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.