Post by M. Strubell "Just like the UK" (5 MAR 2020)

 In this short article I wonder how it is educated British citizens can side with the Spanish authorities in the repression of what is Europe's largest civil movement.
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Just like the UK?

Twitter allows anyone to vent their pent-up frustrations and prejudice against any others that they choose to treat as their opponents.

As has often been observed, tweeters tend both to follow accounts (I was going to write "people") that express similar views - and thus reinforce their own - and also to avoid accounts where opinions or facts they regard as uncomfortable or simply untrue are presented.

This is very visible but, of course, merely mimics what we have always done: Britons may read The Sun or The Times, but rarely both; Frenchmen may read Le Figaro or Libération, but rarely both; Spaniards may read La Razón or Público, but rarely both. 

And we tend to have, as freely-chosen friends, people with whom we broadly agree on many issues. 

This does not mean to say that tweeters never mention their opponents. On the contrary, they tend to share with their followers opinions based on stereotypes and often on prejudice.

Nor does it mean they do not have pet hates, accounts the content of which exasperates or provokes them, and allows them either to criticize them behind their backs, or clash directly in often-sterile slogging matches, liberally sprinkled with ad hominem insults or slights. 

The owners of many of these accounts (of all political persuasions and national identities) choose pseudonyms, which allow them, with impunity, to raise the level of virulence of their references to others. 

Fortunately Twitter has mechanisms to warn or even close accounts that fail to comply with the standards that should always prevail in interpersonal communications. As Tweepsmap informs me regularly, I lose a handful of followers every week - typically 6-12 - for the following reason: "Account Suspended or Deactivated". (By the way, I have no way of knowing if these followers were believers, voyeurs or infiltrated Spanish secret service agents!!)

This does not allow me to say for sure that Twitter España, whose boss has firm connections with Spain's Deep State, applies sanctions to all alleged offenders with equanimity. However, I have no objective grounds to challenge this, though it is an oft-repeated claim.

That some anonymous dude spews venom against someone who reached the conclusion, well over ten years ago, that Catalonia would never be allowed a comfortable fit (in Catalan, "encaix") and that in order to survive as a people - and especially given the increasingly fluid, globalised environment - the Catalans needed the same status as, say, the Portuguese, is no surprise. In most of Spain, despite a large part of public opinion being relatively open to Catalonia's independence 11 or 12 years ago, the closing of ranks in the media has been colossal and has veered public opinion not only against Catalan independence but also against the idea of regional autonomy. The ultranationalists owe most of their recent, enormous surge in popular support - outside Spain's stateless nations - to their rigid, intolerant stance against the Catalan movement, and their active role in the prosecution of tbe political and social leaders of the movement since 2017.  

What does disconcert me is when I hear or read UK residents in Catalonia, openly voicing not their personal opinion against Catalonia's independence, which is perfectly respectable (I would hardly be the best person to indulge in a mind-your-own-business response!), but doing so in an extremely heated, disrespectful and offensive way. 

I and people I admire have been personally accused of being ethnicists (whatever that may be: it is obviously abhorrent!), right-wing, racists, supremacists, nationalists,... you name it. Even Nazis and all (how twisted can you get?!). I have allegedly been abducted by pan-Catalan propaganda, indoctrinated, manipulated... it is alleged I have negative feelings about Spaniards (though I amazingly survived unscathed a short but intense and enjoyable holiday in the Somontano region, Aragon, little over two months ago!). 

These are people who apparently take in their stride actions by the Spanish state that I venture to surmise they would find utterly condemnable in, say, Wales or Scotland. 

Imagine over a thousand voters getting medical attention after riot police brought in from the rest ofr the UK try to beat their way through them to confiscate ballot boxes and papers for a referendum Westminster didn't like. Imagine seven Welsh or Scottish Assembly ministers and two civic movement leaders being held in pre-trial detention for up to two years, being tried 400 miles from home, being sentenced in a show trial to 9 to 13 years for "sedition", for organising a huge, but peaceful protest at a search inside a Ministry, and a referendum under rules defined by an Act of the Assembly. Imagine five Welsh or Sciottish political leaders in exile on the continent facing extradition proceedings. Imagine about two thousand people awaiting trial for incidents related to the independence movement. Isn't all of this unthinkable in the United Kingdom?

It takes a big effort on my part to avoid speculating on how and why some of these British citizens living in Catalonia have been swayed from upholding the fundamental civil and political rights Western democracies are based upon. Instead they seem to have been persuaded to swallow the "rule of law" argument that the Spanish authorities have used instead of solving this political crisis politically, and have accepted the courts' convoluted interpretations of the law, including the Constitution itself.

These are not the main reasons I hope Catalonia's independence will soon be recognized by Spain and the international community. But they certainly reinforce them.

Michael Strubell MA, MSc