Catalan news : Burning King's Photos & Bombing the Greens
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Monday October 01, 2007 20:24
by o as if
Catalan independence news these days seems to be focussed on a prison sentance passed on a protester who burnt a photo of the King of Spain last September 13th whilst Juan Carlos Bourbo y Bourbo was in Girona to open the science park there. A crowd of protesters had attended the event as part of the wider "300 years" movement which aims to raise independence hopes on the anniversaries of the beginning and end of the war of Bourbon succession between 1707 and the 11th of September 1714. That of course was the war which saw the European alliance supporting the Catalans (& British by they way) lose to the Bourbon dynasty (& the Basques by the way) which still holds the crown today. & that was when they lost their powers to raise tax & sundry other privelages.
Yesterday a bomb was difused in the headquarters of the Catalan Green party ICV-EUA which is a sister party of the Spanish state's IU or reformed marxists (who are linked to the SWP by the way)
Yesterday I dealt with the annual irritation & morbid fascination which a display of His Majesty's air force brings to the city where I live & long ago made my home. I can't say I marvelled at the assorted bombers and the most expensive toys which are the current pride and joy - Eurofighter typhoons, F18's & French made Mirage jets which all fly around twice the speed of sound & thus announce their presence a split second before they can incinerate your village. Indeed to the contrary they piss me off more not for their obvious "superiority" to a RAF helicopter with its dodgy doors as was seen at the Galway air show, but in contrast to the the police choppre which seemed tantalisingly close to my little bow & arrow from the vantage point of my roof (& infamous antenna array) the day before (Saturday) as thousands of chirpy Catalans marched to revindicate their liberty of expression & if that means burning photos of the King & shouting Katalans have no King & Katalalalaland is no Kingdom , these fighter jets are just out of reach.
But seriously Saturday was a demo for the liberty of expression in the face of Police repression.
& I'm all for that. http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/318279/...x.php
The King has the sort of jets a Burmese general would wet his khaki pants for.....or so they'd have you believe. I of course am leaning to the theory that Burmese generals are nothing more than stage prop of mirrors who hide some nasty lab. You'd swear hte King doesn't really care about Catalans burning his photos, but as last week's Catalan TV's impersonator satire show dealt with amusingly - the Crown is above the King. They had shown Juan Carlos looking through his photo album & deciding to burn his own photos of him with Franco or him on the gargle some night. Bingo no sooner had he done it, the door opens and Minister Saura of the Catalan government enters with some Catalan "mossos d'esquadra" police to arrest him for disrespect to the crown.
His majesty finds himself in a flap - shut up Joan he cries to the minister whislt struggling with the Mossos - the Spanish prosecutors are watching!
& indeed at times it seems the real power of oppression is not the Crown, nor the chuckling King with his jets, nor the congress of ZP, nor the opposition of the PP, nor the senate - no - by now anyone with even a passing interest in the ways of the Kastilian Empire or Spanish state know the real power lies with the prosecution & judges of Madrid.
The hot-headed Catalan lad who burnt his photo & didn't get away "Scot Free" received a 2 year sentance in a Spanish jail.
Minister Saura of course is a Greenie. His wife or long term partner of the civil union type is the number 2 of Barcelona's council which for a while now rules the city in minority since the ERC (catalan independence party of republicans) left the "tripartite". For in truth over the years the ERC have lost credibility with the Catalan independence supporters of the hills (& Girona) and the more radical "CUP" alliance of candidates are making inroads - if simply by dint of not accepting "estatuts", not turning blind eyes to King's visits, not enjoying photo-ops with the Dalai Lama & the usual stuff which many an Irish republican would understand.
Anyway - nobody has claimed responsibility for the bomb you know. But whatever way these roads to independence go, or to be fair - more Catalan spoken & the sniff of the rights & tax raising powers stil enjoyed by the Basques or Navarrans, or the pride of the Scottish!!!! I sincerely hope I never find my work researching Burmese companies is disturbed by those jets doing their real job.
There is war and there is occupation. There is resistance & there is liberty of expression. I'd rather burn the stock certificates of corporations.
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local reacion to the bomb in the Green's office in Spanish the language of the Kastillian empire & Mexico.
http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=...=1008
http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=...08&h=
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2007/09/30/desactiva...talan
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/mossos/retiran/ar...7/Tes
original report of the 13th of Sept incident in Catalan with video to click on too!
http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=2551440
English reports on the "300 years of oppression 300 years of resistance"
http://indymedia.ie/article/82114
Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2No doubt there are many for whom a flag & nation is more important than the class war & enlightenment. For them a republic's name is more valuable than a republic's inclusion. We don't need to go back to the declaration of a Catalan republic within the Spanish 2nd Republic of 1931 or any other fets de maig or the Anarchist denunciation on March 14th 1937 the anniversary of the declaration of that republic made by the "friends of Durruti" that the 2nd Republic had become a bourgois entity or enter into the jaded hindsight 20/20 vision of how Catalan first socialist second and Socialist first Catalan second contributed to Franco's victory in what was the first chapter of Europe's 2nd continental war which became a world war & was the first chapter of our reality today. Right now we can see that anarchists, socialists, republicans, anti-systemists, anti-capitalists, black blocks & so on - are not united in their wishlist or priorities or indentification of oppressions.
Here's the report of the bomb (which in all honesty was probably as terrible a tool of death as a pipe bomb which any kid can make) from Barcelona indymedia with comments in catalan and castillian
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/319046/...x.php
Here's a video of the King today who I suppose has to say something now, & has thus asked kids or youth to adhere to ''convivencia democrática, tolerancia y libertad'' which means living together in the democratic contract, tolerance and liberty. Oh well he would say that. He says the constitutional monarchy has seen the longest period of stability and prosperity in Spain. http://www.elpais.com/videos/espana/Rey/destaca/Monarqu.../Ves/
He would say that.
But It's true as well.
The king is not saying what he says because his institution faces a threat. The judges do what they do, because they have notions of our society which we in truth find oppressive and intolerant. The journalist who photographed the incident in Girona 13/ix/07 Jordi Ribot, of the agency Click Art Foto, has been ordered to surrender his CD of images of the 50 photocopied pictures which were burnt. It is my exercise of liberty of expression to challenge the justice of such an order. It follows the case taken against a satirical magazine "El Jueves" for a front cover which showed the prince & heir in the doggy position with his wife with a caption of "with ZP's grant to parents we'll feel like we're working now". The magazine was impounded on court order but the image spread through the internet and broadsheets to the world. The "fiscal" or DPP seem ever more to reflect an attitude to society which is sentimental for the control & censorship of what youth believe was the daily reality of Franco-ism. But youth don't remember Franco-ism & I defy many of them to tell me what it really was like from day to day. For less than 1% of the readership of this website or of the Irish Times would be able to tell me without searching - what day RTE was switched off along with the phones in Ireland. By that I mean - youth is distanced and divorced from the reality of the past, and as such is alienated from the freedoms of today.
Oh but I am as foreign as the Bourbon King in this land. I may holiday in the katalan hills & speak their language & teach their kiddies english & music & share most of their problems adjusting to 21st century globalised economics, precarity without enjoying the advantages which natives of any land often forget they have - but I too am an alien. If the 3rd republic of which I & manyy peers dream of someday happens, it will not begin with the antics of many of the younger independence heads now, whose avowed patriotic passions all to often hide xenophobia & intolerance of migrants by shifting blame for the woes we all have onto Madrid or a Bourbon crown. I fear I would have no place in such an independent Catalonia & would rather pack up my bag of tricks & leave in the face of injustice & wrongs worse than those which saw me leave the anglo-saxon world & exile myself by choice from the UK, USA & dare I say it in the knowledge of how ridiculous it may seem - the Eire state in the final year of the 20th century.
At end this is a mountain made out of a mole hill because the bomb didn't go off.
A Katalan coat dragged on the ground which is as sordid as any Spanish bullfighter's cape.
They protest a Green collaboration with capitalism, & betrayal of socialism - don't we all?
They protest a Catalan national police who in the name of nationalist ambition were recruited from their neighbours houses - is that the oppression of Madrid?
& thus, though I know it plays into the hand of the liberal - capitalist - post-fascist press to say it, I also believe it needs be said for this youthful ignorance born of historical distance & social divorce is seen throughout Europe & is called what it is - Fascism. There it is written -
Katalan Fascism lurks in the hills.
link for Catalans & students of the language to a video interview offered today on the Catalan indepedence web platform "Vilaweb" with Armand de Fluvià, who is a heraldist & former advisor to the current King's dad. He claims the King hasn't done enough to endear himself to Catalans or Katalanders. There's not really much money in heraldry & sort of raise my eyebrows when people describe themselves as being a "heraldist". It reminds me of how Billy Connolly that old scottish royalist of infamy made poor people laugh in the years of Thatcher by recounting a chat he had with a duke. & what do you do Mr Connolly ? - I'm a comedien your grace. I make people laugh. What do you do?......... I tobaggon -
http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=2573952&p_ed...neral
& on the other side of that wonderful state which is the Kastillian empire, a noted member of Opus Dei, the radio presenter with "Radio Cope" the mouthpiece of the Roman Catholic church in the state who played a key part in undermining the last peace process with ETA, Mr Federico Jiménez-Losantos has called for the abdication of the King. Sweet muscular jesus on a cross for your sins knows what or who he would like to see instead.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Dios/salve/Rey/al...4/Tes
Meanwhile kiddes of the Austurian communist 3rd republic variety assembled with the noble flag which though "pre-constitutional" ought never occupy the same psychic space as "franco's eagle" to shout Republican slogans at the King & Queen yesterday & had their names taken down in little books by the police.
Now that wouldn't have happened before the Katalan antics with the Greenie Bomb. Which is why generally it is a good idea to take the youngsters who think such bravado works on a political level by the scruff of the neck & forcefeed them psilocybin mushrooms imported from Eire till they forget all about it. Little hint there. Help me in my work.
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