is fine, each person can have their opinions. You feel that Spain is a nice country, or you feel that Catalunya will do better with Spain, or you're against Spain losing Catalunya. Or some other reason like that. That's fine, I repeat. But even then, there are things that I believe concern you.

The Spanish government and judicial system condemned people to lots of years for organizing a vote,  debating it in parliament, trying to organize a protest and declaring "independence" without any real chance to back it up for real, kind of symbolically. That's it. That's the summary.

Now, you may say, "oh no, but the vote was illegal/declaring independence was illegal". Well, first of all, that's debatable, Spanish laws could be interpreted either way about this. Second of all, laws are not pillars of morality. Laws are rules written by governments. Dictatorships have plenty of laws. If something is illegal, sometimes it's good to also ask yourself, why is that, and if it really should be. As mentioned before in other posts, to assume all laws are just and good is dangerous, submissive and can give birth to horrible monsters like Nazism and Stalinism. And well, when is a vote something that should not happen, really? Why voting is so bad? Could you ask yourselves that? You may say that all of Spain should vote, which is fine, but then why not get the region's opinion first since we're at it? Doesn't it sound...fishy, that you cannot even vote? Today it's this topic, but tomorrow it can be another important one (like reducing CO2 emissions or transitioning to green energies) and the result may be the same, "oh it's illegal to vote about this!". This is a slippery slope, really. It's ok to vote but only if you like it? That's the thing here?

Then you could say it was not the vote, that it was the independence declaration. Only thing, it was symbolic. No administrations changed control. No infrastructures were taken. No efforts were made to change taxation mechanisms nor implement any type of real independence. The declaration was made and then nothing was done to implement it. While I could accept that declaring independence is illegal under the current constitution, the point is that it was not implemented. So, with no effort to do it properly, they should be condemned to lots of years just because they said it?

Then you could say it was the protest a few days before where some police cars were vandalized. Which is true, but the people condemned didn't personally do it either, and they asked for tranquility and peaceful protesting at all times.

Then on the trial, the main argument about violence happening in Catalunya was to say that 1-Screams and looks of the people were "violent" and 2-that the police brutality was the cause of organizing the vote. The first argument means that "violence" can be anything now, as long as the people in power decide something is violent. So you cannot protest against anything that you consider unjust, because it's "violent. The second point is the same defense rapists use, "she was asking for it".

Also on the trial, it was not allowed to use videos or images that contradicted the witnesses statements. They were shown later. So no witness could be considered false and to be removed from  the trial during the trial itself. And there's a lot other things that happened during it that plenty of international organisations have condemned, saying that it didn't guarantee proper rights. I mean, I understand you may be against independence and you didn't like the fact that people tried to vote about it, but isn't it...troubling, how forceful it was? The Spanish government disagreed with the idea, accused people and then proceed to not follow their own laws and checks and balances to make sure these people would be condemned. Isn't it worrying this can happen, regardless of who's being tried and for what?

This was a vengeance, plain and simple, not really a justice matter. Isn't that something that should not happen at this levels, inside the justice system, regardless of your political believes?

Then there's the matter of  the following protests. Of course there has been protests, and there's been people organizing them. They have been disruptive, they have been intense and they have been a lot of them. Well, guess what, that's how all protest that achieved something have worked. That's how we got the 8-hours workday. That's how some other regions and colonies gained independence. So, that's how protests work, they're disruptive or they're useless. Did they put bombs or killed people? No. Did they use firearms? No. Did they enter into direct fights with the authorities? Well, some people have, but the vast majority haven't, and the ones that have are mostly using it as defensive strategies. There has been burnings and fires, yes, and it's not good they happened, but not with the intention to harm others, just to protect from police charges. The thrown objects are bad, ok, but again, these things have been more as defense from charges.

Well, this is now being considered terrorism (not a joke). And again, let's say you agree, those stupid pro-independence bastards are bothering you. Thing is, next time you want to protest because you have a shit salary and rent is being controlled by investment funds that want to make you pay a lot more? Forget about protesting. Any demonstration, any type of road blocking, any type of disruptive action can and will be considered terrorism. Don't you think this is worrisome? That it's establishing precedents? That real democracies should not consider this terrorism?

Let's also talk about the police charges. You can also say that police tell protesters to leave and if they don't they should be hit and arrested because they're not following the law. But then, police are hitting people on the head, on the neck, on other areas where it's clear in their procedures that they cannot hit. Isn't it a problem that the law doesn't apply to them then? Isn't it curious that rubber balls are banned in Catalunya and police used them anyway? Doesn't make you wonder,  that police can arrest anyone in the street,beat them up, jump on top of them, touch them (to women usually), and that's all fine? Is police above the law? And then, why is wrong to defend from them also not following the law? Are you ok with all this because "they would never do this to me, why would they?". Because this is for protesting, for demonstrating, with ideas that are not the officially approved ones. Should you be hit in the head for not running away fast enough when police charges to make people move? Is this proportional? Is ok to beat anyone in the area just in case, even people that are leaving?

And following also this topic, isn't it weird that fascist have been running around Barcelona and beating people up, and in these cases there has never been police beating them or stopping them? Or that when unionist, let's say, have slapped pro-independence people in front of police, police did nothing whatsoever? Isn't it a problem how friendly police is with fascists? And also the same fascist, how friendly they are always judged when they beat someone up and such things? Similarly when it's about rapists that belong to police forces, as shown in La Manada?

Then, considering all this, and consider how the Spanish government refuses to talk. About anything, really. Isn't it strange that no one on the Spanish side is willing to sit down with no pre-conditions, and try to see what can be agreed on or what can be done to improve the situation? Not saying agreeing to anything, I'm just saying to talk.

I will also add for those that put both sides at the same level, do you think it's the same to hit someone and to defend yourself from someone hitting you? Is it the same to control police charges than to have some people among thousands that do fight back? And even then, do you think it's at the same level, police charging and people protesting? An organised force beating civilians is the same that a few disorganized violent groups? And given the last images, is it ok that police infiltrators are trying to rile up these people so there is some fights and some chaos? Do you think it's the same to organize a voting and send police to beat people up? Do you think it's the other's side fault when, during a negotiation, one side just says "No" without further comments and proposals?

Also, consider this: It has been proven that the Spanish government, in the past, has used police to try and incriminate people, accuse them, make sure that minimum you get big news about it by filtering information to the press, prepare charges, etc. Doesn't this concern you a bit? Doesn't this makes you doubt the whole judicial process?

I keep adding: Spanish tribunals are usually decided by the two main parties that are in charge of all this repression and that have alternated ruling the country for the last 40 years. A lot of these judges have been members of the party "in the past". A lot of these judges have clear preference with a certain political spectrum. There's even some that are the same ones that were ruling during Franco's dictatorship, they never moved or were never removed from the position. Isn't that something to make you wonder about the quality of Spanish judicial system?

Just to finish, there's Catalan politicians that left the country and are staying in Europe to internationalize the conflict. Spain has send extradition orders to several of them. Don't you find it curious that Germany and UK and Belgium have, in general, ruled that the detention orders were wrong/didn't apply? Don't you find it disturbing that, in places where there should be separation of powers, the Spanish government is threatening diplomatically other governments about the outcome of a trial in their respective country, which is made by the separated judicial power? Do you think it's normal that the Spanish judges have only asked for the detention of certain people, and that they have withdrawn the petition depending on the political moment?

Now that there's other protests in the world at the same time: do you trust China's and Chile's Governments regarding their actions and declarations with their respective protests? Whatever are your thoughts about independence, don't you see parallelisms between all three cases and how police and governments are acting? Do you disagree with how Hong Kong people is being treated when they protest certain laws? Do you like that Chile protesters have been shot?

Do you still think independence is the problem here? Do you still think it doesn't apply to you? Do you still think Spain is being fair and just with their reaction? Do you still think that, when the time comes, your protests will be treated differently because yours will be just and necessary?

Do not defend independence. If you don't want it, that's ok. However, wonder what is at stake here, because it ain't about the independentists.

Argumenting

Things are getting tense in Catalunya.

The Government has approved a law to organise a referendum on Independence on 1st of October which proclaims Spanish legislation cannot touch it. Spanish government and tribunals have reacted by indicating that anything referendum-related is forbidden and that the law is suspended.

There's more details, but well, the most probable outcome at this point seems a vote happening on 1st of October nevertheless, where "yes" wins.

The Catalan laws were approved with questionable procedures that limited the possibility to debate them....but then again it was done like this because Spain was indicating that even debating such things was illegal, and therefore there were no other options.

In all this mess, several newspapers have started a misinformation and lying war against independence, while several people have made articles or comments where they attacked the referendum.

And in all that, what I have not ever seen are arguments about why we should not vote, or vote "No", that could stand on their own. So I want to comment on some of the arguments said and why they're bullshit....but I also want to point out that there are arguments, valid ones, and it's just mind-boggling that people that I though were smart are not mentioning them....

1-Because it's illegal:

-This one is the first thing that lots of people mention that are against the referendum, and it's really really stupid. For starters, its legality is a matter of interpretation. However, let's say it was clearly and without doubt illegal. So fucking what? As lots of people mentioned, legality is not an indication of morality or ethics. People say that one should respect the law in a democratic country, but I disagree on mindless obeying. First question to ask regarding anything illegal, is to ask why is it illegal. Is it morally or ethically wrong? Is it harmful? Is it plain stupid? If you check this, it's rather evident that some laws make perfect sense. You cannot rob, kill and/or rape because it's ethically terrible. You are not allowed to do drugs because it's a danger for your well-being. Of course there's already shades of gray, and for example maybe rather than forbid drugs for that last one it is better to control and regulate them..this could be debated, and that's why some laws are a must, but others can be debated. Why is a referendum illegal? Because it would leave the integrity of Spain int he hands of Catalan people. And why is this bad? Well, here is where it fails. The only reason this is bad is if you believe in frontiers, in countries, if you feel patriotism for Spain without any other reasons than being Spanish and feel personally insulted by the though of Spain not having some piece of land that was theirs before. I consider patriotism idiotic, since where you are born is a rather random thing to be proud of, it's the same as being proud of having 5 fingers, as if you are personally responsible for them. A referendum is also illegal if you believe people should not decide things, which is antidemocratic as hell. And there's plenty of things that were illegal and should not have been, like women voting. Legality cannot limit ethical causes, and if that's your main reason, what should change is the law.

2-Because it's nationalistic propaganda/patriotism, which as you said it's rather stupid.

-First of all, Spanish nationalism is SO much worse than Catalan one. Second, while there may be some people that really want to be independent because they don't feel Spanish at all and are really really proud of being Catalan, this is also patriotism, which is stupid. However, if you check the general opinion among independentists, the nationalism aspect is not that important compared with the chance of self-governance. Currently, Spain's government and institutions are a cesspit of incompetence and corruption, unable to do much apart of behaving like a corrupt dictator, with the novelty that they do so in group. This is fairly evident for anyone not suffering from brain damage, and that includes a big chunk of the Catalan people, who want to get rid of that and be able to promote a better management and better laws. Lately a lot of progressive laws that could have improved life in Catalunya have been suspended or nullified by creating another law that supersedes them. The problem is that in Spain at the moment we do have a lot of brain-damaged people apparently, and the main parties that are corrupt, dictatorial and useless keep getting votes, so there's no clear solution for Spain. A clean break from that sure would solve the issue for Catalunya.

3-Because in the context of the European Union it makes not sense to put more frontiers, and in general frontiers are stupid.

-Indeed, frontiers are stupid. For example, the Spanish frontiers are not allowing refugees and are also kicking them out back to the sea on the heat of the moment, something that has been declared as illegal by international right. Controlling such frontiers in Catalunya would not be to close the region to the world, but to open it a lot more than what Spain is allowing.

4-Because it's right-wing propaganda and it will become a dictatorship/neo-liberalist hell worse than Spain (so what you say about making progressive laws or opening frontiers won't apply).

-The independence moment is really transversal, and if you check any demonstration or statistic you will see that people of all ideologies are supporting it. What's more, this movement has forced the traditional right-wing party of Catalunya (which disgusts me) to move toward the centre and become much more progressive (but I don't trust them at all still and I know they have corruption, but not as bad as the Spanish one). Also, the parties that have always been more supportive of a referendum and independence have always been more on the left side of the spectrum.

5-Because it's left-wing propaganda and it will become a lawless/communist hell like Venezuela

-Again, the movement is transversal and you can see that a lot of ideologies are involved. It is true the left has more supporters in Catalunya and inside the independentist movement, but the left parties involved have been very calm and rational in the last years while ruling, promoting more social justice and never advocating for pure anarchy, trying to follow a model more north-European if anything.

6-Because the law of the referendum and its conditions have not been agreed with Spain.

-This one is the most used by people more in the middle/undecided, or against the referendum as it is but not against the idea of voting/doing something political to solve the issue instead of just illegalizing it. The problem here is that this depends on Spain. Spain has a tradition of being authoritative and is not used to negotiate much. Let's be clear: The left lost the civil war against fascism because there is a lot of fascists tendencies in Spain, a lot of patriotism for the wrong reasons, and there's only one accepted way to be Spanish, and since then things have not improved greatly about this topic. For a big group of people, Catalunya is not Spanish enough, instead of thinking that Catalunya is another interpretation of Spain, as valid as any other. The current government has the support of such people and any negotiations would be considered as weaknesses. That's why in the last years the Spanish Government has never even considered any negotiations, and has just said Catalunya should shut up and behave, basically. The Catalan government has offered to negotiate until the last minute, but Spain has never offered or proposed anything. So, how can this be negotiated if one of the parts negotiate by saying "no, end of discussion"? Some of the people defending this argument say that this is now, but that we should work to change this dynamic, and vote to put into power people more open to negotiations. The reality however is that with the latest election results we are very far from having a big majority of parties open to that. One of the parties currently not ruling that is defending this argument or proposing other solutions ruled for 8 years and did nothing of the sort, so their promises feel pretty much empty. Asking to pact is asking for people to wait maybe 40 years while renovating the parties, to reach an unknown situation where maybe things improve...or maybe they don't. People defending this option are way too optimistic about it, I think, based on previous experiences. However, I can understand to a certain point people defending this.

7-Because independentism excludes and divides people.

-This one I've heard it from several newspapers that I thought were better than this. This argument, similar to the patriotism or frontier argument, assumes or tries to tell that independentism is about Catalunya being isolated and defending "proper Catalans". However, this is easily disproven by the fact that there's a lot of independentist that are immigrants and children of immigrants. This movement has always been inclusive, and you can see that people in Catalunya just love it when newcomers integrate. One of the best things that Catalan government has promoted since Franco's dead is the fact that, to be Catalan, you just need to live and/or work on the region, and this attitude is clear in all the movement. Most of the divisions come from the unionist side's attitude, where statistics show that the emotional component of feeling Spanish is the most common reason to want to avoid independence, and therefore tend to act in more emotional and extreme ways (although lately it is true there has been some extremism on each side)

8-Because Catalunya will be kicked out of EU.

-First of all, as long as people remain Spanish (which is an option available), they will be part of the EU. As for the theoretical new country, you don't need to be in the EU to have some of the benefits of the EU, as Switzerland or Norway show, but also it's unlikely that EU will not manage things to include a rich region that would be in the top tiers of GDP compared with the rest of European countries.

9-Becasue Catalunya will become poorer.

-Of course if Catalunya becomes poorer, EU may not want to accept it. However, the general consensus is that industry and business in Catalunya is strong enough that there are 2 likely outcomes: If Spain negotiates with Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will rapidly grow from the start. If Spain penalises Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will have problems for a short-term period until it regulates the situation and then it can grow at medium-term.

I could list more reasons that I heard these days, but most of those are over-simplifications of the situation or just plain wrong. The only one that might kind of work is number 6, but it ignores reality too much....which brings me to one reason I have not heard yet, but it is actually good, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned loudly yet, that I know.....

10-For solidarity towards the poor Spanish people that will be left with the brain dead, conservative and corrupt Spanish traditional parties.

Now this is a reason I can get behind to defend not separating. Catalunya is a very progressive area compared with the rest of Spain. The current vote estimation for Catalan elections indicates that  around 60% of the people would vote a party on the left spectrum. Checking the results of the last Spanish elections, Catalunya gave around 2.100.000 votes to parties from the left-centre. In Spain in total, there were around 11.700.000 votes to parties from left-centre. Almost 18% of the total votes for the left came from Catalunya, while the region represents only 14% of the total votes in Spain. Losing those votes, even if you also lose the votes of the Catalan right, means it's much harder to implement changes on Spain, especially since the party that seems to really want to change things in Spain (they're not perfect but so far they're at least trying) was the most voted party during these same general elections in Catalunya.

Basically, separating from Spain is a bit like abandoning any hopes of changing it. It's admitting that the system is too corrupt, too biased, to change it from inside. It's a bit like admitting defeat. And it's leaving all this great nice Spanish people more at the mercy of a group of bastard.

However, there's an alternative approach to this. Spanish politics are stuck in a bad place, for too many years. Breaking from that would be traumatic yes, and would leave the progressive side weaker in Spain. Nevertheless, maybe that's what is needed to make people in Spain react, and see the old parties for what they really are: A bunch of useless corrupt assholes.

Maybe a shock therapy like this can put some life into this old and outdated system....

At Independence's Doors

Again, elections are coming, and again it seems like a nice moment to make a post.

Last elections were to decide government in cities around Spain. In Barcelona and Madrid these went very, very well, and the next mayors of both cities were people from the left, with good ideas and that have been implementing good and reasonable policies since then.

I was not able to vote last time. Living abroad means that you're never fully sure of what you need to do and when do you need to do it. When we arrived to Rio, I registered myself with the Spanish consulate (which is conveniently located 10 minutes away from our house on foot), but I was unsure if I needed to do some paperwork. Since for Barcelona's elections I did not receive anything, I believed I had failed to register to vote.

For this elections I wanted to make sure, and I was told I could inscribe myself during august. However, then I heard inscriptions closed at the end of July. Feeling again left out by the idiotic Spanish system for voters abroad (made on purpose so we don't vote), one day checking the mail I found out I had received the paper to ask for the voter for these elections. So I did my paperwork correctly this time, and now I'm waiting for another letter that I will use to vote. I may not receive it, since the system is in place to increase mistakes and late deliveries, but at least I have a chance.

During Barcelona's elections, I was sure about what to vote. Barcelona en Comu(a coalition that includes Podemos, IcV and other leftist parties), I believed, offered the best chance to finally move things around and produce some important changes to improve politics and make Barcelona a better city. I could not vote, but I'm really proud of the fact that they won enough votes to rule the city...through pacts and negotiations, but that is not something bad, that should be the norm everywhere. If I could vote for them in Barcelona again, I would do so without doubts.

For the current elections I had some doubts for a very long time. Plenty of times I keep getting doubts about independence, since I do believe Spain is currently a political cesspit but I also believe that maybe we should fight to convert it to something else. And I know I would never vote CIU, since they are corrupt to the bone. They may believe in independence, but more likely than not they want to make their own country just to make some new laws for their rich friends. ERC showed too much willingness to pact with CIU for a leftist party, and that worried me. PP and Ciutadans will always be out of the question, those are parties for people who would enjoy to go back to the 1950s with Franco. PSC is lost completely because depends too much from central PSOE, and they are dissolving between the new parties around them, without clear ideas. This basically leaved me with the options of ERC, CUP, IcV and Podemos.

However, several things have happened that have made it really easy for me to decide. First thing is that CIU, which is made of CDC and Unio, separated. Unio is the part more to the right in CIU, so the fact that they are separated now is really good, because it reduces strength in the Catalan right parties. These parties have been ruling for way too long, they have too many "friends" in charge of big companies and there's plenty of cases of corruption and of laws that reduce rights. CIU is the main responsible for budget cuts in education and healthcare. Sure, Spain is not giving funds to Catalunya, but before you cut these two things there's plenty of other points that could be reduced, like government salaries, help to private healthcare and education (The public ones are the ones being cut brutally while help to private companies is mantained),  and plenty of other things. Unio alone will never get my vote either, they are slightly less dictatorial and disgusting than PP and Ciutadans, but just slightly.

Then, CDC convinced ERC and other organizations to join forces in a single party for independence. This allowed CDC to cover their corruption cases and all their problems under the mantle of independence. Even if I support independence, I will never vote for them because they are forgiving CDC some things that are just unforgivable, and need to be remembered.  However, I will not make the mistake that Podemos and IcV did: They joined forces as well (which is fine), but then started attacking the new independence party focusing on the fact that CDC is there. This is way too simplistic, and follows central Spain's idea that independence is something CDC has invented and people have been tricked into believing. This theory ignores centuries of repression and hard work from the Spanish government to eliminate Catalunya's institutions and culture while sucking it dry of money without investing back. This is not something you can just ignore, and simplifying the message is idiotic. Also, while the principles behind Podemos are quite good and I would still vote them in Spanish general elections, their leaders have done some stupid mistakes lately. Sometimes people fail to understand that one person being stupid does not imply that the whole party needs to be dismissed as stupid, and as I said I would vote them also in Barcelona. But in Catalunya's case they don't understand the region, which has positioned me in favour of independence (unilaterally declared).

Therefore, I'm left with CUP. CUP is a party from the left, in favour of more democracy and social policies. They fight corruption. They believe in referendums and consulting people about important issues. They also want Catalunya's independence. And they have understood quite well, by not joining ERC and CDC, that even if independence is the main point of their program, it is not good to achieve it t any cost. They will support it, but they will not be constrained by joining forces with CDC. And if they feel they need to vote against CDC and ERC because these two parties are doing wrong things, I believe they will do so.

And the point is, after the latest issues, if CDC and ERC's coalition, together with CUP, get enough votes to add up to a majority of parliament members in Catalunya, they will declare independence. Just like that.

And then hell will break loose.

And it is about time for that. 

Ciudadanos and Cognitive Problems In Spain

Again, I found motivation to write something from the sorry state that Spain is showing.

This Sunday there will be elections in most towns and cities of Spain, and also in plenty of regions. Catalunya is not one of them and will have elections later on, on September, but Barcelona will vote this week.

The polls around Spain show weird results. New parties have appeared and have gained an incredible amount of support in a very short time. On one side we have Podemos, CUP, and other parties and organizations from the left that are trying to remove the traditional parties from power to improve life conditions and increase social policies. Most of these parties are getting support from people that used to vote PSOE, but since PSOE has done really stupid things that have situated its central power in the center-right rather than the left, several of those voters have abandoned PSOE as an option. This is understandable: If you support the left, currently in plenty of regions PSOE does not represent the ideas from the left, and is involved in several important corruption cases. There may be regions where PSOE is still defending the right ideas, but central POSE and lots of other regions are corrupted by having had the power for too long, and own too much to the banks and big companies to really work for the people.

What does not stop surprising me is still the massive support that PP has. Half its leaders are being judged or already condemned for corruption. Where they go corruption appears around them constantly. They have openly said they had a secret accountability book, even if legal (or not really illegal but unclear). They have failed to comply with all their program. They have increased taxes for the big majority of the population. They have modified laws that have reduced salaries, and new jobs are mostly temporary contracts. And even after all that and more, still people supports them in embarrassing numbers.

And what is even worse, the people that have stopped supporting them apparently have decided to vote Ciudadanos.

Ciudadanos is a new Spanish party, but before it became nation-wide it was a Catalan party (Ciutadans) for a long time. In Catalunya, they defined themselves as anti-catalanist, basically defending the idea that there are more important things to worry right now than catalanism, independence and defending Catalan language. This is a perfectly valid posture, but they followed it by centering all their program in anti-catalan proposals: instead of really focusing in other topics (like unemployment, or corruption), they centered all their campaign in being against Catalan language and Catalan independence…Which basically is still wasting time and not trying to do anything for all these things that they said were more important than catalanism (like unemployment, or corruption).

They also tried to say they were not a party from the right, and several times skipped talking about it or claiming they were center-left, or center. However, they sounded suspiciously similar than PP, and several of their members were ex-PP, or ex-PSOE with ideas from the right.  I always considered them from the right, but they were ambiguous about it.

After the initial success of Podemos, Ciudadanos decided to go national, and presented candidates all around Spain. They presented themselves as another new party, an alternative to the corrupt old parties. And then they declared themselves as a right-center party, and basically took as candidates politicians mostly from PP but also some from PSOE or IU, that had not won before any important position and took this as their chance to enter a parliament and get paid for life.

They have won quite a lot of support. And I keep realizing there's no hope for Spain as long as 25%-33% are raging fascist or mentally disabled. Even if they're not truly aware, that's what they are. PP has lost lots of votes, but most of those votes have gone to Ciudadanos, which is made by the same people with the same ideas.

I will make a prediction: during these elections, PP and Ciudadanos will pact in lots of regions and cities to rule together. Because there's an embarrasing number of mentally handicapped that keep voting PP. But the rest of the mentally handicapped that had voted PP will go ahead and vote for PP2, Ciudadanos. You can see it in Valencia or Madrid. According to the polls, the loses of PP are gains for Ciudadanos, almost to the decimal in estimation of vote.

The only solution is to have enough parties from the left to win over these two parties (and also to win over PSOE in some regions where PSOE is not doing very different things than PP).

I will just finish saying that Catalunya's situation is more complex, because there's the independence factor as well...but, to not avoid the chance to offend some more people, I will say this: This Spanish mental handicap that seems so common in the population also affects Catalunya, to all the people that believe independence is more important that the state of the country when it becomes independent. To explain it to these same people with cognitive problems: CIU governing an independent Catalunya is not very different than PP governing Spain, and one of the the only differences is the language and culture that will be promoted.

If you don't see a problem with that, well....as I said, cognitive problems.

Voting as a Protest

This Sunday (9th of November), lots of people voted in Catalunya about independence. However, this can be considered a demonstration more than anything else.

We've talked several times that currently the Catalan government is really pushing for independence, to hide their own mistakes and corruption, and to try to get some extra votes. And we've mentioned in other posts that there is actually a big proportion of people that do want to become independent, for a big number of different reasons. And how Spanish central government is acting really really stupid about it,  as in all things they do.

Now let's explain what has happened in the recent months, because it's the kind of thing that is hard to believe....

Catalunya's government and quite a lot of the Catalan political parties decided it was time to vote. Scotland had done the same, so they felt prepared to organize voting. They established the 9th of November as the date.

First thing that happened is that Spanish government, rules by PP, said that this is illegal and antidemocratic. We've mentioned before, but the kind of people that say voting is antidemocratic must have the most twisted minds of the world...or more likely, the stupidest.

However, it is true apparently that there's some part of the constitution and actual laws that say referendums (as in legally binding voting processes) can only be organized state-wide, by the Spanish government. Never mind that other times referendums like this were asked at levels different than state-wide and nobody complained about it, but well...

So, the Catalan parties cannot organize a referendum legally. Ok, that is fine. What they did then is prepare a law saying that they could organize a public poll to consult people about things. Of course the purpose of the law was to vote and see if people wanted independence, but the law itself just provides a way to vote about stuff, without this being legally binding but allowing the use of official census and public workers.

And then the Spanish government said this was illegal as well and anti-constitutional, and that "democratic, law-abiding citizens" would never participate in the voting. They started a legal process to stop the voting, and even if it is not clear what will be the judges verdict, the result is this poll was basically blocked from happening any time soon (judges are slow, it could take a year or more for a verdict)

This is the point that surprises me. Surprises me because the rest of the European Union didn't tell Spain to shut the hell up and let people vote. Sure, this may be kind of an internal Spanish matter, but we're talking about a theoretical "democratic" country saying that it is illegal to make official polls, basically. Serves to show the type of "Democracy" that the European Union also supports...

Anyway, I was expecting a bigger outcry from all sections. Especially the people that do not want an independent Catalunya.

If I really, really wanted to stop independentism, some years ago (when it might still be possible to do so, because now I don't see it working) I would have made negotiations and concessions to Catalunya, and then I would have allowed them to vote, while campaigning in favour of the union of regions. That's more or less what happened with Scotland. If then you convince enough people that it's not worth the risk and we can obtain good results together, you have killed the independentism movement for the next 20-30 years.

When somebody ask, you can always say this was recently voted, and the results were clear. You can vote again in some time, but you cannot vote every year until you get the result you want, and therefore people against independence would have a strong argument to forget about it for a while and things would calm down.

At this point I don't know if its pure incompetence or machiavellian planning: Incompetence is easy to understand, because the Spanish government has proven to be useless so many times in less than 3 years that I lost count. However, it can also be that the Spanish government is quite happy with the independentists. After all, they are an enemy. Something that people can join to fight, and something that is not the main parties' cases of corruption. Every day there's more and more people from the two main parties being arrested, accused or even condemned in the tribunals, and independence is a nice distraction.

Then again, they say to not attribute to malice what can be explain by simple dumb stupidity...

Anyway, the Catalan government organized another poll, unofficial, without census, done by volunteers. Of course such a pool cannot be very useful to ask officially for independence, but well, it server its purpose to get the pulse of the people....

And the Spanish government and other central parties still complained about it and tried to stop it.

Luckily, since at this point the legal waters were very murky (and getting closer to the dictatorial style) this time this was mostly ignored by the Catalan government and the voting happened.

The results are interesting...only 2.3 million people voted out of 6.2 possible votes, but considering how unofficial and rushed the thing was, it is still a success. Not every town had a voting area, so not everybody was able to vote. Since it was unofficial consulates and embassies would not help with this, and I could not vote either, although some international voting points were created around the world.

80% of voters declared to want independence. 10% declared to want a different status, but not necessarily while being independent from Spain, and less than 5% declared they didn't want any changes. The rest of the votes were not valid answers (maybe we can consider them also supporters of "No", but it is not clear).

This would indicate that most people in Catalunya want independence, but actually the thing is that the people that do not want it were convinced to not vote. So, they had no visibility, no effect on the final result. There's a big group of people that do not want to separate from Spain, but they were not really fully represented in this poll.

The whole thing turned up to be more like a demonstration in favour of a referendum, but still, with more participation a more realistic picture would have been possible. As it is now, the central government will say that not enough people participated (and also that the whole thing is antidemocratic and illegal, as usual). Meanwhile, the Catalan government will take it as support of their work (which is not true, Catalan government is doing a very bad job). The rest of teams and parties will each interpret it as they wish, but it is undeniable that a big majority of people in Catalunya want things to start moving, towards independence or at least towards a more official and definitive voting.

What is more evident here is the parties and people's true colors regarding democracy. If somebody is offended by my following words, sorry, but this is the truth: If you believe voting for something to know people's opinion is bad, you are a defender of dictatorships and totalitarian governments. Simple and clear.

Not everything should depend on the votes of the people. There are things that are right and things that are wrong, and not everything allows for opinions. As I mentioned before, if that would be the case we would not need any experts in anything, we could just all vote and see what the majority thinks.

However, that does not mean there aren't things where it is important to ask the population about their opinions.  And it does not mean that asking everybody about a topic is ever a bad thing, even if the government or the experts decide to do something else afterwards.

This is a clear example, because the "big picture" of the organization of a region is something that you can let everybody decide. Regardless of the actions to take afterwards, voting to see who wants independence is never bad. Wanting to stop the voting is bad. Wanting to stop the voting shows you disregard the term "democracy". It means you believe in imposing ideas. It means you think that ethics are not important, legality is, and therefore as long as something is legal it is ok to do it, and as long as something is illegal you should not do so, without actually thinking if these things are ethical or moral. With this logic, some centuries ago it would be ok to have slaves, because it was legal. And we should not try rescue and free them, because that was illegal (stealing property).

When you are against voting, you're basically defining yourself as this. Maybe you were not aware of it, but that's what you did by thinking voting was bad. And if you don't want Catalunya to be independent, well, promote the "No", because not voting is the surest way to guarantee the region leaves Spain.

And voting is never something permanent. Voting is a continuous process. A constitution does not stay approved after one voting, it needs revisions, rewriting and more voting after some years pass. And this is what "democracy" means, if you don't like it openly promote a dictatorship that fits your world-view better, just don't be an hypocrite about it.

(Ah, as a final reminder, I support independence. Not because I feel specially Catalan, but because I'm embarrassed to be Spanish, and also because it would mix things up and give opportunities to redefine what is Spain, what is Catalunya and maybe a chance of getting rid of a big amount of corrupt bastards on both sides)

PSOE, Podemos and Other Parties

I have not written in a while, and a lot of things are happening at the same time, in the country and in our regular life.

For the moment, I'd like to rant about politics for a bit.

In the end of May, there was European Elections, and the results could be commented, but let's center them to Spain. After years of screwing up big time, the two main parties had lost credibility, and it was expected that they would have worse results than in the latest general elections.

What nobody was expecting was Podemos. This was a new party that got created by people's associations, inspired by the 15M protests against the ruling parties, that had become nests of corrupt politicians in their leading positions.  With only 4 months of life, they got more than a million votes in these elections. Polls say they may get a high number of parliament seats in the next general elections, although not enough at all to rule on their own.

The problem Podemos represents to the current rulers is that they defend popular meetings and popular votes to decide about things, and the people in general, when asked directly , may decide they want to limit the politician’s salaries or that they don’t want a king. Other left parties that are more traditional may not ask directly and are more controllable, but when people actually vote for things it’s really hard to, for example, decide your childhood friend should win a contract to provide a public service through a private company.

Podemos has also proven to be really good at advertising themselves and reaching people that got tired with the traditional parties, to prove some of their points by example (like rejecting to get the full salary of an European parliamentary) and to actually say quite reasonable things that resound with the public.

Of course, after these results, official newspapers and channels have stopped treating them like a joke and started attacking them to defend the traditional parties. The two main parties have been ruling on their own for ages, fighting publicly but agreeing and working together privately at the highest levels, and seeing how they are losing power scares them.

However, the current ruling party (PP) is maybe the least affected at the moment....they are losing votes, but I believe people who voted PP in the past will never change to Podemos (unless we're talking of really, really stupid people). No, the one that is most bothered by Podemos is PSOE.

PSOE, or the Spanish socialist party, was born very long ago, in 1879, and as a truly socialist party started fighting for worker's rights. However, a lot has happened since then, and the party has evolved and changed (as is normal with so much time passing). After Franco's dicatorship, PSOE became one of the main parties in Spain, participating in the transition period, and it managed to become the ruling party a few elections afterwards. At that moment the party was still defending interests considered from the left wing, but it had done several concessions (like accepting a monarchy) and in general moved to the center of the political spectrum, especially regarding economic ideas.

From that time till now PSOE's leaders have been moving to the right little by little. At the same time, they have started to use the same tactics than right-wing parties, where destructive critic is all it matters, and to point to the other as the cause of all problems. It is true that PSOE leaders still defend some ideas from the left, like LGBT rights, abortion issues and other similar things, but these things, even if important, do no deal with the main problem a leftist party should deal with: The abuse that middle and lower class people are receiving from the rich and the company owners. That minorities have the same rights as the rest is important, but if everybody has shit for a job, then maybe this should be the priority of a leftist party.

PSOE's leaders have also been caught in important corruption cases, have helped maintain a monarchy while keeping secret how much does it costs and what does it do, have promoted to important positions relatives and friends, have increased their own salaries and hired consultants while the country was in an economic crisis, has put ex-polititians in charge of banks and big energy companies, has helped the catholic church as if Spain was not independent from religion, and in general has behaved no differently than a (maybe softer) right-wing corrupt party, except for a few issues.

Now, part of the problem is that there are lots of people in Spain that believe PSOE is the worker's party. And there are a lot of people in the PSOE that also believe that they should work for the workers. When Podemos, or other parties, or me, critisize PSOE, I think it's clear we do not mean everybody in PSOE. However, the current leaders are the ones at fault, and the ones doing it all wrong.

Podemos may be tricking us and become something horrible later on, who knows...but right now them and other small parties are pointing to the problems Spain has and proposing solutions (that may work or not, but that go beyond criticising blindly what's being done by the other party). They're also promoting more democracy.

Meanwhile, PSOE leaders got some of the ideas that Podemos is promoting and started to apply them wrong.  For example, they have chosen a younger party leader, as if age, and not ideas (the guy was involved in one of the banks that have done more irregular things in Spain), was the problem. Or promoting democracy by opening to all party members who is going to be the new leader, but at the same time the leader that actually got chosen and most of the central PSOE parliamentaries are saying that letting people from Catalunya vote about if they want independence is bad and should not be done (missing entirely the point).

This and other comments shows in my opinion that PSOE has not been refunded, and the same people than before have power and are quite comfortable in there and do not want to change anything.

If PSOE would like to be taken seriously as a party again and not keep losing votes month after month, they need to actually do more instead of saying they will do more. They need to condemn corruption by auditing themselves through some third company, by making public all their numbers and accounts and the accounts of their leaders, and by doing internal investigations and actively collaborating with the police the moment someone in their party is accused of corruption, instead of just saying “not guilty until a judge condemns us”, which does not mean you are guilty but gives a really bad image, as if you’re hiding secrets.

They need to condemn the transfers between private companies and leading parties (or otherwise) by actually indicating, for example, that is shameful that the ex-president of Spain Felipe Gonzalez is part of Gas Natural, one of the major energy companies in Spain and part of the lobby who is promoting laws approved by the government that are punishing green energy companies and green energy research while increasing the energy bill and creating an energy monopoly.

They need to actually recognize that they have made mistakes, for example indicating that last time they were in power they screwed up and didn’t prevent the crisis or publicly recognize the start of it, without charging all of the guilt to ex-president Zapatero only.

They need to recognize that they have agreed with PP in lots of things and have voted the same as them especially in Europe or in economic topics, and if they want to differentiate from them they need to stop doing that.

They need to condemn the current pardon system and indicate that too many times the ones pardoned are ex-politicians, cops, company owners and other people that are not the “commoners” by far, and recognize that they have done this in the past to show they will stop doing so.

They need to actually comprehend and recognize that their new idea of a Federal nation was created once Catalunya gave them the option to be independentist or centralist like the PP, and since they didn’t want that association with PP they created this 3rd option never defended before.

They need to open up and learn from the new parties, by publishing their decisions in some public way, showing their decision-taking process and, if they want to look democratic, allowing their militants to participate in those decisions.

They need to do such things and much more, and then we could consider them as a valid left-party alternative that will defend the rights and interest of the middle and lower classes.

However, given the current leaders and their position of power, they’re never going to do that….

Small Steps And Acts

I have time for another political rant.

Some days ago I read in a newspaper that the main "left" party in Spain (well, for the past few years they have acted like a right-wing party mostly), called PSOE, had a big meeting to refund themselves with new ideas and objectives. And the list of ideas is quite impressive. For example, they are proposing to made a law regarding salaries, so the highest salary in a company is not more than 12 times the lowest salary of that same company. This is not the only proposal, and in general they sound better than what they've been doing till now.

The problem is credibility: First, while ruling in the past, they betrayed the socialist principles quite often. They've also had several important corruption cases, and when European government demanded some actions from them, they easily followed whatever they were told even when clearly their voters would be against it. Second, even right now they have all these nice ideas...while keeping the same people in positions of power, and maintaining the idea that no one inside their party can go against whatever has been decided in the party. Basically, the party works like a small dictatorship, and you should follow orders from above.

The other main party, PP, has the same dictatorial behaviour plus they're directly heirs of the Spanish fascism. Compare Spain with other European countries, and the extreme-right parties are non-important. That's why because the supposedly "moderate right" party of the country is actually this extreme right, fascism reborn with the same people or their relatives.

Both main parties have lied, favoured their rich friends, accepted bribes and corruption, and did other things thinking only about themselves. That's why when they propose changes, it's rather unimpressive: Not following their own electoral program is the norm. Particularly with PP, if you want to know what's going to happen next or what's really going on, just assume the exact opposite of whatever they say. As per PSOE, if they really apply these changes, it would be great, but right now before we believe them they need to prove themselves, and that's achievable by not having people there that don't even have studies, they're just relatives of members in power or they've been working their way up the party all their life without any proof that they're even competent at government or able to do anything whatsoever apart from licking asses.

Apart from that....PP lately has approved some terrible laws, against protests and against abortion, similar to Franco's laws.

However, there's not much more to say...while these people are in power, and the same people decide their successors, these parties will not change, and we should not be surprised with a fascist country (version 2.0). If they were truly refunded, by kicking out anybody with some power inside the party, maybe something would improve, but as it is, it's not believable that anything will change.

So, what can we do?

Well, the problem of writing rants, or making websites and posts to warn and criticise some parties is that people with the same ideas are the ones that will read those rants and articles and websites. No matter how angry we are, how much proof do we have of the wrongdoings of some parties, the people that may actually change their minds will never read those. Internet works that way, you're more likely to form communities and follow news about people that match your opinions, so you can all agree while being angry at those other idiots that don't know what they're doing....which is a problem that closes your mentality to new ideas, of course....

We have a problem with advertising. In order to change mentalities, we should try ways to make these messages arrive to the people that will never check this blog, for example.

I believe we should print papers with single simple messages. If there's walls of text, nobody is going to read them. With simple message stating simple truths, maybe some change is possible.

For example, a simple message would be "If you don't vote or vote null or with a white paper, PP and PSOE (or the big parties in general) get more members of parliament". This is a simple message, easy to read, that is also true. Another example: "The current voting laws favour the big parties. PP is ruling the country with 53% of parliament having only 30% of voters' support". Even another: "With the money the government gave to the banks, public healthcare and education would not need cuts". And so on.

Then, we distribute the papers. Put them in walls, give them to people, even just leave them on the street. Yes, not very eco-friendly, but well, it's less echo-friendly to have our current politicians...

And, here's the key point: These papers needs to be distributed in towns (cities as well, but towns should be the main focus). The current electoral law is rigged so areas with small population represent a big chunk of the parliament. The theory is that this way no area is left without representation. The practice is that these areas are designed to maximize member of parliaments form the big parties.

Well, let's hit them where it hurts. Let's distribute these papers in small towns and populations. You visit grandparents in some small nice town in the mountains? You bring papers. You go on vacations through the Santiago way? You bring papers. You need to travel across Spain for work? You distribute papers along the way.

I'm not sure about the legality of this, but I believe it may be possible as long as all messages are true and simple. You don't write "all politics from PSOE and PP are corrupt", since that's not true and can be considered defamation...you write "PP and PSOE have X members of their parties accused of corruption", which is true, and does not declare if they're guilty or not, just shows that's it's a problem affecting lots of them.

Maybe I'm idealistic, but I believe that by putting a lot of focus in towns, something may change. Even if little by little...

Spain's problem is misinformation, false advertisement and lack of evident choices. This is a strategy from the big parties. Well, we should counter-act it. If we start now, maybe next elections we manage to kick some people out of their permanent seats...