Homage to Catalonia
These are particular days here in Spain. Catalonia is fighting for (a referendum on) independence. The date is set to October 1st, 2017. The Spanish Government in Madrid is fighting back - trying by all means to crush the (preparations for the) referendum. Guardia Civil enters the offices of the Catalan Government to confiscate referendum material - manrolls, votes, ballot boxes etc. Internet sites are closed down - only to spring up at new adresses (abroad). Leading organisers are arrested and fined (12.000 Euro per day !!) The Spanish Government do not trust the Catalan Police Force (Mossos d’Esquadra). Three Italian Cruise ships have been chartered in Barcelona Harbour to lodge 10.000 Guardia Civil and Policia National agents.
It could end really badly in Catalonia. Running out of their own ideas, the Spanish government in Madrid seems to be begging advice from ancestral Castilian spirits. And the ancestors say: “On with your breastplates, sharpen your halberds, show these upstarts who is master in our Kingdom.”
Democracy and freedom are judged by how far devolution is granted
This is the nationalism of “peripheral” regions that consider themselves much more developed than the “core” metropolis. The Czechs, with their new precision engineering, felt like that about snobbish old Vienna. Victorian Scots felt the same way about the “uneducated, forelock- tugging” English. The prosperous Catalans feel that arid, pious Castile still holds them back.