Article by Toni Strubell "Spanish Sociopathy" (23 OCT 2020)

 An English translation (by MS) of an article by Toni Strubell (with the author's permission), La Sociopatia antiseparatista.

Click to read the whole post, if need be.

Source: https://www.elnacional.cat/ca/opinio/antoni-strubell-sociopatia-antiseparatista_549537_102.html 

If Spain were ever to want to become a democratic state - for nothing can be ruled out - one of the first steps it would have to take would be to overcome its perverse anti-separatist sociopathy. It would undoubtedly be a long-term treatment for the centuries-old rooting behind it. However, unless it is uproooted - with its barracks-style symptoms that reveal it - Spain will continue to be the homeland of the denial of rights and the lynching of minorities that it has always been.

In Spain, anti-separatism is based on a distorted social perception such that everyone who wants unity is morally "good" and anyone who does not want it is morally "evil." Of course, the selection is made without taking into account the nature of this unity or the universal right to freedom that political subjects enjoy. The real drama that this leads to is that, as in Franco's time, this perception pervades the entire judiciary, which has anti-separatism - and not orthodox criteria of justice - as a starting point for its most important political decisions. This is what has been seen in the parallel trials which, on the one hand, acquitted Chief Superintendent Trapero (a non-separatist) and convicted Minister Quim Forn (a separatist) for very similar facts and testimonies. Of course, anti-separatism is not seen as the scourge that it really is - from a legal point of view - but as an integral part of the imperishable national DNA.

Though its origins are hidden, for strategic reasons, it is obvious that Spain's rancid anti-separatism is directly related to the expansionist desire of Castile. Moreover, the dogmatism that emanates from it has strong reminiscences of the Inquisition's way of doing things. No one can oppose it without suffering stigmatization or grave consequences. Its ubiquity in Spanish society has been achieved thanks to the secular litany that lays down that separatism is a sacrilege, as periodically proclaimed by the leadership of the Catholic Church, which is one of its greatest promoters (see Chapter 5 of the my book El moment de dir prou - "La nació moral" (The Time to Say Enough - “The Moral Nation”). The result of this is that, dep down, Ms. Forcadell, Mr. Torra and Tamara Carrasco are treated like veritable apostates. And they don't burn them in the public square because the smoke could upset someone at the UN or in The Hague tribunal... 

The serious obstacle to the democratization of Spanish society is that Spanish parties, from Vox to Podemos, find this condemnation of separatism normal. They all share it to some degree. They do not question what is behind this condemnation or the serious democratic deficit that it necessarily implies. They have suckled on it from generation to generation and accept it as a natural part of the landscape. This is certainly what explains the current anti-independence bias of some current Mossos who are tolerant with the far right. Or the fact that Ada Colau can accept the votes of Manuel Valls to keep the "separatist" Ernest Maragall out of the mayor's office. Or what hudes the shame of a gesture as reactionary Jessica Albiach's when she held up her NO vote to the Parliament's UDI. In short, it is what largely explains the great comfort of the PSC and the "Comuns" within the new normality that the tottering 1978 regime seeks. And, on the contrary, its discomfort with the republican Catalonia that wants to exercise its rights. For them, this goes against a dogma with which they have lived all their lives and which clashes with the acquired submission which, unconsciously or consciously, guides them. The "anti-separatist" anomaly in which Spain lives is confirmed by the absence of this phenomenon in other democratic but traditionally imperialist countries, such as the United Kingdom. Without ceasing to be nationalists, they do not cultivate hatred or apostasy for national minorities. There is not even a lexical equivalent to the insulting term "separatist" to refer to. Thus, in the many years I lived in England, I do not remember ever hearing that any Scotsman was stigmatized as a "separatist," or treated violently for being so. By this I do not mean that there is no deep Anglophile state like the one that certainly helped the Unionists win the Scottish referendum in 2014. But the mechanisms of hatred and intolerance that are common currency here, would be unthinkable there. There is no overtly hostile press that attacks Scotland on a daily basis in the same way that the Madrid media do against Catalonia. This is what distinghes a State that has largely curbed supremacism and colonial practice from one that has not, and is not expected to, do so. At least not until international bodies demand that it adopt the features that characterize democracies and truly lawful countries.