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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.

Rajoy and Catalonia: a troublesome story

2/6/2018

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www.catalannews.com/politics/item/rajoy-and-catalonia-a-troublesome-story​

Some background to the current situation in Catalunya
Ousted Spanish president took exceptional measures to crush the independence bid
ACN | Barcelona
Mariano Rajoy was ousted as Spanish president on Friday following a parliamentary no-confidence motion triggered by a corruption scandal. Catalan pro-independence parties were instrumental in putting an end to Rajoy’s rule and appointing Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez in his place—an unlikely alliance only made possible by a common foe.
In power since 2011, Rajoy has been Spain’s central figure in its response to Catalonia’s push for independence from the outset of the movement, and throughout the escalation that led to a referendum and a declaration of independence last October, which plunged Spain into the country’s worst political crisis in decades.
The emergence of the independence bid is inseparable from Rajoy’s decisions as head of the Spanish government. In 2012, in the midst of the economic crisis, the then Catalan president Artur Mas asked Rajoy for a better financial deal. Rajoy said no. In response, Mas called a snap election and won by championing a new demand: a referendum to decide on independence.
Although a majority of lawmakers in Catalonia supported a referendum, Rajoy blocked all attempts to agree on a vote. In 2014, the Spanish parliament dismissed the petition with 299 votes against and only 47 in favor—including those of Catalan parties.
 
Carles Puigdemont would eventually replace Mas as the head of Catalonia’s pro-independence government. Again, he opened talks with Rajoy about holding a referendum. He received the same answer as his predecessor: independence from Spain is not a matter for discussion.
The Catalan government held an unofficial vote on independence in 2014, with a 40% turnout and with 80% of those people voting to leave. Spain banned the vote, but let it go ahead.
Puigdemont pledged to organize another vote on independence despite Rajoy’s opposition. This time, though, the results would be binding—which means that independence would be declared should the ‘yes’ vote be the preferred option.
In the meantime, Rajoy lost his absolute majority in the Spanish parliament following two consecutive elections that ended in deadlock. As opposition parties failed to form an alternative government, Rajoy stayed in power with the support of the liberal Ciutadans—a party with a hardline stance against Catalan independence.
 
Unlike the 2014 vote, the Spanish government pledged to stop the new referendum. Rajoy sent thousands of police officers to Catalonia in order to halt preparations for the vote, deemed illegal by the judiciary.
Despite Spain’s opposition, the referendum went ahead on October 1, 2017. In an operation criticized by international organizations for its “excessive use of force,” police officers cracked down on voters and left more than a thousand people injured, according to Catalan government figures.
Catalan parties went on to declare independence following a ‘yes’ victory and a 43% turnout. In an unprecedented move in Spain’s democratic history, Rajoy triggered Article 155 of the Constitution to impose direct rule on Catalonia, sack Puigdemont and all his ministers, and call a new election. Rajoy was backed by Ciutadans, as well as the Socialists—with whom pro-independence parties would subsequently unite to oust Rajoy.  
Rajoy would then take a backseat role as the courts entered the ring to prosecute Catalan leaders. As of today, and with a final trial still pending, there are nine pro-independence leaders preemptively jailed in Madrid and seven more seeking refuge from prosecution in other European countries.
Puigdemont was among those who traveled abroad. Although standing from Brussels, the deposed president managed to secure enough seats in last December’s election to reclaim his post. The Catalan branch of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP) got its worst result in decades and became the smallest party in Parliament with four MPs.
Yet, the Spanish courts blocked all attempts to appoint Puigdemont, as well as other candidates subsequently put forward, who were also facing prosecution for their role in the independence bid. Rajoy remained in control of the Catalan government all this time.
Pro-independence parties would eventually elect Quim Torra as president. He pledged to reinstate the ministers dismissed by Rajoy last October, who were either in jail or abroad, but the Spanish president used his rule over Catalonia to block the appointments.
In order to unblock the political standstill, Torra gave up on his promise and nominated alternative candidates. In one of his last decisions as Spanish president before being ousted, Rajoy greenlighted the new cabinet and authorized direct rule to be lifted with the formation of a new government on Saturday.
Where it all began
Mas put the call for a new state at the center of Catalan politics. Yet the pro-independence movement was already looming at the grassroots level. Shortly before the meeting in Madrid, a massive demonstration flooded the streets of Barcelona with a clear motto: “Catalonia, a new state in Europe.” The first clear-cut pro-independence rally of many to come.
In 2010, another huge demonstration in the Catalan capital paved the way for the outset of the pro-independence movement. People gathered to protest against a Spanish Constitutional Court ruling, which cut down a new Statute of Autonomy backed by Catalan parties.
The regional carta magna was brought to court by Spain’s People’s Party (PP), which launched a country-wide campaign against the text. The party was already led by the then head of the opposition Mariano Rajoy.

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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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