Strike Halts Barcelona - King to speak

KING Felipe will make a televised statement at 9 a.m. local time, a spokesman for the royal household told CNN.

His decision to intervene in the crisis comes as tens of thousands of people gathered in Barcelona, angered by the harsh treatment meted out by national forces who tried to prevent the banned vote from taking place. Many demonstrated in front of the Barcelona headquarters of the Spanish national police.

Shops were closed, universities halted classes and transport companies ran reduced services as supporters of Catalonia's bid for independence from Spain attempted to maintain the momentum from Sunday's vote.

The main trade unions, the CCOO and UGT stopped short of declaring a general strike, describing the action instead as a "work stoppage" to skirt labor laws that forbid strikes for political reasons.

Facing Spain's biggest political crisis in decades, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy held talks with opposition parties in Madrid.

Protesters gathering in Barcelona said they were motivated by fury at Sunday's violent crackdown -- the Catalan health ministry said 893 people were injured as riot police raided polling stations, dragged away voters and fired rubber bullets.

"This is a protest against police violence and maintaining momentum after Sunday," said Victor Noguer, 27, a firefighter.

"The streets will always be ours," protesters chanted, some of them draped in the blue, yellow and red Estelada flag used by Catalan separatists.

Protesters wave a Catalan pro-independence 'Estelada' flag as they gather at the Placa de la Universitat square in Barcelona during a general strike in Catalonia called by Catalan unions on October 3, 2017.

Officers from the Guardia Civil and the Catalan police force stood guard outside the local headquarters of the Spanish government in Barcelona, where hundreds of firefighters gathered. Other groups of protesters gathered outside the headquarters of the national police, shouting "Spanish police get out!"

In an interview with CNN at a police control center in the city, Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau condemned Rajoy's decision to deploy national security forces as "seriously irresponsible."

"Why is he throwing thousands of police officers against the population," asked Colau, who does not support Catalan independence but was in favor of holding the referendum. "Why is he keeping thousands of police officers on standby in the city of Barcelona and in Catalonia? What is the message of fear he wants to send?"

Protestors gather in front of the Spanish Partido Popular ruling party headquarters in Barcelona, Spain.

The presence of the Spanish national police and the Guardia Civil in Catalonia is a source of increasing tension in the city following Sunday's violence. Animosity is also rising between local and national forces.

On Tuesday, the Guardia Civil police union, the AUGC, filed a complaint with the Catalan High Court against the Catalan police, or Mossos d'Esquadra, complaining that they failed in their duties by not enforcing the court ruling that banned the referendum.

The AUGC also filed a complaint in connection with the eviction of 200 officers from the Hotel Vila in the Calella district of Barcelona. It called for a judicial inquiry into reports the mayor threatened to withdraw the hotel's license if the Guardia Civil remained there.

Spanish newspaper El Pais said two hotels in Barcelona and hotels in Reus, 100 kilometers from the city, have ordered Guardia Civil officers to leave following Sunday's referendum.

Spain's Interior Minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, said Madrid would "take all necessary measures" to stop the "intolerable harassment" of national security forces.

The Catalan government says it earned the right to split from Spain, claiming 90% of those who voted in Sunday's poll were in favour of independence. But the result was not decisive: turnout was low, at around 42%.

Catalan independence vote caps four centuries of mistrust

Catalan authorities blamed the crackdown for the low turnout, but it remains clear that public opinion in Catalonia is deeply split on independence.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont stopped short of declaring independence for Catalonia Monday. According to the referendum law passed by the Catalan Parliament -- and declared illegal by Spain's top court -- authorities have 48 hours after the result to declare a split. Catalan authorities have not yet presented a final result to the Parliament in Barcelona.

Puigdemont has called for international mediation to resolve the crisis.

Protestors throw referendum ballots as they rally in front of Spain's ruling Partido Popular headquarters in Barcelona.

It said that during his meetings the Prime Minister "has strongly defended the actions of the security forces during [Sunday's] events and has reiterated that more than 400 officers needed (medical) attention and 40 needed emergency attention because of their injuries."

Rajoy's office said Tuesday that he was considering calling a special session of Spain's Congress of Deputies to discuss the crisis.

So far, European Union leaders and the European Commission have backed the Spanish government's opinion that the referendum was illegal.

The European Parliament, the EU's only elected body, will discuss the crists on Wednesday. The issue Catalan cause is likely to find more sympathizers, especially from the smaller nations.

The UN Commissioner for Human Rights has asked to be allowed to send in experts to examine if citizens' rights have been violated.

******

Catalonia: 'The People vs the State'

'Rubber bullets fired by Spanish police

'YESTERDAY, El Pais the Spanish newspaper ran a headline 'La Generalitat lanza a la poblacion contra el Estado' - 'The Generalitat (local government) sets the people against the State'

Last night there were reports of the the police under orders from the central government in Madrid had taken control of the Barcelona.  This coming 80-years after the Barcelona police in the Spanish Civil War seized control of the telephone exchange from the workers of the CNT trade union, is a grim reminder of the days of Franco and the communist dirty tricks which took place following the so-called May Days of 1937.  Much of which was documented by George Orwell in his book 'Homage to Catalonia'.

As I write this there are reports on Twitter of a Civil Guard in Barcelona firing on crowds of Catalans trying to vote in the referendum.

Northern Voices' contact in Spain, Carlos Figueroa, has told us in an e-mail from Madrid:

'I hope you can understand the whole thing...Read público.es y la vanguardia(catalan newspaper).

El País is not anymore a right place to be informed...'

The Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has condemned the violence, and has called on the Spanish government to let Catalans vote peacefully:
 Nicola Sturgeon ✔ @NicolaSturgeon

1/2 Increasingly concerned by images from #Catalonia. Regardless of views on independence, we should all condemn the scenes being witnessed

Minutes ago it was reported on videos of 'police brutality' against voters are going viral on social media.  Spanish journalist Héctor Juanatey has posted footage of police forcibly removing voters outside a polling station at Guinardò market in Barcelona.

Another video shows police dragging a voter out of a polling station by their hair at Ramon Llull school in the Catalan capital.

 An hour ago the Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, has told reporters that “violence will not stop Catalans from voting”.  The Catalan government says 38 people have been treated by emergency services in the disorder. 

Earlier this morning the Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, has called on the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, to resign and demanded police stop using violence against voters.

Police action against the peaceful population must stop. Today, in Catalonia and in the state, we have to demand it. #ResignRajoy

There are several reports on social media of Spanish police firing rubber bullets at people queuing to vote in the referendum.

Princeton researcher Jordi Graupera posted a video of what appears to be a member of the Guardia Civil firing at a crowd.
Minutes ago footage has emerged showing firefighters in Catalonia protecting voters from police violence by forming a barrier between officers and the crowds.
  L'Accent‏ @laccent

Els bombers protegeixen la gent de la violència de la Guardia Civil mentre els mossos s'amaguen #1oct

Ion Telleria Barrena

1:27 am - 1 Oct 2017

******

Challenging Tourismofobia in Barcelona!

 by Brian Bamford

ACTIVISTS in Barcelona have recently targeted tourists as part of a campaign against overcrowding, rising rents and house prices.  Responsibility for a recent attack on a sightseeing bus near the Nou Camp football stadium was claimed by Arran Jovent, a group linked to the anti-capitalist, Catalan pro-independence party, Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP).  

There is a precedent for the current anti-tourist sentiment that is now flourishing in parts of Spain that has a long history that goes back at least to 1963, when I was first there. 

 'The representative of financial institutions told us that the Spanish legislation was great.  He says this when people are taking their own lives because of this criminal law, I assure you—I assure you that I haven't thrown a shoe at this man, because I believed it was important to be here now to tell you what I’m telling you. But this man is a criminal and should be treated like one.'

  These words came from the anti-eviction activist Ada Colau 

in the Chamber of Deputies of Spain in February 2013.

In February 2013, Ada Colau who has since become the mayor of Barcelona, was giving a evidence to a Spanish parliamentary hearing.  Colau had helped to set up a grassroots organisation, the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH), which championed the rights of citizens unable to pay their mortgages or threatened with eviction. Founded in 2009, the PAH quickly became a model for other activists, and a nationwide network of leaderless local groups emerged.  

At that time people across Spain were joining together to campaign against mortgage lenders, occupy banks and physically block bailiffs from carrying out evictions. 

Ada Colau was there to discuss the housing crisis that had devastated Spain.  Since the financial crisis began, 400,000 homes had been foreclosed and a further 3.4m properties lay empty.  In response, Colau had helped to set up a grassroots organisation, the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH), which championed the rights of citizens unable to pay their mortgages or threatened with eviction. Founded in 2009, the PAH quickly became a model for other activists, and a nationwide network of leaderless local groups emerged. Soon, people across Spain were campaigning against mortgage lenders, occupying banks and physically blocking bailiffs from carrying out evictions.

Others believe Ada Colau and her supporters will have difficulties in transforming the two-party democracy that has ruled Spain since the days of General Franco.  

'I don’t think the ideas of a city can be based on what a citizen’s assembly wants – it’s absurd,' said Francesc de Carreras, a constitutional law professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. 'Democracy doesn’t mean that everyone expresses their desires and they come true by some miracle.

'It’s not a good idea to have citizens participate in these things. We’re not the ones who have skills in these areas,' he said. 'I don’t go into a restaurant and tell them how to cook.'

'The Barcelona model is in decline,' said journalist Marta Monedero, referring to the ideas that guided the city’s growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s and helped put Barcelona on the world map.  'The model was a way to understand the city and bring it closer to the people – there wasn’t a lot of money so they came up with things like having lots of squares and intensifying the social fabric of the city through organisations.'

Monedero recently co-edited a book called The Dream of Barcelona: A City in Which to Live or to See?, in which she and journalist Núria Cuadrado asked residents from various sectors of society about the issues facing the city.  What they found was that the model that had once been so successful in guiding the city was now deeply out of sync with everyday reality.  Unlike in the late 1980s, today around 17% of the city’s population is foreign born.  Housing activists say that some 15 residents a day were evicted from their homes in 2014.  Until recently like other cities across Spain, unemployment remains stubbornly in double digits, while the young and educated continue to leave the city in hopes of finding work abroad.

Eduard Masjuan*

In 2006, the anarcho-syndicalist Spanish CGT trade union federation in Barcelona at the request of Tameside Trade Union Council in Greater Manchester, sent an expert on urban housing, Eduard Masjuan Bracons, to speak at Manchester Friends Meeting House about the problems of urban living, housing, planning and design.  The then active Manchester Social Forum was also party to the invite of Eduard Masjuan from the Universitat de Barcelona (Historia Economica), and the Manchester electricians in the then EPIU branch 1400/07, who later were famously in the forefront in exposing the blacklist in the British building trade, were present at the presentation fresh from fighting a case at the Manchester Employment Tribunal. 

The Manchester electrician, Steve Acheson, told the meeting about the problems of health and safety and conditions on the building sites, and what at that time were perceived as being victimisation against trade unionists and safety representatives on the local building sites.  The Calalan academic, Señor Masjuan addressed the urban problems in the city of Barcelona:  the shifting of local residents out from the central barrios to the peripheral suburban areas; and the corruption that was evident in the politics of all parties in the city. 

The predicament of the residents of Barcelona and the electricians on the British building sites were not so dissimilar in 2006.  The young people of Barcelona could not afford the rising prices of appartments in the Catalan capital, and in the same way even today we learn that many of the construction workers who work on building sites can't afford to buy the buildings they are errecting.  

In 2013, when Ada Colau addressed the parliamentary committee, ten minutes into Colau’s 40-minute testimony she broke from the script.  Her voice cracking with emotion, she turned her attention to the previous speaker, Javier Rodriguez Pellitero, the deputy general secretary of the Spanish Banking Association:   

'This man is a criminal, and should be treated as such.  He is not an expert.  The representatives of financial institutions have caused this problem; they are the same people who have caused the problem that has ruined the entire economy of this country – and you keep calling them experts.'

When she had finished, the white-haired chair of the parliament’s economic committee turned to Colau and asked her to withdraw her “very serious offences” in slandering Pellitero.  She shook her head and quietly declined.

The 'criminal' video became a media sensation, earning Colau condemnation in some quarters and heroine status in others.  A poll for the Spanish newspaper El País a few weeks later revealed that 90% of the country’s population approved of the PAH.  The group’s work continued.  In July 2013, Colau was photographed in Barcelona being dragged away by riot police from a protest against a bank that had refused to negotiate with an evicted family.


*  Books by Eduard Masjuan:

• • E. Masjuan, H.M. Elena & D. Saurí, "Conflicts and struggles over urban water cycles: The case de Barcelona",
  • E. Masjuan, "La cultura de la naturaleza en el anarquismo ibérico y cubano", Signos históricos, 15 (2006), p. 98-122.
  • E. Masjuan, "El pensamiento demográfico anarquista: fecundidad y emigración a América Latina (1900-1914)", Revista de demografía histórica, (2004), p. 153-180.
  • E. Masjuan, "Medis obrers, conflictivitat social i innovació cultural a Sabadell (1877-1914)", Recerques, 47-48 (2004), p. 131-155.
  • E. Masjuan, "Procreación consciente y discurso ambientalista: anarquismo y neomalthusianismo en España e Italia, 1900-1936", Ayer, 46 (2002), pp. 63-92.
• Altres publicacions:
  • E. Masjuan, Un héroe trágico del anarquismo español. Mateo Morral, 1879-1906, Barcelona: Icaria editorial, 2009.
  • E. Masjuan, "Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) i la nova cultura de la naturalesa en els medis obrers de 1900-1936", a Ciència i compromís social. Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) i la geografia de la llibertat, Barcelona: Residència d'Investigadors CSIC-Generalitat de Catalunya, s2007.
  • E. Masjuan, Medis obrers i innovació cultural a Sabadell, (1900-1939), Bellaterra: Servei de Publicacions de la UAB, 2006.
  • E. Masjuan, La Ecología humana en el anarquismo ibérico. Urbanismo orgánico u ecológico, neomalthusianismo y naturismo social, Barcelona: Icaria editorial, 2000.
  • E. Masjuan, "El urbanismo ecológico de Patrick Geddes y Cebrià de Montoliu", a Arturo Soria y el urbanismo europeo de su tiempo, 1894-1994, Madrid: Fundación Cultural del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid, 1996, pp. 51-65.