Europe Will Reap What Spain Has Sown
The Spanish government decided to reach back into its history and borrow from the playbook of longtime Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco in dealing with Catalonia’s decision to declare independence from the Spanish Kingdom as the Republic of Catalonia. The Catalan government’s decision to declare independence followed an October 1 referendum in the region that resulted in a “yes” for independence.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose Popular Party is a direct political descendant of Franco’s fascist Falangist Party, wasted no time in invoking, for the first time, Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which allows the Spanish Kingdom to impose direct rule on regions not adhering to the whiplashing from Madrid. Catalonia is the first, but possible not the last victim, of Spain’s neo-fascism on display for the entire world.
During the Spanish Civil War, the Catalans and Basques fought with bravery on behalf of the Spanish Second Republic against the fascist forces of Franco and his fascists. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini provided all-out support for Franco, much like the European Union, NATO, and the United States have fully backed Rajoy in his confrontation with Catalonia. Spain’s King Felipe VI October 3 speech, in which he condemned the Catalan referendum’s pro-independence results, was seen by many Catalans, as well as other groups like the Basques, Galicians, and Andalusians, as an unnecessary involvement in politics. Not only Catalans, but others across Spain, began calling for the scrapping of the Bourbon family’s monarchy and the establishment of the Spanish Third Republic. The Bourbons have little respect among the working peoples of Spain and France. After all, it was an ancestor of Felipe VI, Louis XVI of France, who lost his head to a French revolutionary guillotine after ignoring the poverty of the French people.
Spain’s reaction to Catalonia’s independence was swift and reminiscent of Hitler’s extinguishment of Austria’s independence in his infamous “Anschluss” (union) between Nazi Germany and Austria. Rajoy ordered the sacking of Catalan First Minister Carles Puigdemont; his entire Cabinet, chief of the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra police Jose Luis Trapero, Catalan representatives in Madrid, Brussels, Strasbourg, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, Vatican City, Lisbon, Rabat, Warsaw, Vienna, Zagreb, and Geneva; and even Catalan schoolteachers. Catalan government ministers were replaced with lisp-talking Castillian apparatchiks sent to the Catalan capital of Barcelona to administer, by fiat, all Catalan government institutions. Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria took over Puigdemont’s job, while Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido took over the Catalan police functions from Trapero. Police duties in Catalonia were largely transferred from the Mossos d’Esquadra to the feared “Guardia Civil,” the notorious political enforcers for Franco’s fascist regime that were created by Franco as a Spanish version of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo.
The Madrid regime announced that new Catalan elections would be held on December 21 of this year, however, it is far from clear whether Catalonia’s pro-independence parties will be permitted to field candidates. Madrid may proscribe all of Catalonia’s pro-independence parties and groups, including “Junts Pel Sí” (“Together For Yes”) and the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), leaving only pro-Spanish parties like Rajoy’s neo-fascist Popular Party and the accommodationist Socialists, Ciudadanos, and George Soros-financed Podemos on the ballot. Moreover, Madrid has threatened to put on trial all of Catalonia’s independence leaders for sedition. Sedition convictions under Spanish law carry a maximum 15-year prison term…..More Here