Political control of schoolchildren and police in Catalonia

The Catalan government is officially called the Generalitat. Unofficially it is widely known as the Genestapo. In this post we look at how it keeps political control of the schools and the police, two very sensitive areas for totalitarian governments.

Political control of schools 

We have already seen the way in which the Catalangovernment interferes politically in the lives of schoolchildren by spying onthem. Now the children are being asked for their political opinions.

The El Morell secondary school in Tarragona circulated a questionnaire from Lérida University to be completed by the pupils. It contained the questions:

To what extent do you feel:

1 Catalan

2 Spanish

3 Of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you feel proud of being:

1 Catalan

2 Spanish

3 Of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you identify with:

1 The Catalan language

2 The Spanish language

3 The language of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you identify with:

1 Catalan culture

2 Spanish culture

3 The culture of your country of birth (or that of your family)

To what extent do you identify with:

1 The independence movement

2 The non-independence movement

Answers to be given as a score from 1 (never) to 5 (always)

“We don’t understand why the pupils have to be asked these questions,” said one mother. The documentation in the study says that “Participation is voluntary, anonymous and confidential” but parents have said that that was not the case. The school is trying to row back, saying, “We didn’t know the content of the questionnaire,” (yeah, sure, pull the other one) and “We have proposed the individualised return of the questionnaires to the families who ask for them or else collective destruction.” The individualised return of anonymous questionnaire forms – now there’s a thought!

The questionnaire form shown here is presented in Catalan only. That is the only language that can be used in Catalan schools for any purpose at all. Why? Because it ensures that the lower classes will have poor Spanish and will not be able to leave Catalonia. The policy of linguistic immersion is not practised by the  Catalan bourgeoisie. The latest in a long line of hypocritical top Catalans to be discovered avoiding the policy that they impose on the lower orders is a well-known footballer called Pep Guardiola, who sends his children to the American Benjamin Franklin school in Barcelona, a “truly international school” where the teaching “is entirely in English, with language courses offered in Spanish, Catalan and French”. It must be said though that he hasn’t quite worked out quite what a international education is about: “My children go to school with Indian people, black people, normal people …”

Political control of the police

In 2016 Victor Tarradellas was the Secretary for International Relations of CDC, the name at that time of Carles Puigdemont’s party (now JxCat). He was a trusted confidant of former Catalan premier Artur Mas and of Puigdemont at the time when the 2017 illegal referendum was being planned. If a government is planning an illegal action on the scale of a referendum, it obviously has to have the police on its side. It was Victor’s job to find out which senior officers (“comisarios”, like superintendent) of the Mossos (Catalan police) could be trusted.

“Fainthearted separatist”, “comes from the Guardia Civil”, “red”, these are some of his comments, which were accompanied by positive and negative marks against the names. He kept his comments in a notebook that has come to light in the course of a judicial investigation into illegal funding of the party.

He had a list of 45 officers marked on three scales: patriotism and determination, management ability and charisma, and institutional loyalty. His notes praised recently promoted officers while criticising others for having come from the Guardia Civil or for their being close to the Spanish socialist party PSOE. The current chief officer of the Mossos Eduard Sallent had a top score on all three scales with a positive mention of his background in the nationalist student union FNEC. “Very separatist” was the verdict.

Sources

(Spanish)

Diari de Tarragona

Un estudio pregunta a alumnos de El Morell si son independentistas

(A study asks pupils at El Morell if they are separatists)

Mundo deportivo

La polémica frase de Guardiola: “Mis hijos van al colegio con gente india, gente negra, gente normal...”

(Guardiola’s controversial sentence: “My children go to school with Indian people, black people, normal people …”)

El Independiente

Un dirigente de CDC hacía listas de "buenos y malos" comisarios de los Mossos

(A leading member of CDC made lists of “good and bad” senior officers of the Mossos)

(English)

Benjamin Franklin International School

"I'd whip her till she bled," says the Guardian's chum

Pablo Iglesias is the leader of a Spanish far-left political party called Podemos. He has just done a deal with Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to form a coalition government with himself as deputy PM.

Sam Jones for the Guardian welcomes this:

Spain’s ruling socialist party has reached a preliminary coalition deal with the anti-austerity Unidas Podemos to try to form a government after the country’s second inconclusive election in seven months.

And why not? The other day the Guardian, being British, had no hesitation in giving Dago Johnnie his orders about what future political arrangements he must ensure in Spain (progressive parties must unite) and Heaven’s command has been dutifully obeyed. Podemos’s "progressive" credentials are present in its very name – note the feminine form of Unidas (united). In a hagiography published when Iglesias first came to prominence, the Guardian quoted him: “I’m a normal person.”

Mariló Montero is a TV presenter and she has a different view from the Guardian of what is a normal person. In 2016 she managed to upset Señor Normal. His response was simple: “I’d whip her till she bled … [I’m] a perverted Marxist turned psychopath.”

She referred him to the Spanish Institute for Women. The Institute, not surprisingly, gave her its backing saying that the comment was "totally inadmissible as sexist, and because it incites violence." Iglesias said that he “was sorry”, thereby removing any suspicion that the affair might have been the result of hacking or a montage.

"I don't like children or the family, or walking in the park, or dressing well, or old women stopping me or bloody Francoists telling me to fuck off, and with majority politics it's the same for me as with majority sex ... it doesn't give me a hard-on ..." says the GuardiPodemos's Señor Normal.

Q. Does Sam Jones of the Guardian know this story?

A. You can bet your boots he does. It was all over the media at the time and he’s paid to read the Spanish media.

Q. Did he warn Guardian Central that their Señor Normal was a self-described perverted psychopath who fantasised about whipping defenceless women, whose willy was left flaccid by the thought of majority politics?

A. He’s paid to do that sort of thing too.

Q. Does Guardian Central give a flying fuck about this?

A. Of course not. It thinks that it controls the information that gets published about Spain in English, so if its hero turns out to be a self-confessed psychopathic street-fighter with misogynistic tendencies, it just has to keep quiet and say nothing and nobody will ever know. Just what happened with its backing for Arnaldo Otegi.

Well hard luck, Guardian. You’ve been rumbled!

Pablo the feminist displays his credentials

Other gems from the Guardian’s “anti-austerity” hero Pablo Iglesias:

The Spanish Constitution: “That scrap of paper from 1978”. As Deputy Prime Minister he will be required to swear loyalty to it. Hmmm. We can imagine what that oath will be worth.

“Venezuela is a model to follow.”

And inevitably, he supports Arnaldo Otegi, calling the ETA terrorist a “peacemaker”. Otegi is of course the GuETArdian’s best friend whom we discussed here.

Well now the GuardiPodemos editor Katharine Viner has a new best friend, a perverted Marxist psychopath who fantasises about using extreme violence against women. Isn’t she the lucky one!

GuardiPodemos editor Katharine Viner and friends

Sources

(English)

The Guardian

'Yes he can!' How Spanish indignado Pablo Iglesias aims to use a wave of protest to build 'a decent country'

Spain's ruling socialists strike coalition deal with Podemos

The Guardian view on Spain’s election: progressive parties must unite to defeat the far right

(Spanish)

El Mundo

Mariló Montero denuncia a Pablo Iglesias ante el Instituto de la Mujer por decir que "la azotaría hasta que sangrase"

(Mariló Montero refers Pablo Iglesias to the Spanish Institute for Women for saying that he “would whip her till she bled”)

ABC

El largo historial de Iglesias en apoyo de Otegi

(Iglesias’ long history of support for Otegi)

El Confidencial

El Instituto de la Mujer respalda a Mariló y Pablo Iglesias dice que "lo siente"

(The Spanish Institute for Women backs Mariño and Pablo Iglesias says that he “is sorry”)

Cope

Cuando Pablo Iglesias hablaba de la Constitución como "aquel papelito de 1978"

(When Pablo Iglesias described the Constitution as “that scrap of paper from 1978”)

YouTube

Iglesias and Venezuela

The Brussels Times, sedition and investigative journalism

The Brussels Times is one of those newspapers that cater for English-speaking people in a country that has a large expat community, a common and useful phenomenon. It has just started a weekly series called Brussels Behind the Scenes, which we are told is “a weekly investigative newsletter by The Brussels Times’ Samuel Stolton”. Well, that sounds interesting. There must be a lot that goes on in Brussels that is never told in public. So, what do we have?

The first article, dated 1 November 2019, is titled Call Me Boris. Yes, it’s about Boris Johnson and starts by using a whole truckload of adjectives to evoke his time as a journalist in the city:

A shock of blonde hair emerges through the doorway and the face underneath becomes blushed, enveloped by the damp heat of the room.

The man raises a plump, pink hand to his flaxen locks and ruffles them, disturbing the subdued colours of this musty Irish pub. Approaching the bar, a wry smile crawls over his face as heads, in mechanical unison, turn in his direction. It is the early 1990s and the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has entered Kitty O’Shea’s for a lunchtime drink. 

It is obvious that Sam himself did not witness this scene almost 30 years ago. It is equally obvious that this piece of “investigative journalism” required nothing more arduous than trawling around the Brussels watering-holes in search of gossipy reminiscences from those old-timers who did remember Johnson’s spell in the city.

Sam’s second venture into the risky genre of investigation was, in fact, even easier. All he was required to do was to reproduce an anti-Spanish sob story originating from the Catalan government’s propaganda department and masquerading as an interview with Meritxell Serret. She was the Catalan Councillor for Agriculture at the time of the seditious coup in 2017 and she is finding life on the run (“in exile” as the Catalan government puts it and Sam faithfully copies) to be rather tedious. She feels abandoned. She did a bunk with Catalan premier Puigdemont but gets no support from him because she is from ERC. Her party has now fallen out with Puigdemont’s JxCat party, and she isn’t the flavour of the month in ERC either because her own party leader Oriol Junqueras stayed in Catalonia to face the music, spent two years on remand, and is now serving 13 years porridge for sedition. While she’s in Brussels eating mussels.

A sob story we said, and we meant it literally. Sam’s purple prose style spares us no mawkish thrill:

“I am fighting for the values of Europe – integration, unity, diversity – these are also the principles of a free and independent Catalonia. The European institutions act as guarantors of these freedoms,” Serret tells me, when I ask her who she is doing all this for, having sacrificed so much for the mirthless mope of the Belgian climate.

Tears begin to bud from Serret’s eyes. The alternative, she says, does not bear thinking about. “To permit attitudes that support the imprisonment of democrats and the repression of our political movement is much worse. In Spain, this is too recent in our history to forget.”

There is no need here to parse the whole article. The EU has made it clear consistently that events in Catalonia are an internal matter for Spain and of no concern to its institutions. We will simply quote one downright lie:

Serret cannot return to Spain, for now. She is reportedly wanted on a charge of disobedience, an accusation that would normally not merit the issuing of a European Arrest Warrant.

Sam’s article is dated 8 November. On 30 October the Spanish media reported that the Supreme Court had decided not to proceed with an attempt to have her returned, precisely because the only charge would be “desobediencia” (contempt of court) and those of her comrades who had not scarpered had been sentenced to 20 months disbarment from public office and a fine. In the circumstances, it would not be in the public interest to proceed with the complexities of an EAW. It is still a lie of course that she cannot return to Spain. There is absolutely nothing to stop her doing so. Except the prospect of 20 months out of active politics and a fine.

So who is Samuel Stolton, the Bob Woodward of the Brussels Times? For a start, the shallowness of his knowledge of Spanish affairs is shown by his own remarkable admission of naivety:

Last week, during a dinner with Spanish diplomats in Brussels and naively assuming that the Catalan quandary could be a stimulating conversation topic, I allotted the subject into our discussion. Indeed it was, but not in the manner I had expected –yielding instead a wild and flippant response. “The media has got it all wrong,” one diplomat said. “The separatists are fanatic extremists – they are radicals.”

It goes without saying that we are facing the old British problem, a belief that merely being British confers a magical ability to understand the affairs of other countries and a divine right to tell Johnny Foreigner what he is doing wrong.

Sam tells us that he is:

the Digital Editor at the European news agency, Euractiv, and I cover issues ranging from continental politics to global technology news. I have also written for The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Brussels Times and others.

Euractiv limits itself to:

Samuel Stolton writes on EU affairs in the fields of digital policy and technology. He has a particular interest in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and digital regulation.

The collection of his articles on the Euractiv site are almost exclusively to do with digital technology. The few political articles are about Brexit. There is nothing about Spain or any other European country.

His Guardian work consists of three very short pieces all published in less than 24 hours between 17.00 GMT on 17 February and 12.30 GMT on 18 February 2018:

• 120 words praising a Serbian photographer
• 50 words puffing a bookshop in Cardiff
• 300 words giving Elon Musk a boost

This looks more like PR work than suitable training for the minefield of Catalan affairs. Sam thinks that his admission of naivety will excuse him anything. But is naivety what is required in an investigative reporter? The editor of the Brussels Times may care to ponder the question.

Sources

(English)

The Brussels Times

Call me Boris

Tears in Catalonia

Samuel Stolton’s website

http://www.samuelstolton.com/

Euractiv

Samuel Stolton

The Guardian

Urban landscapes reimagined – in pictures

Browse a bookshop: Octavo’s Book Cafe and Wine Bar, Cardiff

Elon Musk’s dream ideas

(Spanish)

Crónica Global

¿Qué fue de Meritxell Serret?

(What became of Meritxell Serret?)

El Periódico

La fiscalía aplaza la reclamación contra Marta Rovira al haber huido a Suiza

(The Spanish public prosecutor defers the claim against Marta Rovira as she has fled to Switzerland)

Digging up Franco in the Economist

The Economist is to be congratulated again on its balanced coverage of Spain. Its article on the exhumation of Franco concludes thus:

The Socialists want to turn the Valley into “a museum of memory”. There is a risk in that of history once again being written by one side. Perhaps the best thing would be to deconsecrate the site and create a museum that explains what happened at the Valley itself. … Modern Spain is not in thrall to Franco’s ghost. Most Spaniards have no memory of the dictator. Only an ageing minority still regularly attend mass. But the lack of unanimity over the exhumation shows that the country has yet to agree on the past. Perhaps it never will.

The crucial, and most unusual, point that is made here is the clear recognition that Spain is still far from achieving closure and a simple view of the events of the 1930s, from the creation of the Second Republic in 1931 to Franco’s victory in 1939. The Left often gives the impression that it seeks revenge, that it wants to refight the war and win it this time, rather than desiring unity. It will indeed take time to agree on the past, much more than is pretended by those who seek an immediate rewriting of the “historical memory”. The start of a search for consensus and common agreement would be welcome.

The GuETArdian and terrorism

Arnaldo Otegui is an ETA terrorist who has eaten the King of Spain’s porridge and is barred from holding elected office until February 2021. But according to the GuETArdian its correspondent is a happy chappie with a winning smile who runs a progressive political party.

Otegui was released from prison in March 2016 after serving part of a 10-year sentence for membership of ETA that was handed down in 2011. His sentence included the 10-year election ban. He was convicted of membership of ETA and acting illegally at its orders. A conviction of being a leader of ETA was quashed on appeal and the prison sentence was reduced to 6½ years, although the 10-year disbarment still stands. We have full respect for that decision and are happy to say explicitly that Arnaldo Otegui was not a leader of ETA. In exactly the same way that Gerry Adams was never a leader of the IRA.

In 1979 he was convicted of kidnapping a businessman and sentenced to six years, which he served from 1979 – 1983

In 2006 he got 15 months for glorification of terrorism.

The GuETArdian knows all this because it has Stephen Burgen and Sam Jones in Spain and they tell GuETArdian Central what is going on here. It’s what they’re paid for. But the editor Katharine Viner ignores them. Why? Because she is dazzled by the word “progressive” perhaps. Or is she following the ancient British policy of strictly observing the law at home while fostering mayhem abroad? With Brexit approaching, Gibraltar could get a bit tricky, and the GuETArdian may have decided that a touch of anti-Spanish feeling never goes amiss.

After all (as we reported here), on 14 October the GuETArdian gave a platform to Carles Puigdemont, a man on the run from extremely serious criminal charges in Spain, charges for which his comrades have received 11½ years. It is well known that his lawyer Gonzalo Boye once got 14 years for taking part in an ETA kidnapping. The other day the Spanish Policía Nacional raided Boye's home searching for evidence of laundering drug money.

They say that you can judge a person by the company that they keep.

GuETArdian editor Katharine Viner with her new best friends.

Sources

(Spanish)

ABC

¿Cuáles son los delitos de Otegui por los que ha sido condenado?

(What offences has Otegui been found guilty of?)

Wikipedia

Arnaldo Otegi

vozpópuli

Gonzalo Boye: el abogado de Puigdemont condenado por colaborar con ETA

(Gonzalo Boye: Puigdemont’s lawyer convicted of collaborating with ETA)

Catalonia Today: sabotage and aggression

After the violent occupation of Barcelona airport and the blockading of main roads, a train hit a tree that had been felled and placed deliberately on a railway line.

 * * * * *

A motorcyclist tried to run a road block set up by the “brownshirts” of the CDR (Committees for the Defence of the Republic) who were following the exhortation of Catalan premier Quim Torra to “Press hard” (his family are all CDR members). The rider was insulted forcefully and the keys of his motorbike were taken from him. The only response from the Mossos (Catalan police) was to take his details. There is no evidence that they acted in any way against the aggressors.

45-second video of the incident.

 Sources

(Spanish)

La Vanguardia

Un tren de Rodalies choca con un árbol cortado intencionadamente en las vías

(A local train hits a deliberately felled tree on the tracks)

  

El Catalán.es

Agreden a un motorista (los Mossos mirando) al que habían robado las llaves por no pararse ante un corte en la Gran Vía

(A motorcyclist is attacked (as the Mossos watch) after his keys are stolen for not stopping at a roadblock in Barcelona’s Gran Vía)

  

El Periódico

Torra, a los CDR: “Apretáis y hacéis bien en apretar”

(Torra to the Committees for the Defence of the Republic: “Press hard, and you’re right to press hard”)

El Muindo

La vinculación de Quim Torra con los CDR: la familia "apuntada" en el grupo radical

(Quim Torra’s link with the CDR: the family “signed up” to the radical group)

Will the SNP's next leader be a seditionist?

Joanna Cherry is a Scottish lawyer. She is a member of the élite of her profession that are known as Queen’s Counsel. As such she is allowed to put the letters QC after her name, charge higher fees, and wear a silk gown in court.

Joanna Cherry QC is a member of the British Parliament, the member for Edinburgh South West. As such she puts the letters MP after her name. She sits for the Scottish National Party and is its parliamentary spokesperson on Justice and Home Affairs. She is positioning herself as a potential future leader of the party.

Joanna Cherry QC MP is an important person who holds two public posts of great responsibility.

Joanna Cherry QC MP supports sedition in Spain and makes no secret of the fact.

We have met Joanna Cherry QC MP before; she had a walk-on part in this post as one of the people who accepted a freebie from the Catalan government to act as “observers” at the referendum on 1 October 2017. Why a British lawyer, especially one who is allowed to wear a silk gown, chose to lend her prestige to an act that was illegal at the time and has since been judged seditious is a matter on which some may wish to speculate.

On 13 December 2018 Joanna Cherry QC MP issued this tweet. 

Carme Forcadell was once a rabble-rousing populist.

Catalonia – Europe’s next state

However, in the autumn of 2017 she was the speaker of the Catalan parliament when, in the words of the Economist:

… the separatists used their narrow majority in the Catalan parliament to ram through laws tearing up the constitution and the region’s statute of home rule. They deployed the resources of the Generalitat [Catalan government] to organise their “binding referendum” on independence, which they then used to declare an independent republic. They did all this despite repeated warnings of the illegality of their actions.

This is the extremely serious criminal action for which Forcadell was charged and held on remand, and for which she has now been given 11½ years for sedition, as have her fellow prisoners. One might suppose that Joanna Cherry QC MP, lawyer and parliamentarian, would stand on the side of the rule of law and constitutional government. But she doesn’t.

Instead, Joanna Cherry QC MP chooses to propagate the lie that Spain has political prisoners. Personal opinions may differ, but a British lawyer and parliamentarian should be guided initially by the good reputation enjoyed by Spain a member of the EU, NATO and the Council of Europe, and by the fact that neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch mentions political prisoners in the country (“prisoners of conscience” in Amnesty’s usual terminology). She knows this of course. Lawyers, especially the posh ones who wear silk gowns, and MPs, especially those who join specialist All Party Parliamentary groups, do their homework before they make public statements. Nevertheless, she chooses to pose with this lying placard.

It goes without saying that Joanna Cherry QC MP, silk-gowned lawyer and SNP parliamentary spokesperson for Justice, knows perfectly well what she is doing. She has Spanish and Catalan at a good level and follows the local traditional and social media easily. This must, at least be a very reasonable assumption. She is, after all, a member of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Catalonia and was an observer at the illegal referendum. How could she possibly perform these duties conscientiously without having first-hand knowledge of all the local circumstances? 

The British House of Commons met on Saturday 19 October 2019 to debate Brexit. Joanna Cherry QC MP was there, wearing the Yellow Ribbon of Sedition as her Westminster Leader Ian Blackford had done a few days earlier. The SNP has so far run its campaign for Scottish separation legally. One must wonder, however, what will happen if it runs into serious difficulty. Might the party’s taste for sedition abroad spread nearer to home? At present they seem content with the traditional British policy of legality at home and mayhem abroad. But who can tell?

Joanna Cherry QC MP, silk-gowned lawyer and parliamentary spokesperson on Justice, aspires to lead her party and perhaps even to be the Scottish First Minister who negotiates the entry of an independent Scotland into the EU. In doing so, she will meet David Sassoli, the President of the European Parliament. He has expressed his unambiguous respect for the rule of law in Spain and for this judgment in particular. His immediate predecessor Antonio Tajani is also clear: “Under Italian law the independence leaders would be in prison for the rest of their lives.” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said “Nationalisms are a poison that prevent Europe from working together.”

The simple truth is that the EU leaders prize the rule of law and European unity highly, and hate nationalism and separatism wholeheartedly. How will Joanna Cherry QC MP and seditionist react when confronted with real European democratic politics in a real, democratic political institution, one that is a world away from the posturing, dilettante play-acting of the Scottish National Party?

Sources

(English)

The Scotsman

Joanna Cherry on Supreme Court victory and SNP leadership speculation

YouTube

UK Parliament Brexit debate, Saturday 19 October 23019

The Economist

Catalan nationalists protest as their leaders are jailed for sedition

Human Rights Watch

Spain

Amnesty International

SPAIN 2017/2018

euobserver

Nationalism is 'poison', says Juncker in Spain

(Spanish)

Europapress

El presidente del Parlamento europeo respeta la sentencia del TS y desea que se rebaje la tensión en Cataluña

(The President of the European Parliament respects the ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court and calls for a reduction of tension in Catalonia)

El Español

Antonio Tajani: “Con la ley italiana, los líderes del 'procés' tendrían cárcel toda la vida”

Antonio Tajani: “Under Italian law the independence leaders would be in prison for the rest of their lives.”