Spain

In the summer of 2012 a small group of ex-miners and labour movement activists met in a pub in Sheffield. We had just heard of the Spanish miners’ strike against the attempts by the right-wing government of Manuel Rajoy to withdraw subsidies to the mining industry and thereby, in effect, close it down.

A ‘fact-finding’ trip to Spain then followed and on returning to the UK a Spanish Miners Solidarity Committee was formed, raising 28,000 Euro in something like six weeks – money that went to support the families of the strikers. After which time the miners called off the strike.

On Friday 5 November Spain's Supreme Court Prosecutor called for sentences of up to 25 years for the Catalan nationalist politicians jailed after the 1 October 2017 referendum on independence for Catalonia.

The prosecutor's case is that the Spanish constitution says that such a referendum could be called only with the agreement of the Spanish government. The Spanish government did not agree: in fact it mobilised state forces to try to disrupt the referendum.

The referendum ended inconclusively - 92% for Catalan independence, on only a 43% turnout.

In his new book Burning Up, A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto Press), Simon Pirani notes that the world economy tripled in size between 1945 and 1973. And the world began to burn as much fossil fuel, every three years, as in the whole of the nineteenth century.

Through all its confrontations with Catalan separatists, Spain has been under a minority government. On 1 June that political levitation act finally expired.

Parliament voted no confidence in the conservative PP government of Mariano Rajoy. Through a never-tested-before provision of the 1978 Spanish constitution, the new government will be led by, and probably made up solely from, the PSOE, Spain’s social-democratic party, although it has only 84 seats in the 350-seat parliament.

Big demonstrations in Barcelona on 25 March responded to the arrest, in Germany that day, of Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont.

Supporters of Catalonia separating from Spain hold a small majority in the Catalan parliament, though they are probably still short of a majority in the electorate. Other separatist leaders are in exile or jailed.

Instead of negotiating and finding ways for a democratic decision by the people of Catalonia, the right-wing minority government in Madrid continues to try to “solve” the problem by repression.

Leon Trotsky: The National Question in Catalonia

Written: July 13, 1931. First Published: The Militant, Vol. IV No. 24, 19 September 1931

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/07/spain01.htm

Once more on the subject of the timely questions of the Spanish revolution.

Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy has scheduled the first session of Catalonia's new parliament for 17 January.

Elections on 21 December gave a result similar to 2015. The pro-independence parties won a small majority of seats in the parliament (70/135 this time, 72/135 in 2015) with a slight minority of the votes (47.3% this time, 47.8% last time).

Only now several of the leading pro-independence MPs are now held in Spanish jails for sedition, or self-exiled in Brussels for fear of being jailed if they return to Catalonia.

"If we want everything to remain the same, everything must change", says the young aristocrat Tancredi to his uncle, the Prince, in the turmoil of Italian unification as portrayed in Lampedusa's novel The Leopard.

The constitutional crisis in Catalonia continues to simmer as the region awaits elections on 21 December.

A number of Catalan politicians and activists, including members of the recently dismissed government, have been denied bail and remain jailed on charges of sedition. Some are in exile in Belgium.

On 5 December, the Spanish Supreme Court withdrew its international arrest warrant against Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four other members of the government who have sought refuge in Belgium. Other Catalan politicians, arrested in Spain, have however been refused bail and will have to run their campaigns for Catalonia’s 21 December elections from jail.