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Pro-Independence parties win Catalan elections
Jordi Oriola Folch    Off_Guardian , 17 February 2021
off-guardian.org/2021/02/16/pro-independence-parties-win-catalan-elections/


For the third time in a row, the Catalan pro-independence movement wins with an absolute majority in the Catalan elections. It has won resoundingly with 74 seats, more than the 68 that establishes the majority (in the previous elections it had won with 70). This time also with 51.22% of the votes, making it the majority among the voters.

The elections were due next year, but they were brought forward because the Spanish courts overthrew Catalan President Joaquim Torra for having disobeyed an electoral board that ordered him to take down a banner criticising the imprisonment of Catalan politicians. The President refused, citing freedom of expression, and the Spanish judiciary considered that the contempt was sufficient to force the removal of the President of the Parliament of Catalonia and cause the elections to be brought forward.

Furthermore, after consulting experts on the pandemic, the provisional Catalan executive decided to postpone the elections for five months until the third wave of Covid-19 had subsided. However, yet again, the Spanish judiciary interfered forcing the elections to be held on 14th February.

This is the same Spanish Justice that keeps 9 Catalan politicians and activists in prison, that has issued search and arrest warrants against 7 exiled Catalan politicians (which the German and Belgian courts rejected because they did not see the accusations as justified or because they understood that there were no guarantees of a fair trial in Spain), it is the same Spanish Justice that maintains the search and arrest warrant against a Majorcan musician –exiled in Belgium– for singing against the King of Spain and that is imminently going to imprison another Catalan musician, Pablo Hasel, for also having sung against the King.

In this context, and despite having the entire state apparatus and the Spanish press against them, independence has won again, and has done so obtaining a larger absolute majority than ever and with over 51% of the votes. In front of the pro-independence movement, we have the former Spanish socialist health minister during the pandemic, who has had the full support of the state, the press and unionism in general, and also the Spanish extreme-right of VOX, which has burst onto the Catalan Parliament with 11 seats.

Given this scenario, the Spanish state and the European Union cannot deny the right of self-determination of Catalan society, which must be expressed in a referendum with democratic guarantees, transparency and without foul play.

All in all, democracy is about allowing citizens to decide at the ballot box, not about violating their will with the application of laws that should in fact serve to guarantee there is a framework that respects what societies want for themselves.

Jordi Oriola i Folch is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of Transforma Films. His work has been broadcast on television stations around the world and touches on issues of human rights, sustainability, democratic participation and community work, historical memory and the economic crisis. He has also taught audiovisual classes in the Basque Country, Catalonia, South America and Africa. He can be reached through his website or twitter.



https://english.elpais.com/society/2021-02-08/spain-approaches-end-of-phase-1-of-covid-vaccination-campaign.html

El Pais - PABLO LINDE
Madrid - 08 FEB 2021 
Spain approaches end of phase 1 of Covid vaccination campaign

Spain’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign is entering the final stages of the process of immunizing residents of senior residences, while the majority of healthcare workers have also received their first jab – many have also got the second. Meanwhile, the final part of this first phase, inoculating adults with need for daily assistance even if they are not in residential care, has begun in the Canary Islands, Murcia and Navarre. This process is expected to get going in the rest of the country before the middle of February.

EL PAÍS has collected statistics in an attempt to take a snapshot of where the vaccination process has got to in Spain and these are the principal conclusions. Despite a year having passed since the first coronavirus infections having been detected in the country, the system for collecting data on the health crisis is still deficient. The Health Ministry has not centralized the collection of information on the vaccination process and just 11 of the country’s 17 autonomous regions have supplied sufficiently detailed figures.
The process is both complex and flexible. The first three groups in phase 1 of the campaign overlap in order to optimize the process, and so that it continues without pause. Healthcare workers started receiving the vaccine before the process finished in senior residences, and adults with need for daily assistance will start being immunized before all healthcare staff have had their doses.

Along the same lines, some regions are already planning for the over-80s – who are the first group in phase 2 – to start the process before phase 1 has finished. There are around 380,000 adults with need for daily assistance, and they are a complicated group to vaccinate given that home visits are often needed. It could be more efficient to vaccinate non-dependent seniors at the same time – this group is made up of 2.8 million people and accounts for six in every 10 Covid deaths in Spain. In January of this year, more than 1,300 people over the age of 80 died every week with the disease.

To complicate the situation further, not all of the approved vaccines are going to be administered to everyone. The AstraZeneca vaccines, which will start arriving in Spain this week, will only be given to people aged between 18 and 55, given that this is the group where clinical trials have proved it to be effective. For now, the Health Ministry has decided that it will be used to immunize healthcare workers who are not on the front line, and next week a decision will be made on which section of the population to prioritize – it could be essential workers or young people with underlying health conditions.
This, in effect, is what some regions are already doing. It is not completely clear which healthcare workers are being immunized in phase 1, and in many cases, the authorities have opted to give all staff in hospitals their doses, independently of their role. In Madrid, for example, a higher percentage of healthcare workers have received the second dose of the vaccine than among seniors who live in residences. This is despite the fact that senior residences – where more than half of official Covid deaths took place in Spain, according to the Health Ministry’s figures – were the absolute priority of the central government’s vaccination plan.

That said, the available data suggests that immunity is not far off for residents of the country’s senior residences. With the information supplied by the regions, nearly all residents and staff have got their first dose, and the majority of regions have administered the second dose to more than half of the recipients.

The process in residences is being delayed due to outbreaks in some of these centers. According to regional health departments consulted by EL PAÍS, this is not presenting a problem given that the process is simply being postponed where there is a high number of people infected.
Data supplied last week by the Catalan regional authorities show that the vaccines are starting to have an effect, and that number of new infections is rising less inside such residences compared to outside. Fernando Simón, the director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts (CCAES), also said on Thursday that outbreaks in these centers are falling and that comparisons made by the ministry between the over-65s who live in residences and those who do not show a lower infection rate among the former.

The full protection offered by the vaccines, however, does not arrive until a week after the second dose. With the extreme levels of transmission that are currently being seen in Spain – the 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants is around 750 – it is no surprise that the virus is finding its way into senior residences during this process, infecting inhabitants, and even claiming the lives of those who have been inoculated. The risk after the first shot is low, but it still exists.
The latest data from the Health Ministry shows that all regions have administered more than 70% of the doses that they have received. The authorities insist that the problem now will not be the capacity to deliver the vaccines, but rather the number that Spain will receive. From this weekend onward, that number will rise, with, for example, AstraZeneca sending 1.8 million doses this month. And it will go up even more in March, which is when a new vaccine – from Janssen – may be added to the list. The vaccination process for adults with need for daily assistance even if they are not in residential care will be a good means to measure the agility of the system.
With reporting by María Sosa, Isabel Valdés and Lucía Bohórquez.
English version by Simon Hunter.









Leftinspain
I am a  bit of an anomaly, a British  migrant, an expat if you like,   living in Spain, who sees life from a left point of view.

Catalonia, Lombardy, Scotland … why the fight for self-determination now?     Paul Mason

24/10/2017

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Catalonia, Lombardy, Scotland … why the fight for self-determination now? 
"In Spain and Italy, the answer is clear – a mixture of austerity and central government failures has prompted regional dissatisfaction. Elsewhere, the reasons are more complicated, but they’re not going away"

Paul Mason in the Guardian discusses how we look at nations.

 Woodrow Wilson used it to dismember the empires of old Europe; Vladimir Lenin promoted it with the aim of destroying imperialism; the UN wrote it into article 1 of its founding treaty. The right of peoples to self-determination has been a principle in international law since Versailles and confirmed as the basis for negotiations on issues as varied as Kashmir in 1948, Vietnam in 1973 and the state borders of eastern Europe in 1990.

But from Kirkuk to Barcelona, the national question has resurfaced to flummox modern democracies and confound the political tradition of technocratic centrism. As the Spanish Socialist party prepares to endorse the takeover of Catalonia by a rightwing government in Madrid, as an Italian president of the European parliament issues panicked warnings to autonomists in the northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto, those in power are having to reach for the textbooks on international law.

The issue of national self-determination is back and unitary states are struggling to cope with it. The left, particularly, seems psychologically unprepared for the eruption of struggles for democracy and social justice where nation and ethnicity, not class, is the driver. And the EU is trapped in a legal limbo. Its own founding treaty failed to include the right to self-determination of peoples – preferring instead to give that right only to nations already recognised as states, in the form of article 50.
e comInternational law on this issue exists only because certain people fought for the principle of self-determination towards the close of the first world war: the subjugated peoples of the former German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires; Wilson, who forced the principle into the founding documents of the League of Nations, and the Bolsheviks. Having recognised the right of self-determination in theory, by the summer of 1920 Lenin realised struggles for national sovereignty had the power to tear apart the imperialist powers that had invaded Russia. In response, the Comintern ordered communist parties around the world to support “national revolutionary movements” even where they were not led by workers or the left.

One hundred years ago, then, politicians ranging from conservatives to Bolsheviks had a strong theoretical understanding of nationhood, the competing claims and the principles against which they were to be judged. This is not true today.t they’re not going away
The “principle” from which Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish socialist leader, derives opposition to Catalan independence is his own country’s constitution. But if that constitution took absolute priority, then article 1 (2) of the UN charter would be redundant. For the European parliament’s president Antonio Tajani, who berated those who voted for autonomy in Lombardy and Veneto this weekend, the principle is simply fear: fear of “the proliferation of small nations”, as Tajani put it – which, again, is not an argument in international law.

To move forward we need to understand: why are regions, states and peoples beginning to re-pose the question of national self-determination now? For Spain and Italy it is clear: the mixture of austerity, corruption and political sclerosis at the centre has limited the reality of regional democracy. It has pushed autonomous regions such as Catalonia towards independence and places such as Lombardy and Veneto towards seeking fiscal autonomy from an essentially dysfunctional central state.
But in other countries there is an action-reaction cycle under way: Britain leaves the EU; the Scottish government seeks a different form of exit, heightening the tension with the centre; republicans in Ireland spy an opening to stage the referendum on Irish unity they were promised in the 1990s, when everyone assumed economics would solve the problem.
You can see the same process happening in a different way in the French pacific department of New Caledonia, whose indigenous Kanak people were promised a referendum on full sovereignty by 2018. When I spoke to Kanak leaders in January, few believed there would be enough support for a break with France. Then in the presidential elections, the white settler population of the island swung heavily behind far-right racist Marine Le Pen, changing the dynamic.
As calls for autonomy and independence proliferate, mainstream left parties are failing to understand the basic principle: in some circumstances, the national question is not a distraction from the fight for social justice – it is the frontline of it. And it is not going away.
Above the problems of economic failure and racial polarisation, the positive factor driving progressive nationalisms, from Scotland to Catalonia, is technological change. Information-rich societies reward the development of human capital; so the ability to study in your first language, to participate in a rich national culture, to create unique local selling points for incoming foreign investment is more important than ever. If the regions, peoples and nations currently demanding more freedom seem to be driven by “cultural nationalism”, that in turn is driven by technological change plus global competition.
The second impact of these forces is the emergence of successful big cities and devastated small towns. In large cities with dense networks of information and culture, you can survive globalisation. In small towns it is harder. So the logical economic strategy is to create a “region” or small nation focused on one big city, and develop the suburban and rural economy in synergy with that city, not the bigger unitary state. If Barcelona were not a massive global success story, the impetus behind Catalan nationalism would be smaller.

One Dublin-based financial intermediary told me that Irish businesses continually struggle to make the idea of “Ireland” salient for big Chinese investors: that is despite Guinness, James Connolly and James Joyce. How much harder must it be to project Lombardy or Veneto as a global destination for inward investment, when you’re up against a corrupt and semi-functional Italian state?

Understanding claims for secession and autonomy does not mean acceding to them: authoritative legal referendums are the method enshrined in international law to test such claims – and it is a disgrace that the EU and Spanish state have refused one in Catalonia.

But in December the European court of justice ruled that article 1 of the UN charter, which guarantees the right of self-determination to states that are not yet independent, is a legally enforceable right in the EU. It has yet to be tested in relation to Catalonia, Flanders or Scotland, but it will be.


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Spain: Police Used Excessive Force in Catalonia

22/10/2017

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From 12 October 2017
Spain: Police Used Excessive Force in Catalonia

Human Rights Watch  report on the police violence towards citizens in Catalonia on 1 October 2017, the day of the referendum.

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‘Worst attack’ on democracy since Franco sees half a million Catalans take to the streets

22/10/2017

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https://www.thecanary.co/global/2017/10/22/worst-attack-democracy-since-franco-sees-half-million-catalans-take-streets/
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Barcelona 21 October 2017

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An independent Catalonia is in Britain’s best interests

19/10/2017

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An independent Catalonia is in Britain’s best interests
This letter, from a man born in Catalunya and now living in Scotland, was the most read letter in Tuesday's Financial times. He mentions some interesting events from history.


"Sir, Unlike, I suspect, most commentators on the current crisis in Catalonia, I was born there. Can I point out what no commentator has yet fully understood, namely that it is in the permanent interests of the UK to prevent Iberia from being dominated by Madrid? If the Catalans had not revolted in February 1640, Portugal would not have been able to regain its independence — very few British people realise that Philip II of Spain gobbled up Portugal in 1580 and the Armada was launched mainly from Lisbon. Moreover, Catherine of Braganza would probably not have married Charles II and Britain would not have prospered as we did — see Sir John Elliott’s excellent book The Revolt of the Catalans. Again, if the Catalans had not supported the Archduke Carlos in the War of the Spanish Succession, Prince Georg of Hesse-Darmstadt would probably not have been able to seize Gibraltar — and more importantly hang on to it — see my father’s book The First Peninsular War. (Incidentally Gibraltar should never be “handed back” to Spain until Spain has agreed to cede Melilla and Ceuta to the Moroccans, and Olivenza to Portugal.) Although we abandoned the Catalans in 1713 and in 1938, they gave us much support in helping escaped British aviators in 1940-44 at a time when it took six weeks to build a bomber but six months to train a pilot. And also helped many others, notably Jews and artists, escape from the Nazis. In short, an independent Catalonia is in the best interests of the UK, especially at a time when our relations with other European nations are so fraught. Charles Drace-Francis St Monans, Fife, UK"
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Catalonia is everyone's business

17/10/2017

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Catalonia is everyone's business
When I saw in an article from a Catalunyan newspaper that Julian Assange had accused El Pais of lying about events in Catalunya I was immediately interested. 
I have been amazed at the totally one sided view this "news" paper has shown towards events in a country where it claims to represent the whole.
But then I have become accustomed to newspapers suposedly on the left, like the Guardian in the UK, becoming mouthpieces for the establishment when the going gets get tough. 
It was hard to find any information on Google other than articles in El Pais accusing Assange and Edward Snowden of lying and of being mouthpieces for the Russian government who are, of course, interfering in events in Catalunya. What very busy folk these Russians must be.
An interesting point of view in this article in English from Liz Castro, an American women living in Barcelona and very close to public affairs.
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La represión mediática de El País

16/10/2017

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El artículo critica la manipulación y falsedad de El País al haber identificado falsamente a Vicenç Navarro como secesionista.
​La represión mediática de El País

"Bajo la dirección de Antonio Caño, El País está alcanzando un nivel de sectarismo, manipulación y promoción de falsedades que está convirtiendo a tal rotativo en un mero instrumento de propaganda en defensa del status quo, especialmente hostil a las nuevas formaciones progresistas que lo cuestionan, utilizando todos los medios para destruir a los que la dirección de tal rotativo considera sus adversarios."

​the media repression by El País
The article criticizes the manipulation and falsification of El Pais, which falsely identified Vicenç Navarro as a secessionist.

THE MEDIA REPRESSION by El Pais

Under the direction of Antonio Caño, El País is reaching a level of sectarianism, manipulation and promotion of falsehoods that is turning this newspaper into a mere propaganda instrument. The paper works in defense of the status quo, is especially hostile to the new progressive group which question it, using every means to destroy those that the directors of the newspaper considers are its adversaries.



Publicado el octubre 15th, 2017 | Por Vicenç Navarro
​Publicado el octubre 15th, 2017 | Por Vicenç Navarro
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Spanish State: Can Podemos and Its Allies Save Spanish Democracy?

15/10/2017

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​
​Spanish State: Can Podemos and Its Allies Save Spanish Democracy?
Madrid—Halfway between Barcelona and Madrid by high-speed train, the city of Zaragoza proved for one day last month how simple a solution to the crisis in Catalonia should really be.


In a last-gasp effort to prevent further division and possible clashes between voters and police in Catalonia, the city, capital of the autonomous community of Aragon, hosted a multiparty conference a week before Catalonia’s illegal referendum on independence. Neither of the traditional parties—Mariano Rajoy’s governing conservative People’s Party (PP) and the Socialists (PSOE)—was present. Nor was the separatist group that now heads the Catalan government and its bid for independence from Spain. Of the large parliamentary groups, only the new-left alternative Podemos, the driving force behind the conference, attended.
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The referendum wasn’t a spontaneous happening, it was the result of a neighbourhood solidarity that will outlast any constitutional settlement

15/10/2017

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Observer article, Sunday 15 October 2017 
Catalonia’s fight is driven by a passion for neighbourhood, not nationhood

"It is not mere rhetoric when the parliamentary leader of the CUP, Anna Gabriels, says: “We know that to avoid continual economic and social crises, we need to build new economic and social relationships. We are anti-capitalist, socialist and feminist and we want to build a new republic on that basis: one that is sustainable and nurtures solidarity and equality.” And this is the point that the left across Europe hasn’t yet grasped: this aim has always been part of the self-determination movement.
The wide range of different political groups in those communities have displayed an incredibly mature approach that is committed to the neighbourhood, rather than the nation, as the focal point for action. It is this commitment that ensured high level of involvement from women’s collectives, migrant solidarity groups, independent trade unions, autonomists, anarchists and the social centres.
As the international media sees an oversimplified battle between Catalonian and Spanish nationalisms, the political elites in both states are looking over their shoulder at a movement that threatens to shake the foundations of both." 

Ignasi Bernat is an academic sociologist and social movement activist based in Barcelona. David Whyte is professor of socio-legal studies at the University of Liverpool; his most recent books are How Corrupt is Britain? and The Corporate Criminal (with Steve Tombs)

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History of Catalonia

15/10/2017

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The Wikipedia "history of Catalunya" provides a good basic introduction to the long and interesting history of the region. A good starting point for finding out more than the minstream media, in Spanish or English, is prepared to tell you.


"The territory that now constitutes the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain was first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic era. Like the rest of the Mediterranean side of the Iberian Peninsula, the area was occupied by the Iberians and several Greek and Carthaginian towns were established on the coast before the Roman conquest."

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More from Catalunya  - 14 October 2017

14/10/2017

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From the Guardian 14 October 2017 
EU intervention in Catalonia would cause chaos, Juncker says

​Juncker said that while he wished to see Europe remain united, his hands were tied when it came to Catalan independence.

“People have to undertake their responsibility,” he said. “I would like to explain why the commission doesn’t get involved in that. A lot of people say: ‘Juncker should get involved in that.’

“We do not do it because if we do … it will create a lot more chaos in the EU. We cannot do anything. We cannot get involved in that.”

Juncker said that while he often acted as a negotiator and facilitator between member states, the commission could not mediate if calls to do so came only from one side – in this case, the Catalan government.
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    I am a  bit of an anomaly, a British  migrant, an expat if you like,   living in Spain, who sees life from a left point of view. 

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