Spain

Catalonia: right to choose yes, new borders no!

As Solidarity goes to press on 10 October, Carles Puigdemont, the president of Catalonia, has announced his response to the referendum on independence in Catalonia his government called on 1 October. The Spanish government declared the referendum illegal, and deployed heavy Spanish police force to try to stop it, but it largely went ahead. 92% voted yes, on a 43% turnout. A series of opinion polls carried out by the Catalan government since 2011 has in recent years shown a slight majority against independence, most recently 49%-41% in July this year. Puigdemont asked the Catalan parliament...

Letters

Colin Waugh’s review of The Russian Revolution: When Workers Took Power is right that Marxists must learn from the experience of workers’ struggles: revolutionary socialism certainly is dialogic. The Bolsheviks followed those principles and this helps explain their success in 1917. However I disagree with Colin’s critique of Kautsky and Lenin about the relationship between socialism and the working class. Colin claims Kautsky asserted that “Marx and Engels created their conception of socialism in isolation from workers” and that Kautsky assumed “the essentials of modern socialism were defined...

For Catalonia's right to decide; against separation

Spanish riot police unleashed violence against people voting in a referendum on Catalan independence on Sunday 1 October. Recent estimates (on Monday 2 October( number those injured at 884, and it seems miraculous no one was killed. As soon as the Catalan regional government set a date for a binding referendum, the right-wing Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy declared its intention to prevent the vote taking place. On the Prime Minister's appeal, the Spanish constitutional court ruled the referendum illegal. State police then geared up to prevent the referendum by force, confiscating...

For the politics of solidarity against terror

Socialists should give no political space whatsoever to the “reasons” behind the cowardly attacks in Spain and Finland. We condemn these attacks, carried out in the name far-right Islamism and violent jihad. Our sympathies are with those affected. It seems the attack in Las Ramblas Barcelona was part of a planned attack, by 12 men. This was exposed when a gas explosion in a building killed two men likely to have been making bombs and storing explosives. The Sagra Familia Cathedral may have been chosen as their next target. The choice of a popular tourist area shows a similarity with the...

Spanish dockers win

Jordi Aragunde, coordinator of the International Dockworkers’Council, has reported a victory, at least a temporary victory, for the Spanish dockworkers. They have been fighting the Spanish government’s plan to abolish the “pools” through which they are employed. “As of March 17, the Spanish Government was unable to pass the Royal Decree to reform the Spanish port system. The Spanish Parliament has rejected this Decree, therefore acting to protect Spanish dockworkers. “Action has been cancelled indefinitely. However, IDC will continue to watch over new developments closely. “IDC would like to...

Spain: Podemos split on strategy

Last month Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias won an internal leadership contest against faction opponent Íñigo Errejón. A temporary truce has now been declared. The following extract from an article by Eoghan Gilmartin, written before the vote, explains the background and is reproduced from Jacobin online magazine. At the core of the dispute [was] the question of how Podemos, a party that traces its origins back to the indignados movement, should approach its new role as a force in the country’s political institutions. The divisions are particularly pointed on the subject of relations with the...

Spanish radical left follow Dieudonné

Yves Coleman of Ni patrie ni frontières discusses how Podemos, Izquierda Unida and the Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP) as well as representatives of the Spanish “cultural world”, defend the “freedom of expression”of the anti-Semitic magazine El Jueves.1 El Jueves has no inhibition in proclaiming its hatred of Jews as the magazine stated in 2009: “So says El Jueves, a coarse and anti-Semitic publication...”.2 With such a motto, so proudly sported, its readers can indulge in vile jokes about the “gazpacho3” or “judias” 4(meaning white beans, but also Jewish women in Spanish, that provoke gas...

Spanish politics at a crossroads

Spanish elections (held on Sunday 20 December) marked a defeat for the ruling right wing party. The Partido Popular only took 123 seats out of 230, 63 fewer than four years ago. The Spanish social-democratic party, the PSOE, won 90 seats, Podemos 69, and Ciudadanos, a rightwing anti-corruption party, 40. We republish (from the website of the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) an interview with Alex Merlo, parliamentary attaché for the Member of the European Parliament Miguel Urbán Crespo, members of Podemos, and of Anticapitalistas, the Spanish section of the Fourth International. What are...

Two visions of Podemos

“I don’t want to be a “hinge”. I want to win. And in a context of complete ideological defeat in which they have insulted and criminalised us, where they control all of the media, to win the left needs to stop being a religion and become a tool in the hands of the people. It needs to become the people … I know that this pisses off people on the left.” Pablo Inglesias, General Secretary of Podemos Last month broad grassroots political platforms supported by Spain’s left anti-austerity party, Podemos, won municipal elections in Barcelona (Guanyem Barcelona) and came close to winning in Madrid...

Campus battles and NUS conference 2014

For a report of the conference published on 11 April, see here . The weakness of the labour movement after the defeat of the public sector pensions dispute has had its effect in the student movement too. Student activism is stronger than before the student upsurge of 2010-11, but still sluggish. Nonetheless, the National Union of Students conference (8-10 April, Liverpool) comes after six months which have seen important struggles. These struggles have been focused around two main issues: workers' rights on campus and repression against student activists. The two are connected, because the...

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