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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.

The Second Spanish Republic remembered

18/6/2018

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I think it difficult to understand what is happening in Spain today without knowing the history of the second republic (1931-1939).
But the goal of Franco was to eliminate all memory of the time, a time of some historic changes and a time in which Catalunya played a key role.
Franco was succesful in this aim and the idea of "Spain of the Catholic Kings" became the only story.
It was not until the PSOE government headed by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, from 2004 - 2011 that the atmosphere in Spain changed sufficiently to some allow discussion of the Republic, the Civil War and the dictaorship which followed.
Since the election of the PP government, with Mariano Rajoy at its head in 2011 however it has been more difficult to investigate the past. Although thta has not stopped some determined campaigners from fighting in the courts over many years to exhume the bodies of their family members. 
But for learning to understand Spain a little only happened after I researched the history of the Second Spanish Republic. 
The following article from Open Democracy gives what I consider a fair account to begin with. 
By 
CSILLA KISS 14 April 2011

The values of the Spanish Republic - freedom, progress and solidarity - are also the values of today’s Europe. Eighty years on, it is fitting to remember the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath.The passions stirred by the commemoration and official memorialisation of the Spanish Civil War even today are a reminder of the enduring principle of solidarity


The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed eighty years ago, on 14 April, 1931, after the monarchy’s supporters lost the elections against the republicans. The Spanish population greeted the proclamation of the republic with serious hopes: not only the lower classes, who expected an improvement in their lives, but also the bourgeoisie. All expected that the Republic would lead Spain into the 20th century, since the Spanish Republic was first and foremost an attempt at modernisation. It extended political and civil rights to those hitherto deprived of them, which meant the increasing of the rights of the working classes, the introduction of public education, and the emancipation of women. 
Unfortunately, the Republic had only a short time to carry out these tasks. As is well known, only five years later, in1936, the military rebellion of General Franco pushed Spain into a three-year long bloody civil war, after their coup d’état and hopes for a quick grab of power were foiled. Their victory in 1939 resulted in Franco’s thirty-six-year long dictatorship. The legacy of these tumultuous years is evident today.
The Second Spanish Republic was not born under a friendly star: its international environment was shaped by the 1929 economic crisis and its consequences, as well as by the European advance of the extreme right. Domestically the government, composed mainly of liberal and centre-left parties came into conflict with the most powerful groups of Spanish society. Confrontation was inevitable with three such groups, which were also the strongest supporters of the monarchy: the big landowners, the Catholic Church and the army. The secular policy of the Republic, based on the separation of church and state, the introduction of laic education, of civil marriage and divorce, deprived the church of its privileges in social organisation, education and culture. Moreover, while these groups, together with the monarchists and the newly formed extreme right parties such as the Falange, constituted the Republic’s right-wing opponents, the government also had to contend with those left-wing republicans which demanded more radical reforms: the various workers’ parties, trade unions, especially the anarchists which were particularly strong in Spain, the socialists, and the not yet very numerous communists. However, the government was able to handle – or as the participants called it, ‘brutally repress’ – these groups or their actions.
The general impression that the Spanish Republic was primarily a left-wing system is not far from reality, if we consider that its supporters belonged to the political centre or centre-left and the radical left also supported this form of government. On 14 April, 1931, for the first time oligarchy was replaced with the moderate centre-left. The winner of the elections in February 1936, the Popular Front, was also based on a wide coalition of centre-left and left-wing political parties and trade unions. This coalition was formed because the right-wing government that came to power in 1934 started to reverse the previous reforms, and those supporting the reforms concluded that they could only win together. Such a coalition was obviously inspired by the French example (Léon Blum’s government) as well as by fear of the advance of fascism, but it also shows that during its short life the Spanish Republic functioned as a democratic parliamentary system based on competitive elections and political alliances. And while the Popular Front government enjoyed the support of numerous workers’ parties and trade unions, at this time there was no workers’ party in the government. This blatantly belies the rebels’ propaganda that their coup d’état attempt intended to prevent a revolution and a communist takeover. In fact, it was the coup d’état itself, the following chaos and the temporary collapse of the government that facilitated the momentary success of revolutionary movements (the formation of a kind of “dual power”) as well as the strengthening of the Communist party.
Military coups and dictators appointed by kings had a tradition in Spain, and Franco and his supporters hoped for a similarly quick takeover when they rebelled on 16 July, 1936. This time, however, they faced the opposition of a part of the army and of the guardia civil, as well as the unorganized, but determined, resistance of the population, especially of the organized workers. The coup attempt thus turned into a long and bloody civil war, and what started as a Spanish affair soon acquired international dimensions.
Eighty years later, it is still imperative to mention the shameful behaviour of western democracies during the Spanish Civil War which, under the veil of “non-intervention”, refused all assistance to the republican government that any legitimate government has a right to claim, including the transfer of weapons bought by the government.  At the same time, they turned a blind eye to the material and military support offered to Franco and his rebels by Germany and Italy. Only the USSR supported the Spanish Republic, extracting a high price for its help.
Yet in marked contrast with the conduct of their governments, thousands of volunteers flooded Spain from numerous countries to help the Republic’s fight in the International Brigades. Their role was not simply symbolic, limited to the expression of solidarity, but a real and tangible military contribution.  This is evident in the three-year long resistance of Madrid, as well as the last desperate republican counter-attack at the Ebro river. Despite all this, the People’s Army, the workers’ militias and the International Brigades could only postpone, but not avoid defeat. On 1 April, 1939 Franco announced his victory and started his thirty-six-year long rule. 
Vengeance against republicans was cruel and brutal.  Everyone who supported the Republic, or whose sympathy for the republican cause could be assumed based on social status was made a target. Those who managed to cross into France did not generally fare much better: the anonymous refugees, the rank and file soldiers of the People’s Army and of antifascist parties were herded into concentration camps in the south. Later many of them participated in the French resistance, and if captured, ended up in German concentration camps. In vain they hoped that following Germany’s defeat the Allies would also rid Spain of Franco: the western powers did not desire another armed conflict with a non-belligerent party, and as the Cold War developed, in exchange for Franco’s anti-communist stance and his willingness to accommodate American military bases on Spanish territory the United States was ready to ignore the dictatorial nature of his rule.
Even if the international community behaved shamefully during the war, and pretended not to notice what was going on in Spain under Franco’s rule the memory of the Republic and the civil war did not fade amongst artists and intellectuals. For many the Spanish Republic’s fight against fascism signified the ‘last great cause’, as demonstrated by a great number of masterpieces, of which Picasso’s Guernica, Miro’s paintings and Hemingway’s writings are only the best known examples.
But while the civil war became the lyrical conscience of the European left, it was not only Franco’s official Spain dominated by the narrative of a ‘glorious crusade’, but the democratic transition that followed the dictator’s death and is still regarded as an exemplary route to democracy, that was also based on the ‘pact of forgetting’. Legally it took shape in the amnesty law, while socially it was expressed through the silence surrounding the civil war, the repression and the atrocities of the dictatorship.
Republican memory was liberated and officially sanctioned only at the 70th anniversary of the war. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s socialist government, which came to power in 2004, played a significant role in carving out the historical memory of the Second Republic, its supporters and their heritage. It is expressed in the law quoted at the start of this piece, or in the strongly debated legislation about historical memory (Ley de la Memoria Histórica), which ordered the removal of Francoist memorials and monuments, and assists the identification and reburial of republican dead, the honouring of their memory. Yet the difficulties faced by social movements organised to discover and open mass graves and honour the memory of the victims, or the complications surrounding Judge Baltasar Garzón who took up and assisted their cause, testify to the passions stirred by the war even today. While the conflicts created by the law demonstrate that the memory of the civil war and dictatorship can still divide Spanish society, the reforms implemented during the transition and in the recent past follow the best traditions of the Republic, this time hopefully permanently.
In the light of all this the sometimes tense relations between Spain and the Vatican is unsurprising and was not eased by the beatification of priests killed by republicans in the war. This gives the impression that the Spanish Catholic church, which has not yet apologized for supporting Franco’s rebellion and dictatorship, would prefer to continue to solely remember the victims on Franco’s side, forgetting the bloody crimes committed by Franco and his supporters against republicans, not only during the war, but also in the repression that followed. All this happened with the enthusiastic assistance of the church, while the Republican victims could not even be commemorated. The need to remove Francoist memorials is also a sensitive issue for the church, as commemorative plaques are visible on numerous church walls, listing the names of those who fell “for God and Spain” - that is, in the fight against the Republic.
At the same time, the values of the Spanish Republic are also the values of today’s Europe. In the 2006 book L’homme européen Jorge Semprun draws attention to the constitution of the Second Republic as a potential inspiration for Europe, and, we might add, to any contemporary state committed to freedom, progress and solidarity.  Eighty years on, it is fitting to remember this legacy of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath.

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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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