Skin in the Game

Politics is a dangerous game. It can appear childish, or pointless, or it can appear that despite much jaw-jaw there is too much war-war in either the literal or the metaphorical sense. But beneath all the hot air, the postures and the editorialising there are people, sometimes many people, with skin in the game.

That is how it feels here in Catalonia, now. After the extraordinary events of the last few weeks – extraordinary in the sense that the creation of a new nation state is definitely out of the ordinary – we have had the anti-climax of leaders leaving to seek asylum in Belgium, and of a fudged takeover, in which civil servants in Madrid will run Catalunya at least until we hold a new set of elections in late December.

So that was the outcome of more than two million people voting, in polling stations defended, over the weekend of 1^st October, by thousands of volunteers. Of more than a million people turning out each year on 11^th September to create massive demonstrations in Barcelona, or along the Mediterranean coast. Of bloody attacks by Spain’s militarised National Police and Civil Guard on people in lines at voting stations. Of what Julian Assange has called the first Cyberwar in Europe (yes, his hyperbole is sometimes a little far-fetched). Of widespread censorship. And of locking up the leaders of two charities on charges that could put them down for up to 15 years.

All of these people had skin in the game. Many will be charged with mediaeval-sounding offences such as rebellion and sedition, knowing that the courts in Spain – where this type of justice is still a relative novelty after years of dictatorship – are unlikely to be lenient in sentencing. More than 700 town, village and city mayors, for starters. Many civil servants. The bosses of Catalan radio and television stations. People – such as my neighbour, a farmer – who were selected at random to run the voting stations on 1^st October. People – such as this writer – who have written about the referendum in positive terms. All of them, all of us, have skin in the game.

And for what? So that the Sixth Catalan Republic could last just one weekend, from 15:27 on Friday 27^th October, when the vote in the Catalan parliament, the Generalitat, was announced, to around mid-day today Monday 30^th October, when we heard that the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont had arrived in Belgium and was seeking political asylum? All of the brilliant planning before the Referendum – hiding the voting boxes so that even Spain’s ‘intelligence’ service could not find them – wasted on a grey Monday afternoon with the disappearance of the team who led us this far?

For what? 

For community. 

Because the people who had and have skin in the game are people who have built a community. We’re a community of sufferers, today. But we showed the incredible power of a mass movement, enough power to create, even for a weekend, a new state. Power and organisation enough to evade an entire police force and intelligence service. Power to force Spain to reconsider its relationship with Catalonia. Power to move the bond and stock markets. The people are not powerless pawns in the grip of multinationals, media and our Imperial Leaders. We have power, we have wielded that power, and we can do that again – whether the cause is Catalonia, saving the environment or rights.  We have the power because we are willing to risk our skins – literally in the case of the people attacked by the National Police – for a cause that we believe in.

Mariano, my friend

Spanish President Mariano Rajoy could not have done a better job. A better job, that is, for Catalan independence.

On Saturday morning he announced a series of measures that raise the hairs on the back of the neck. The aim, he claims, is to restore constitutional democracy. The effect is quite the reverse.

Mariano's government will decaptitate the Catalan government (and as collateral damage, the government of the tiny protectorate of the Vall d'Aran.) Mariano becomes, effectively, the president of Catalonia and his Ministers take over the Catalan ministries. Every cent spent by the Catalans government will be controlled by Madrid. He will take control of the radio and television channels subsidised by the Catalan government, and the Catalan centre for telecommunications (CTTI), and thus the internet. His Ministers will run the schools and the police, the health service and the suburban railway. Every agency, company, foundation or department of the Catalan government will now be controlled by Madrid. The El País newspaper (whose shareholder structure includes the Madrid government) reported on Sunday that Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, is to be charged with inciting revolution and faces a 25 year prison sentence.

This is the same Mariano Rajoy who led a campaign, whilst in opposition, to overturn the statute that would govern relations between Spain and Catalonia as an autonomous region, the 'Estatut'. The statute had been voted through by the two governments and in a referendum, but none of this was good enough for my friend Mariano, who took the statute to the politically controlled Constitutional Tribunal and destroyed it.

Now this friend of an independent Catalonia has given the Catalans exactly what they needed. By revisiting Imperial Spain, by sending in his violent, militarised police to beat old ladies in voting queues, and by attempting to take over a government that thousands of Catalans lost their lives to defend in the 18th and 20th centuries, my friend Mariano has catalysed a social revolution in Catalonia. People who were undecided have become staunch nationalists. The demonstrations are getting bigger, although they remain, despite the provocations of plain-clothes policeman placed there for the express purpose of inciting violence, completely peaceful.

And people are smiling in wonder at the utter stupidity of Madrid politicians. What are they thinking? How do they imagine that they can control the people? Because this is a people's revolt, something that Madrid has failed to understand. This is emphatically not, as it is painted in Madrid, a few crazed politicians leading a hypnotised electorate to a cliff edge. It is the voices, bodies and votes of millions of Catalans who would rather be poor and free than live under the heel of the Spanish Empire.

This is Jeremy Heimans' "new power" in action, and my friend Mariano has no idea how to channel it.

Referendum, just for the record

Just for the record of having taken part, for the record of Yes votes, for the record of a wonderful, terrifying emotional weekend, a few notes on the Catalan Referendum on Independence, 1st October 2017, as seen at Sant Esteve de Palautordera, the village in Montseny, Catalonia, that is my home:


We got the call-out on Thursday. Everyone should be at the old primary school - the polling station for the village - on Friday night. The fear was that the police would seal the polling station. In Catalonia and Spain this official seal (it's done with Police sticky tape) makes it illegal to enter a building. So we had to make sure that the police did not seal us out.

Friday Night

By 6pm on Friday there were a couple of hundred people in the school playground. The numbers grew during the evening. We organised food, there was street theatre from Tortell Poltrona of Circ Cric and a story from the Marduix theatre group. And we watched Pride, dubbed into Catalan. The struggle of the lesbian and gay community in London to support, and be accepted by, the striking miners seemed especially appropriate as our tiny village took on the might of the Spanish Empire.

The film was still running when around 1am on Saturday morning the shout 'Police' went out. We shut off the movie, and crowded round the entrance to the playground. We phoned and texted friends and within three minutes there was a crowd of 250 people and growing, jammed into the entrance of the playground. Two very calm, decent Mossos d'Esquadra (the autonomous government's police force) drove up and told us that they had to read a charge against us. Was there any single organisation behind all of this? 'The people of the village' we replied. Was there any one person who was responsible? 'The people' went the shout. The police then told us that they would be back - and this time there might be four of them - at 06:00 on Sunday morning to 'precintar' (officially seal) the school. But that if there was 'such a big crowd that, in our judgement, we might cause public disorder by closing the school' then they would be unable to seal the gates. They repeated this message so that we all understood clearly.

I slept, fitfully, that Friday night at the school with around 50 other people, waking repeatedly at small noises and shouts in the night. In the morning, with three other volunteers and the generous donation of wonderful fresh croissants from the Valflorida bakery we made breakfast for around 150 people.

A Festival for Democracy

Saturday morning was a festival. The group organised dance classes (I took part in tap-dance, and Menorcan 'ball de bot'), drawing classes and talks. There was music, and people contributed food and drink -  we were all avoiding alcohol so it was soft drinks all round - to sustain the crowd. There was another visit by the Mossos with the same message about the timing of their Sunday visit, and the relevance of the crowd. And so into Saturday evening, now with some 500 people in the school and the playground. I retired home for a few hours sleep, and then came back at 05:00 to make breakfast. At 05:30 we served over 200 breakfasts to the volunteers - so many that the local café's coffee machine broke down with the demand. By 05:00 there were at least 500 people there, and by 06:00, the appointed hour that number had grown to represent more than half the number who would eventually vote.

The police did come back, but made the sensible judgement that the crowd was too big to control (it was two friendly Mossos, and 800 people at the school.) The Mossos stayed with us all day, parked just a little way away from the school, watching the entrance to the playground.

The Voting Boxes

Just before 08:00 the shout went out 'Police!' By then we had been drilled to block the entrance, and climb onto the barrier fence surrounding the playground. The crowd was enormous, all of us facing outwards, packed along the fence. Behind us, and thus completely hidden from the two Mossos in their patrol car, three people appeared with black bin bags. The voting boxes! The famous voting boxes that had been hidden so successfully that the entire Spanish police force had been unable to find them! They were smuggled into the school behind our backs and out of sight of the Mossos. And then, realising what had happened, realising that this had been a false alarm designed to distract attention, we all cheered. The boxes, with the voting slips and envelopes were safely in the polling station.

Now an enormous queue formed. We heard that - another masterstroke by the Generalitat - the Catalan government had introduced a universal census so that people whose polling station had been shut down could go to any other station to vote. This depended on access to the web, and so the team had organised IT specialists to be on hand, backed by a team of hackers somewhere in Catalonia, to keep the census open against attacks by the Spanish intelligence service.

Police Brutality

Then we started to see the videos. The awful videos of brutality by the Policia Nacional and the 'Civil Guard' against defenceless voters. The rubber bullets - banned across Catalonia two years ago after an incident in which a woman was blinded. We were all thoroughly scared. WhatsApp and texts began to arrive from friends in other places who had been attacked or seen the attacks. We reorganised the queue to ensure that the oldest people could vote early and leave. And we did more drills to prepare for what we presumed would be an armed attack by Spain's militarised police.

We uncovered a secret police officer. She was identified (in our village, everyone knows everyone so it was particularly stupid of the Civil Guard to send in a plain-clothes cop), surrounded by a group of women, and gently moved away until she left the village.

The Farmers (and Firefighters) Save the Day

Then the tractors came. The local farmers came out in force to support the referendum, and used three tractors to block the main access to the polling station. One farmer parked a livestock truck across a fourth entrance and the fifth was closed with four tonnes of sand, courtesy of a local building supplier. The firefighters arrived - the roar of pleasure from the crowd must have been audible a kilometre away - and added to the blockade by parking a fire tender across the road. 

That was all a relief, but it did not stop us being vigilant, especially when, during the afternoon, we heard that more than a dozen Policia Nacional vans were parked on the main road a few kilometres from the village. People were still frightened - at one point in the afternoon an old lady asked me, from outside the playground, if it was safe to come in and vote; I reassured here that here, now, it was safe.

The young people of the village were incredible, reinforcing a weak section of the fence around the playground with street barriers, and zipping around on their scooters and bikes to watch out for arriving police.

As the referendum closed, the brim-full voting boxes were smuggled out of the school in a reverse of their arrival, and the counting team was taken to a safe house in the village to compile the results.

Democracy Wins

In the end, aside from the plain-clothes police officer, no-one came to assault our village. The people of the village, together, saved the day. The evidence is in the figures - in a village of a couple of thousand voters we achieved the highest ever result for voting in an election or referendum;  85.36% participation, and 95.8% (1,525 people) voting Yes.

It was an extraordinary day. A day of mass participation, of powerful emotions - fear, laughter, many, many tears of pain (when we saw how the Policia Nacional hit old ladies to try to prevent them voting) and joy (at the farmers, the fire fighters, the four tonnes of sand). It was a day of new friendships, of many hugs and much dancing. And a day when democracy, the will of the people, proved that it was stronger than the 'argument of force' from Spain. A day to remember forever.

Light Shift

There was a moment this morning, under the trees, when the three-quarters moon cast a shadow as the dawn light from the East caught the topmost leaves. The moon's brilliance outshone the sun.

That is how it feels in Catalonia. The cool, quiet, clean light of a tiny planet outshining the raging solar flares from Madrid.

Catalonia has outmanoeuvred Madrid at every step of the referendum process, keeping calm and carrying on while Madrid sent in its violent militarised police to beat people standing in line to vote. The Catalan government successfully delivered voting slips, envelopes and voting boxes to more than 2,000 polling stations despite a vast operation over weeks by the Spanish police force. Crowds of people, this writer included, slept over at the polling stations and barricaded the entrances to stop armed police intervention, all so that more than two million people could cast their votes. Teams of hackers kept our voting system operational despite mass attacks by others, assumed to be the (patently slightly useless) Spanish 'intelligence' service.

And now the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, has made the move that is check-mate to Madrid's blundering game. Having won the referendum he has declared independence, but has asked the Catalan parliament to delay the actual moment 'for a few weeks' to give time to Madrid to negotiate.  A brilliant move, this forces Madrid to take a decision; carry on the violence, the arrests, the trumped up charges against Catalan politicians? Or accept that the Catalan people have spoken and negotiate a settlement, possibly with an international mediator.

Madrid will know the consequences of the first option; an immediate confirmation of independence and widespread revulsion, here and internationally, of the Spanish government.

But don't rely on Madrid to care. It is perfectly probable that the Spanish government will carry on its long tradition of bullying the Catalans, in the vain hope that they will submit. International opprobium does not seem to concern Madrid.

The comments on the village street last night were approving: Puigdemont had made another brilliant move. People here have a lot of confidence in him - one person told me that 'selecting Puigdemont was the best thing that [former president] Artur Mas ever did'. He and his team of advisers have played a brilliant game so far, and the expectation here is that the team have worked out the next few moves in the game, whatever Madrid do.

So now we wait. Wait for the next move from Madrid. And ready ourselves for a long, steep road to independence.