Cassandra Voices

Author: Conor Blennerhassett

  • Spain: Vegan Jailed for ‘Glorifying Terrorism’

    The jailing in June of thirteen rappers for ‘glorifying terrorism’ in their lyrics has once again thrown the spotlight on Spain’s use of draconian legislation to stifle free speech and dissent.

    But the sentences of up to nine months meted out to Pablo Hasel and twelve members of La Insurgencia collective pale in comparison with the ordeal suffered by vegan activist Juan Manuel Bustamante, who spent sixteen months in jail on trumped-up terrorist crimes.

    Known to friends and family as Nahuel, the softly spoken twenty-nine-year-old from Madrid was arrested in a dawn raid in November 2015. It was the beginning of a Kafkaesque nightmare that saw him pass through five of Spain’s most notorious prisons, often locked up in solitary confinement and denied a vegan diet by his captors, who also beat him. It ruined his family’s finances and led him to attempt to take his life after his release.

    For the first time, Peru-born Nahuel has spoken to a foreign medium about his experiences and how they have scarred him. He speaks of the mental trauma, the beatings, the sense of loss but also of his profound gratitude to his mother for never giving up on him.

    Nahuel had been a vegan since the age of thirteen. He and five of his friends, Francisco Martínez, Borja Marquerie, Candela Betancort, David Budziszewski and Diego Hernández, were part of a small vegan anarchist group called Straight Edge Madrid. They went to concerts, they handed out propaganda at flea markets, marched for animal rights and posted slogans on social media.

    It was to be the latter that caught the eye of police and would be presented in court as evidence that they were ‘glorifying terrorism’. Often, these slogans accompanied images of graffitied bank branches. Among the subversive messages were: “Your ATMs will burn”, “Death to capitalism”, “Hate Spain, hate tobacco”, “Resistance is not violence. It’s self-defence” and “Goku lives, the struggle continues”. (Goku is a Japanese manga character with a cult following in Spain.)

    But the ‘glorifying terrorism’ charge was, in fact, a last roll of the dice by the authorities, who had initially hoped to convict Nahuel and his friends on full-blown terrorism charges. That sounds too far-fetched, but thanks to Spain’s anti-terrorism laws, their case was just the latest example.

    As Eduardo Gómez, Nahuel’s lawyer, said: “The persecution and jailing of anarchists is a recurring theme. It has never ceased.” He listed four big police operations of this type in Spain between 2012 and 2015: ‘Pandora’, ‘Piñata’, ‘Pandora II’ and ‘Ice’ There were thirty-three arrests across all four, which resulted in not a single conviction. Nahuel was one of twelve to be jailed without bail on ‘terrorism’ charges.

    ‘Ice’ was the operation against Nahuel and his friends.

    Liberal Democracy?

    Such abusive behaviour by the police and the judiciary is at odds with the image of Spain as a modern and consolidated liberal democracy. As the former Spanish foreign minister – and now EU high commissioner for external affairs – Josep Borrell is fond of saying, “No one is in prison in Spain for their opinions, only their acts”. The reality, however, isn’t consistent with such a claim as in recent years tweeters, puppeteers and rappers are among those who’ve being prosecuted and even jailed for political content.

    Spain is often associated with having a good time. As well as the hedonistic attractions of sun, sand, sea and sangria, it boasts almost unrivalled heritage and cultural portfolios. It’s a country that wields a lot of soft power. Perhaps because of these factors, a string of unsavoury cases violating civil liberties have been shrugged off by the EU and human rights NGOs.

    Worryingly, the lawfare has taken on an extrajudicial dimension. Former interior minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, a man who recently claimed Pope Benedict told him “the devil wants to destroy Spain[i]”, has been implicated in some of the most notorious cases targeting left-wing politicians and Catalan nationalists, who were the victims of fabricated stories[ii] that implied corruption and which were planted in right-wing media.

    Solitary Confinement

    Nahuel spoke to Cassandra Voices about his ordeal and how it has affected him.

    Each prison marked him in its own way. “I was in Soto for a short time,” he said. “But what little I saw in solitary confinement was horrible. Especially when interacting with officers. Navalcarnero was old and dirty, like some South American prisons. In Estremera, I had to deal with openly fascist officers.

    “Morón was more violent in every way, and that was when I came out of solitary, so I was sent to the conflictive prisoner modules. Aranjuez was totally horrible and they did anything to screw my life.”

    What’s more, Nahuel had to deal with indifference and hostility to his vegan lifestyle, even though the central prison administration recognises a prisoner’s right to a vegan diet. He recounted how in Estremera his diet “was either not respected or was acknowledged in the most absurd ways such as giving me a plate of rice with three tomatoes or a boiled potato, or a plate of rice with another plate of rice”.

    He added: “Being vegan in prison is very limited since they do not give you that option and what you can buy on your own is not usually vegan, almost everything contained milk or milk protein. For [the prison authorities] it seemed stupid for me to continue with my position.”

    Nahuel’s ordeal began in the early hours of November 4, 2015 at the home of a friend. He and his pals had just finished watching Into the Wild and playing Smash Bros when police stormed in. They later took him home and removed a laptop and hard drives.

    The arrest baffled Nahuel. “You never expect that your small group is important enough for the police to follow you for months,” he said. “In the end, all they saw was that I did concerts, sold merchandising and fundraised through events attended by at most twenty-five people.”

    Despite the tenuous nature of the charges, the police announced the breakup of a major terrorist organisation. The press dutifully reported the arrests with damning headlines.[iii] El País, considered Spain’s paper of record, reported that Nahuel “is known to the police. He has been arrested on multiple occasions, always for violent acts. In the ‘Surround Congress’ demonstrations, in riots after so-called Dignity Marches, in rallies supporting detainees, in squatting attempts… José Manuel is this group’s main protagonist”.

    Judge Carmen Lamela

    A day later, the six accused appeared before the National Court. Presiding over the case would be judge Carmen Lamela, an uncompromising reactionary renowned for her harsh treatment of those accused of ‘terrorism’ – as eight Basque youths involved in a late-night bar fight with off-duty police officers found out.[iv] And the charge sheet against Nahuel was daunting: membership of terrorist organisation, possession of an explosive substance or objects and damage with terroristic ends.[v] State prosecutors called for 35-year sentences.

    Judge Lamela argued[vi] in the indictment that the accused “constitute and behave as a criminal organisation with a terrorist purpose” with links to other terrorist organisations such as GRAPO (a far-left group active in the 70s and 80s) or the ‘Coordinated Anarchist Group’, whose existence has yet to be proven. Nahuel says of the judge: “It didn’t matter what was said or shown. She had the police version and it didn’t matter when we presented evidence [to the contrary].”

    Furthermore, prosecutors argued that the social media memes shared by the young activists constituted “a glorification of violent subversion of the state’s political and social structures and of the struggle against all established powers by various terrorist groups with an anarchist or insurrectionist profile both in Spain and abroad”.

    And police claimed[vii] that the six had participated in the occupation of buildings to carry out anarchist propaganda, in the burning of bank branches and in the violent riots and public disorder caused after the so-called ‘March of Dignity’ in March 2015.

    Nahuel and his friends weren’t helped by the – intentionally – very loose definition of terrorism in Spain’s criminal code. Article 573 of the code[viii] defines it as anything that “gravely alters the peace” and “subverts constitutional order”. Worryingly from a human rights perspective, it requires no link to armed activity.

    Explosive Substances?

    But what exactly were the explosive substances found in the group’s possession? Among the evidence presented by police were bangers, matchsticks, red cabbage soup, orange juice, bleach and bicarbonate of soda. The only actual weapon displayed by police after the raids was a baseball bat.[ix] If it wasn’t so serious, you’d laugh.

    Yet, when it came to trial, all six were absolved, with the judge ruled that there was “insufficient proof to indicate their concrete participation in a violent act of a criminal nature, nor sufficient evidence that irrefutably demonstrates that they have influenced others to commit such acts”.

    But in Spain, with its appalling record of judicial persecution of non-conformist dissidents, such flimsy ‘evidence’ was enough for police and prosecutors to build a case. In the meantime, Nahuel had rotted away in solitary confinement.

    Aside from being denied a vegan diet, Nahuel encountered other problems in jail, including beatings from guards and prisoners. But he also suffered psychological and health problems. Inevitably, considering the harsh regime under which he was detained.

    “The FIES regime is applied to those accused of terrorism and drug trafficking,” he explains. “I spent more than a year in solitary confinement. All my interactions were observed, including conversations. What I could read was also restricted.

    “After a few months, I began to have muscle pains in the stomach, neck and shoulders. I was recently diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome and cervical radiculopathy.”

    But perhaps the real damage was to his prospects. “When I came out of prison, my life had been ruined. All my career plans and savings had disappeared, so my priority became getting a job. So, I’ve had loads of low-grade jobs without contracts. I was always an anarcho-syndicalist, and now I’m even more so.”

    FIES Regime

    One of the aspects of the FIES regime was that he was constantly moved around. One transfer from Madrid to Seville[x] was particularly arduous – the journey is usually five hours by road. “It was the worst transfer,” he said. “It took four days. The policeman handcuffed me in a small cubicle because he thought I was a Basque terrorist.”

    During his time in solitary confinement, Nahuel found comfort in the knowledge that his mother, María Goretty, was fighting tooth and nail for his freedom. Maria was in no doubt as to why her son was jailed. At the time, she said: “He is in prison for having a conscience, for thinking.”

    She organised weekly protests in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. Watching footage of dozens marching in the autumnal rain demanding his release is both moving and inspiring.

    Nahuel says of his mother’s efforts: “I was genuinely surprised by my mother’s strength. After my arrest, she got into debt and our savings disappeared in a matter of weeks. She had to carry the emotional burden of being ignored and questioned by those who are unaware of the situation in prisons. I can’t possibly thank my her enough for everything she did for me and the people who were with her giving their all.”

    Natalia Bosch, the mother of Candela Betancort[xi], also campaigned and gave interviews to raise awareness of the case. She said at the time: “It’s madness. There’s absolutely nothing, not one shred of evidence. It’s just about what they posted on social media.”

    It was evident to the mothers that their children weren’t ‘terrorists’ but prisoners of conscience, jailed for their beliefs and ideals – in an EU state in the 21st century. As Natalia Bosch said: “[The accusation of] ‘terrorism’ is used as a form of repression by the state against certain collectives.”[xii]

    Nahuel explains the police’s strategy. “They speculated about unrelated events. Later, they intentionally traduced conversations or tweets to distort their meaning. It was a disgrace.”

    Does he think they were being stitched up? “The police knew what they were doing,” he says. “And this became clearer the longer the investigation went on.

    “More than a set-up, it was a belligerent action against certain political positions and, at the risk of sounding self-centred, me. I say this because in their report they highlighted my ethnic origin, that I was against the Spanish banks and that I was the most dangerous anarchist in Madrid. And the press did the rest by destroying my future opportunities in Spain with its descriptions.”

    Latent Xenophobia

    Nahuel is not alone in thinking latent xenophobia played a role in the harsher treatment meted out to him. His lawyer, Eduardo Gómez, suspects that he was denied bail because he was of Peruvian origin.

    And like the vegans’ mothers, he also believes that the accusations[xiii] “prove yet again that these sort of [police] operations only look to break up dissident collectives”. He added[xiv]: “It’s the so-called criminal law of the enemy – you are accused more for who you are than for what you have done.” For Gómez, what Nahuel endured in jail was “genuine torture.”[xv]

    Speaking about Nahuel’s case on Catalan TV, Basque human rights lawyer Endika Zulueta said that “People are afraid when they go to a demonstration that they will be beaten, fined, detained and imprisoned. And what that fear does is neutralise people exercising their fundamental rights… and in this case, the criminalisation of thought.”

    Silencing or cowing dissent appears to be the aim of the Spanish authorities, and it the case of the vegan activists, it appears to have worked. Between July 14th and November 2nd, 2015, Straight Edge Madrid’s Twitter profile posted just over 2,000 tweets. It has remained silent since their arrests. Nahuel explains: “I rarely used Twitter as I didn’t like it. I never had the password. I used YouTube in conjunction with the others but after our arrests, the password was changed, and I saw no need to post anything. My priorities had changed.”

    Mental Scars

    It’s clear the mental scars of his time in jail have taken their toll on Nahuel. Right from the start, the authorities targeted him for harsher treatment.[xvi] Of the six vegans, four were granted bail after two day, while Borja was eventually granted bail after eighteen days on remand. But Nahuel’s ordeal behind bars lasted from November 4th, 2015, when he was arrested until March 8th, 2017 – 489 days. And the six weren’t acquitted until July 26, 2018.

    Nahuel speaks of the trauma he has suffered since his acquittal: “I’ve gone to therapy on and off,” he says. “In 2018, I had severe bouts of clinical depression and tried to commit suicide. I feel better now but I can’t say I’m stable. I’ll go back to therapy when I’ve got economic stability. I haven’t received any compensation from the state.”

    He’s also had to go into exile and suffers from a ‘Google problem’ as searches bring up headlines labelling him a ‘terrorist’. “It was impossible for me to get a job in Spain, even in the black economy, because of the information publicised by the police.” he says. “I got work in Germany, then the Netherlands and Belgium. Now, I’m in Estonia working for a while. Even so, I’ve had to explain my situation in Spain.”

    The worrying thing is that Nahuel’s ordeal was not an isolated incident. The Spanish state is obsessed with subversives[xvii] who “want to destroy Spain”. These are the internal enemies[xviii] vilified by the right-wing media: Basque and Catalan nationalists as well as supporters of Podemos, the junior partner in the coalition government.

    Recently, ordinary Catalan nationalists have been charged with ‘terrorism’ on the flimsiest of evidence. As with Nahuel, a compliant media published a series of ‘leaks’ aimed at establishing their guilt before any judicial proceedings had begun. One paper even went so far as to link them to the 9/11 attacks.[xix] As with Nahuel’s case, a fictitious terrorist organisation, the GAAR (Fast Action Group[xx]) was fabricated by the authorities. Another low-level Catalan nationalist, Tamara Carrasco[xxi], was accused of ‘terrorism’ and ‘rebellion’ for blocking a motorway and staging a sit-in in a toll both.

    It’s all part of a tried and tested formula.[xxii] Yes, it often ends with innocent people jailed or, at best, in exile, their futures destroyed. And it often ends with Spain on the receiving end of humiliating rebuke from the European Court of Human Rights. But it’s a price worth paying to save the unity of Spain – especially if the state has no intention of compensating those wrongly accused.

    [i] ‘Fernández Díaz confiesa que el Papa Benedicto XVI le dijo que “el diablo quiere destruir España”’ Ondacero, June 12th, 2020,  https://www.ondacero.es/noticias/espana/fernandez-diaz-confiesa-que-papa-benedicto-xvi-dijo-que-diablo-quiere-destruir-espana_202006125ee34f4d65a80900017fc637.html

    [ii] Jose Antonio Romero, ‘The “cesspit of the Spanish state,” under scrutiny by the courts’, El Pais, April 8th, 2019. https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/04/08/inenglish/1554718836_944961.html

    [iii] Patricia Ortega Dolz, ‘Cinco anarquistas detenidos por ataques a bancos y nexos terroristas’, November 5th, 2015, https://elpais.com/politica/2015/11/04/actualidad/1446670621_424512.html

    [iv] Pascale Davies, ‘Basque bar fight trial tests 10 years of fragile peace in the region’, The Guardian, 14th of April, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/basque-country-bar-fight-high-court-ruling-terror-related

    [v] ‘Carmen Lucas-Torres, Cuando te toman por terrorista por tener en casa lejía, bicarbonato y caldo de lombarda’, 27th of May, 2018, https://www.elespanol.com/espana/tribunales/20180525/toman-terrorista-tener-lejia-bicarbonato-caldo-lombarda/309970179_0.html

    [vi] ‘La causa judicial contra una supuesta organización terrorista anarquista que quedó reducida a unos tuits sobre Goku’ Publico, May 19th, 2018, https://www.publico.es/sociedad/causa-judicial-supuesta-organizacion-terrorista-anarquista-quedo-reducida-tuits-goku.html

    [vii] Carmen Lucas Torres, ‘Cuando te toman por terrorista por tener en casa lejía, bicarbonato y caldo de lombarda’, May 27th, 2018, El Espanol, https://www.elespanol.com/espana/tribunales/20180525/toman-terrorista-tener-lejia-bicarbonato-caldo-lombarda/309970179_0.html

    [viii] http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Penal/lo10-1995.l2t22.html

    [ix] Marcus Pinheiro, ‘Straight Edge, el “grupo terrorista” que quedó en nada: fin al proceso que encarceló 16 meses a un activista vegano’, August 21st, 2018, El Diario, https://www.eldiario.es/politica/acusaciones-audiencia-nacional-straight-edge_1_1970359.html

    [x] Terasa Correl, ‘La pesadilla del anarquista vegano que pasó año y medio en prisión por terrorismo: “Tras ETA, el Gobierno necesitaba otro enemigo”’ July 27th, 2017, El Publico, https://www.publico.es/politica/straight-edge-pesadilla-anarquista-vegano-paso-ano-medio-prision-terrorismo-gobierno-necesitaba-enemigo-interno.html

    [xi] Inigo Dominguez, ‘Terrorists or troublemakers?’, December 30th, 2016, El Pais, https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2016/12/22/inenglish/1482402715_561273.html

    [xii] Inigo Dominquez, ‘Absuelto de enaltecimiento del terrorismo el anarquista vegano que pasó 16 meses en prisión’, July 26th, 2018, El Pais, https://elpais.com/politica/2018/07/26/actualidad/1532619800_455742.html

    [xiii] Inigo Dominguez, ‘Piden dos años de cárcel por sus tuits para seis miembros de un grupo anarquista vegano’, El Pais, May 19th, 2018, https://elpais.com/politica/2018/05/17/actualidad/1526584732_803262.html

    [xiv] Inigo Dominguez, ‘Terrorists or troublemakers?’ El Pais, December 30th, 2016, https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2016/12/22/inenglish/1482402715_561273.html

    [xv] Eduardo Gómez Cuadrado, ‘Sentencia Straight Edge Madrid: Cuando mostrar posiciones de rebeldía no es apología del terrorismo’, September 10th, 2018, Rights International Spain, http://www.rightsinternationalspain.org/es/blog/137/sentencia-straight-edge-madrid:-cuando-mostrar-posiciones-de-rebeldia-no-es-apologia-del-terrorismo

    [xvi] ‘El castigo ejemplarizante de Nahuel’, Contexto y Action, May 11th, 2016, https://ctxt.es/es/20160511/Politica/5953/regimen-FIES-abuso-judicial-prision-preventiva-Straight-Edge-Espa%C3%B1a.htm

    [xvii] Connor Blennerhasset, ‘Spain on Trial’, May 1st, 2018, Cassandra Voices, https://cassandravoices.com/politics/spain-on-trial/

    [xviii] Conor Blennerhassett, ‘nemies of the People’ Cassandra Voices, February 1st, 2018, https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/global/enemies-of-the-people/

    [xix] ‘Ataque contra las torres gemelas de septiembre de 2001 – Ap / Vídeo: Entre el material incautado a Jordi Ros apareció un plano llamado “esquema bomba”, ABC, November 7th, 2018, https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-planearon-acciones-visualizando-videos-atentados-11-s-201911062204_noticia.html?ref=https:%2F%2Fwww.google.ie%2F

    [xx] Ignasi Jurro, ‘Los independentistas radicales crean los GAAR para “parar Cataluna’’, Cronical Global, December 8th, 2018, https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/politica/gaar-gaar-independentistas-radicales_205563_102.html

    [xxi] Tamara Carrasco: “He vivido un destierro, un exilio y un confinamiento a la vez” October 2nd, 2019, LM, https://www.lamarea.com/2019/10/02/tamara-carrasco-he-vivido-un-destierro-un-exilio-y-un-confinamiento-a-la-vez/

    [xxii] Connor Blennerhassett, ‘Hate Crimes in Spain not as they Seem’, Cassandra Voices, October 1st, 2019, https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/global/hate-crimes-in-spain-not-as-they-seem/

  • Hate Crimes in Spain not as they Seem

    Some years ago I read about a small theatre in Moscow staging hard-hitting plays critical of Official Russia. It goes without saying that the authorities did not take kindly to Teatr.doc and its founders, Mikhail Ugarov and Elena Gremina (who both died of heart attacks within six weeks of each other in 2018).[i]

    In 2014 Moscow City Council closed the theatre on a planning technicality regarding the location of a window. Then, in 2018, nine of the theatre’s actors were arrested for ‘unlawfully drinking alcohol in central Moscow.’[ii] And in August of this year, unknown assailants stormed the stage during a gay-themed play.

    But despite all the bureaucratic obstacles put in its way, Teatr.doc continues because even a regime like Putin’s baulks at blatantly shutting down a tiny theatre – it prefers to use legal levers to stifle dissent.

    Unfortunately, Putin’s regime is not alone in basing its repression on the ‘rule of law’. Erdogan’s Turkey is also at it. Even in the EU, Poland, Hungary and Spain are using repressive legislation and compliant judges to shut down non-conformism.

    Flawed Democratic Transition in Spain

    The case of Spain is the most alarming because few people are aware of the problems there. Ever since dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, the country has been portrayed as the poster child for a transition from totalitarianism to democracy. But, as is often the case with the family of an alcoholic who falls off the wagon, its friends are ignoring the warning signs, hoping that it’ll right itself, and turning a blind eye to lapses.

    Problems have long dogged the fledgling democracy. In the mid-1980s, the then Socialist government organised death squads against those suspected of links to Basque terrorist organisation ETA. A few bureaucrats and a senior minister even spent a few months behind bars for their role in the scandal.

    Then in the late 1990s, judges shut down a number of Basque nationalist publications on the grounds that they were financing ETA. The conservative prime minister at the time, Jose Maria Aznar, even boasted ‘Did anyone believe we wouldn’t dare close [them] down?’[iii] An unusual thing to say in a democracy supposedly with a Separation of Powers.

    Most disturbing of all, journalists from those publications served jail sentences of up to eleven years. The closures of all the publications were later – too late for those who had been jailed –found by Spain’s higher courts to have been unlawful.

    the ‘Gag Law’

    Those cases could be written off as once-in-a-decade incidents caused by disconcertion in responding to a terrorist campaign. But since 2015, new legislation – the Organic Law for Citizens’ Security, colloquially known as the ‘Gag Law’ – has allowed the authorities to clamp down on free speech, free assembly and peaceful acts of civil disobedience.

    Complementing the Gag Law is anti-discrimination legislation – known as ‘hatred offences’ – which was introduced to deal with, for example, racism and sexism but is increasingly being used to prosecute people on ideological grounds. And from looking at official statistics, it’s clear that such legislation is being disproportionately employed in two regions: Catalonia and the Basque Country.

    In 2017, the last year for which official figures are available,[iv] there were 1,418 ‘hatred offenses’ in Spain. Of these, 36% were prosecuted in Catalonia and 10% in the Basque provinces. That means almost half of all cases in two regions accounted for just a fifth of the population.

    ‘ideological hatred’

    And when hatred offenses are broken down, ‘ideological hatred’ in Catalonia accounted for 42% of all cases nationally. There’s an explanation for this.

    Since the beginning the decade, Catalan nationalism has gone from being satisfied with devolution within Spain to demanding a referendum on independence. After being stonewalled by the government in Madrid, they went ahead and organised one on their own. The conservative government at the time responded by sending in thousands of riot police to requisition ballot boxes. In carrying this out, the police beat voters with truncheons and fired rubber bullets into crowds queuing outside polling stations.

    The images were seen around the world and proved a PR disaster for Spain, which has since then tried to dismiss these events as ‘fake news’ and ‘Catalan propaganda’. The Supreme Court in Madrid is now deliberating on the fate of twelve Catalan leaders accused of violent rebellion, sedition and embezzlement for organising the referendum. They face up to twenty-five-years behind bars.

    Going hand-in-hand with the trial of the leaders is a lower level persecution of ordinary Catalans, who publicly display separatist sympathies. Many are charged with ‘ideological hatred’. And while the cases are often thrown out by the courts, on account of risible evidence, the stress of being charged and the cost of hiring a legal team might deter democratic expression of political opinions. Thus, the threat of prosecution allows the state to persecute without explicitly having to do so.

    Other targets

    That said, Catalan nationalists aren’t the only ones being targeted. The Podemos mayor of Cadiz, José María González Santos, is standing trial[v] at the time of writing on an ‘ideological hatred’ charge. He has been accused of ‘hatred of Israel’ in response to cancelling a run of Israeli movies during a film festival. Also a Barcelona University professor is being investigated for ‘calumny’[vi] after claiming that prisoners are tortured in Catalan prisons.

    Other almost comical cases that have made headlines are those of a clown with a red nose[vii] who stood beside a policeman and a car mechanic[viii] who refused to service the vehicle of a police officer. Both were Catalans and both were charged with ‘ideological hatred’. Both cases were thrown out, but not after the accused had endured months of uncertainty.

    Both cases also serve to highlight how legislation designed to protect minorities is being used to persecute members of a national minority in order to protect police from perceived slights. As the former interior minister, the conservative judge Jose Ignacio Zoido said: ‘All those who have disrespected the forces and corps of security of the state will pay for it in the courts.’[ix]

    One such case is that of Catalan satirical magazine El Jueves, which was charged with ‘hatred’[x] for a cartoon saying that cocaine supplies had run out in Catalonia because of all the riot police sent there from the rest of Spain. While people who protested outside a hotel hosting said riot police were also investigated for ‘hatred.’[xi]

    Against the Constitution?

    The crime of ‘hating’ police has given rise to some controversy among legal academics. Professor Joaquin Urias, a constitutional law expert at Seville University, has argued that ‘it can’t be applied to protect an institution.’ He added: ‘Accepting that hating the police is a criminal offence could insert us into a terrible spiral of repression.’ He was responding to the so-called ‘Alsasua 8’[xii] youths, who were jailed for between two and thirteen years for public disorder offences and ‘ideological discrimination’ after a bar fight with two off-duty policemen.

    Perhaps the most notorious cases are those of the puppeteers Alfonso Lazaro de la Fuente and Raul Garcia, who spent three days in jail, and the TV comedian Dani Mateo, who is Catalan. The puppeteers were charged with ‘hatred’ and ‘glorifying terrorism’ after parents complained about a banner held by one of the puppets in a children’s matinee in Madrid. They endured an eleven-month ordeal from their arrest to the judge striking out the case. Meanwhile, Mateo was charged with ‘hatred’ for appearing to blow his nose on a Spanish flag during a TV sketch. His ordeal lasted a mere three months.

    The situation is, to put it mildly, an affront to democracy. Amnesty International has said that it is having ‘a profoundly chilling effect, creating an environment in which people are increasingly afraid to express alternative views, or make controversial jokes.’

    Esteban Beltran, Director of Amnesty International Spain, added: ‘Sending rappers to jail for song lyrics and outlawing political satire demonstrates how narrow the boundaries of acceptable online speech have become in Spain.’

    He continues: ‘People should not face criminal prosecution simply for saying, tweeting or singing something that might be distasteful or shocking. Spain’s broad and vaguely worded law is resulting in the silencing of free speech and the crushing of artistic expression.’

    What next?

    The current caretaker government of Socialist Pedro Sanchez indicated while in opposition that it would address these worrying trends. But despite being in power for more than a year, it has done nothing other than to set up a propaganda ministry, Global Spain, which aims to fight the ‘disinformation’ about the state of democracy spread by, wait for it, ‘the enemies of Spain.’

    What can be done to make Spain change course? With four of the five big parties in its parliament fully behind the idea that Spain is protecting democracy by clamping down on freedom of expression, there are appears to be little hope. Foreign criticism, such as claims that there are political prisoners in its jails, makes the Spanish establishment bristle. But perhaps more concerted criticism from the EU and its member states might have an effect. We won’t know until the EU speaks out – up till now, it has chosen to look the other way.

    SUPPORT Cassandra Voices with a Patreon Donation CLlCK HERE

    [i] Sophia Kishkovsky, ‘Moscow Theater Rebels, Husband and Wife, Are Dead’, June 8th, 2018, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/obituaries/gremina-and-ugarov-russia-teatr-doc-die.html

    [ii] Katie Davies, ‘Actors from Russia’s independent Teatr.doc detained by Moscow police’, July 5th, 2018, The Calvert Journal, https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/10464/actors-from-russias-independent-teatr.doc-detained-by-moscow-police.

    [iii] Jose Miguel Larraya, ‘”¿Alguien pensaba que no nos íbamos a atrever a cerrar ‘Egin’?”’ July 23rd, 1998, El País, https://elpais.com/diario/1998/07/23/espana/901144814_850215.html

    [iv] http://www.interior.gob.es/documents/10180/7146983/ESTUDIO+INCIDENTES+DELITOS+DE+ODIO+2017+v3.pdf/5d9f1996-87ee-4e30-bff4-e2c68fade874

    [v] Untitled, ‘José María González ‘Kichi’ declara en el juzgado por cancelar un ciclo de cine israelí’, September 17th, 2019, Diario de Cadiz, https://www.diariodecadiz.es/cadiz/Jose-Maria-Gonzalez-Kichi-declara-juzgado_0_1392460911.html.

    [vi] Untitled, ‘El juez admite la querella de CCOO e imputa a un profesor de la UB por decir que en las prisiones “hay torturas”’ September 19th, 2019, eldiario.es, https://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/sociedad/querella-CCOO-profesor-UB-prisiones_0_942806331.html

    [vii] Jordi Pessaradona, ‘Imputado por un delito de odio el concejal catalán de la nariz de payaso’, February 23rd, 2018, Público, https://www.publico.es/politica/imputado-delito-odio-concejal-catalan-nariz-payaso.html

    [viii] Jordi Cabre, ‘Archivado el caso del mecánico de Reus acusado de delito de odio’, 23rd of March, 2019, Diari de Tarragona, https://www.diaridetarragona.com/reus/Archivado-el-caso-del-mecanico-de-Reus-acusado-de-delito-de-odio-20190325-0057.html

    [ix] Carles Villalonga, ‘Delito de odio: ¿uso o abuso?’, March 4th, 2018, La Vanguardia, https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20180304/441143656491/delito-odio-incitacion-violencia.html

    [x] Pascual Serrano, ‘El delito de odio, la revista ‘El Jueves’ y la Policía’, November 14th, 2017, Público, https://blogs.publico.es/otrasmiradas/11541/el-delito-de-odio-la-revista-el-jueves-y-la-policia/

    [xi] Javier Álverez, ‘Fiscalía investiga por delitos de odio y amenazas la expulsión de los policías de los hoteles’, October 3rd, 2017, Seiz, https://cadenaser.com/ser/2017/10/03/tribunales/1507017054_809275.html

    [xii] Guy Hedgecoe ‘Ghost of ETA refuses to fade for Spanish Right’ June 9th, 2019, politico.eu https://www.politico.eu/article/eta-spanish-right-basque-country-alsasua/

  • Spain on Trial

    Writing in The Observer in 1961, Peter Benenson lamented that ‘in Spain, students who circulate leaflets calling for the right to hold discussions on current affairs are charged with ‘military rebellion’.’

    So what? You may ask yourself – that was 57 years ago under the Franco dictatorship. But that’s the point: six decades later in a liberal democracy, dozens of people in Spain have been charged with crimes such as ‘sedition’, ‘rebellion’ and ‘terrorism’ for offences such as blocking roads and bar fights with off-duty police officers.

    Benenson, who used his article as the launchpad for founding Amnesty International, added that ‘no government… is at greater pains to emphasise its constitutional guarantees than the Spanish, but it fails to apply them’. This observation rings true today, where the Spanish government and Madrid-based media react with apoplexy at any criticism of Spain’s handling of the Catalan crisis. Spain, they argue, is a modern and mature democracy with separation of powers and legal guarantees.

    By coincidence, the Spanish government’s recent travails with Catalan separatists have coincided this spring with the trial of eight youths from the highland town of Altsasu in Navarre. With about 7,500 inhabitants, it’s typical of the middling market towns that make up the Basque nationalist heartland straddling the Franco-Spanish border.

    5am bar brawl

    In October 2016, the youths became embroiled in a 5am bar fight. The two men they tussled with were off-duty police officers: one of whom suffered a fractured ankle. State prosecutors allege that the youths knew this and that it was an intentional assault; that they sent text messages to others to join in. The eight were arrested and transferred to Madrid, where three have remained ever since awaiting trial without bail.

    If convicted, they face sentences of between 12 and 62 years on terrorism-related charges. It is instructive to set out the draconian penalties just one, Oihan Arnanz, faces. Eight years for terroristic public disorder; two years for attacking agents of authority; eight years for non-terrorist lesions; and twelve-and-a-half years for making terroristic threats.

    Needless to say, the case has caused consternation in the town and wider Navarre. Locals feel the proposed sentences excessive and vengeful. Baltazar Garzon, the judge who earned fame for trying to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet 20 years ago, has claimed the trial ‘trivialises’ genuine terrorist offences and should never have gone beyond a circuit court.

    Human rights charities such as Amnesty and Fair Trials have criticised the use of anti-terror laws to deal with a bar brawl – which would lead to sentences of up to 60 years for a fractured ankle. To further highlight the absurdity of the charges, Rafa Mora, a Spanish reality TV star who was involved in a bar fight with off-duty police officers was fined €300.

    Ministers have openly commented on the trial. The Interior Minister has tweeted that the testimony of one of the officers was ‘disturbing’; meanwhile the conservative news website El Español has labelled the accused as the ‘children of hatred’, and the formerly liberal El País has described Navarre as a society that is ‘hostage to xenophobia’.

    Yet at the end of the trial, the judge finally allowed evidence from the defence that contradicted court testimonies by the victims and police officers on the scene. In mobile phone footage, one of the victims is seen pacing about outside the pub in a spotless white shirt – despite claiming to have been stamped on and kicked on the pub floor during the attack. The prosecution’s response was to suggest the footage had been edited, and summed up: ‘What we are seeing is fascism in its purest state by the Basque supremacists.’

    Brute force

    A short distance away, in another Madrid courtroom, hearings were taking place for an undoubtedly bigger event: the trials against the more than two dozen Catalan nationalists accused of ‘misappropriation of public funds’, ‘sedition’, ‘rebellion’ and ‘terrorism’.

    This case has received far more international coverage because of the shocking images of Spanish police beating would-be voters in the unconstitutional independence referendum called by the Catalan regional government on October 1, 2017.

    Rebuffed by the central government in Madrid after years of at attempts to negotiate a referendum, the nationalist-controlled regional executive decided to throw down the gauntlet. Quim Arrufat of the hard-left separatist CUP party telegraphed the strategy a year in advance: ‘A unilateral independence referendum would show up the undemocratic contradictions of the state, not just to our people but to the world; so that it resorts to some type of legal or even brute force.’

    The inflexible PM Mariano Rajoy took the bait and sent in the stormtroopers. Since then, Madrid has been reeling, especially as half a dozen of the accused have fled to other jurisdictions and extraditing them is proving to be far from straightforward.

    The lack of violence by the nationalists is the elephant in the room, though it hasn’t stopped the Madrid press from talking up the ‘violence’. It means that the legal case against them is, at best, flimsy. So flimsy, in fact, that a German court took fewer than 48 hours to reject as ‘inadmissible’ the charges of violent rebellion against Carles Puigdemont, the deposed Catalan president who was arrested in Germany on a European Arrest Warrant. It was a double humiliation for Spain: the court took two days to reject six months of legal work by Spanish prosecutors and it also questioned, by implication, the quality of the rule of law in Spain. 

    German hostages

    The result has been a spike in anti-German rhetoric by politicians and the Madrid-based media. The more restrained criticism was that it was an insult for a regional German court to rule against Spain’s Supreme Court, while the more volatile have called the decision ‘racist’ and suggested that ‘there are 200,000 German hostages in the Balearic Islands.’

    Meanwhile, El Español ran a piece on the Schleswig-Holstein’s ‘Nazi heritage’ – helpfully illustrating it with a triptych of mugshots featuring Puigdemont and Nazi war criminals. Germany’s embassy in Madrid was also on the receiving end, with 4,000 messages arriving per day, ‘many in an insulting tone’, to complain about the tribunal’s decision.

    Not ones to let the politicians, media and ordinary public make all the running, Spain’s Supreme Court also weighed in by accusing the German tribunal of a ’lack of rigour’. It also claimed, somewhat cryptically, that had police not intervened on referendum day, “it would have been very probable that a massacre occurred”. It didn’t specify who would have perpetrated the ‘massacre’. Nor did it explain the legal basis for a hypothesis of a crime that never took place actually being a crime. But this fits in with the Orwellian nature of the whole ‘violent’ rebellion charge: In their arrest warrant prosecutors blame the Catalan leadership for inciting civilians for violence on the part of the police, saying that ‘a gathering of approximately 250 people…impeded the access to the polling station…generating the aggression of the officers who intervened.’

    Siege mentality

    The Schleswig-Holstein ruling and the difficulties Spain has encountered in extraditing wanted Catalans from Belgium, Scotland and Switzerland, coupled with what it perceives as unfairly hostile media coverage abroad, has led to a siege mentality. It cuts to the bone even more so because the nationalists are routinely portrayed in the Madrid-based media as xenophobic putschists and even Nazis. Apparently, it doesn’t enter their heads that anyone could characterise them any other way.

    Narratives against Catalan nationalism are so widespread that Spain’s paper of record, El País, has taken to comparing Pep Guardiola, the Catalan manager of Manchester City Football Club, with Joseph Goebbels while pumping out op-eds labelling him a ‘liar’. Guardiola is, of course, a Catalan nationalist and delighted to make the point at every opportunity. It’s not just the media who are hounding Guardiola: his family has been subjected to official harassment with his private jet searched and a car his daughter was travelling in stopped by armed police and searched.

    The media and Twitter are alight with anger and dismay at reports in The Times – whose ‘Spain Again’ editorial got under the skin of quite a few – Le Monde, Washington Post and Der Spiegel criticising Spain. The message being put out is that it is Spain itself on trial, when it should really be the seditious Catalan putschists.

    The mainstream media bristles at this questioning of Spain’s democratic credentials; that Spain’s judiciary is a tool of government policy; and that anyone could think there are ‘political prisoners’ in Spain. They suggest that Spain is once again the victim of ‘black propaganda’ and characterised as Franco-landia.

    As the ultraconservative paper, ABC, put it: ‘On the other side of the Pyrenees, the image of an inquisitional and underdeveloped Spain, pseudo-African and intolerant, is as alive as ever.’

    Lashing out like that is an example of what award-winning writer John Carlin – who is half-Spanish – calls the ‘insecurity’ of Spanish nationalism. Carlin experienced first-hand the backlash against foreign criticism when he was sacked by El País after two decades as a columnist, for criticising the handling of the Catalan crisis. ‘I do not support separatism,’ he told Catalan news site Vilaweb, ‘But that is not enough. You must absolutely scorn secessionists, almost hate them and systematically disrespect them in a visible manner.’

    And Carlin is not alone. Another half-Spanish journalist, Tom Burns, was on the receiving end of a reporter’s ire in a recent El Mundo interview, after he bemoaned police brutality. Asserting that it was a journalist’s job to report the truth, the reporter asked: ‘Why are foreign media portraying Spain as a Francoist country, without separation of powers?

    In tatters

    While the Schleswig-Holstein tribunal gave short shrift to allegations of ‘violent’ rebellion, it asked for more evidence to back up the claims of misappropriation of public funds. But as German magazine Der Spiegel revealed: ‘In their arrest warrant, the Spanish checked the box for corruption but there was no reference in the warrant text indicating that any corruption had occurred.’

    Despite a lack of fundamental evidence to ground the charge, the German court nonetheless sought further particulars, leading Der Spiegel to conclude: ‘the Higher Regional Court ruling was still too merciful with its treatment of the Spanish arrest warrant.’

    While the rebellion charge against Puigdemont is in tatters other Catalan leaders remain in Castilian jails awaiting trial. The former still faces a maximum eight years on the misappropriation charge, although this is seen as insufficient punishment for daring to declare independence.

    But even this is at risk after a bombshell interview by Spain’s finance minister, Cristobal Montoro. El Mundo, the conservative paper he spoke to, didn’t even lead with the claim, preferring to headline on a nothingburger about Rajoy. But his comments were picked up by the Catalan press and the lawyers of the accused.

    Montoro was only repeating what he and PM Rajoy had told Parliament in February: ‘I don’t know with what money they paid for the Chinese ballot boxes,’ he said. ‘But I know it wasn’t public money.’ At a stroke, the man pulling Spain’s purse strings had discredited the prosecutors and police investigators, who, while admitting that they have been ‘unable to determine’ how the referendum was paid for with public funds, claimed that up to €1.9m was misused for such ends. It appears the police have found invoices but have been unable to establish that they were actually paid as no monies were debited to accounts.

    It’s hard not to overstate the anger at Montoro in the Madrid press. Terms such as ‘clumsy’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘unforgivable’ and an ‘own-goal’ were among those that made it to print. Some even thought he was covering his back and called for him to resign. The previously hawkish finance minister is now a marked man, seen as an enabler of putschists.

    Is this a case of a politician being savaged for telling the truth? The police reports are full of holes. The interior minister has admitted that police quadrupled the number of injuries they received while beating would-be voters and, incredibly, the chief leading the investigation has been tweeting about it under the name Tacitus, disparaging the Catalan leaders and making accurate predictions about the legal process, a habit the justice minister Rafael Catala shares. So much for the separation of powers.

    Lack of credibility

    Nowhere is the lack of credibility in police claims more obvious than in the case of the ‘village’ of Sant Esteve de les Roures. A report on Catalan ‘violence’ on referendum day detailed this hamlet as being particularly vicious, with brutal attacks on police officers. Someone spotted that there is no such town and, in the only witty moment of this whole saga, created a Twitter profile claiming to be the town hall.

    They then trolled the police for a month. But, amid the laughs, the fact that the police fabricated violence against them appears to have been forgotten.

    Of the 315 acts of ‘violence’ in that dodgy dossier, almost 200 were nothing more than road blocks in which nobody was physically hurt. But in the current climate, where jeering the national anthem is considered ‘violence’, anything is talked up to support the extradition of Puigdemont & Co.

    Another to bear the brunt of this hyperbolic definition of ‘violence’ is Tamara Carrasco, a 32-year-old Catalan nationalist activist, alleged to be a leader of the Committees for the Defence of the Republic (CDR). She took part in the blocking of a motorway and was charged with terrorism and rebellion. State prosecutors labelled her ‘a clear threat to the established constitutional order’, who carried out ‘acts of rebellion, aimed at normalising disobedience and confrontation with the state, bringing the Catalan sovereignty process to the streets with violent acts’. In a rare outbreak of common sense, the judge dismissed the charges and settled for disobedience. The State has appealed.

    While it would be churlish to compare democratic Spain with Apartheid South Africa, it does bear an uncomfortable similarity in one respect: the use of exaggerated, even spurious, criminal charges to punish and put away for a long time political, to use Benenson’s phrase, non-conformists – and to send a warning to anyone who might think of emulating them. Nelson Mandela, remember, was charged with four counts of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government, and served 27 years in jail.

    The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has five criteria for defining a political prisoner. Arguably, all of these apply to the Basque youths – though the Spanish government will point to the caveat that ‘those deprived of their personal liberty for terrorist crimes shall not be considered political prisoners’ – and Catalan politicians and activists, meet three of these, without the aggravation of terrorism.

    Slap in the face

    So, why the outlandish accusations? Well, as in Stalin’s Russia, it makes for a better show trial. But the real reason is that they prefer to lock away Puigdemont & Co for decades rather than eight. The same goes for the Basque youths.

    The Spanish government has been caught flat-footed by the tenacious and tricky Catalan leadership. From being goaded into the PR disaster of sending in police to beat voters to the escape by some to other countries – which has required embarrassing extradition hearings that have humiliated Spain’s justice system – Madrid has looked ham-fisted and authoritarian.

    The problem has been that the government has only one strategy: criminalisation. It worked against ETA terrorism but is proving ineffective against peaceful Catalan nationalism. Hence the constant need to portray Catalan nationalists as xenophobic putschists, which bears similarities with the Russian propaganda campaign against Ukraine.

    It’s likely that the Catalan nationalists expected such a response to their antics. They have always seemed to be one step ahead of Rajoy and his ministers. Even when it looked like they had suffered a setback in Puigdemont’s detention in Germany, the Schleswig-Holstein ruling ended up being a massive slap in the government’s face.

    With no legal mechanism for achieving independence while the government in Madrid refuses to negotiate, the only hope Separatists cling to is that the EU will force Spain to the table. But so far other European powers has shown no inclination to do so, lamely claiming that it’s an ‘internal matter’. Naturally, Madrid rejects the idea out of hand. Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said that ‘mediation through a third party would be a victory for Puigdemont.’

    Separatists must either tempt the government into further repression or ‘internationalise’ the problem. In other words, put Spain on trial. The Spanish government’s draconian response to a political impasse and amateurish attempts at securing extraditions have drawn the eyes of Europe to a justice system that appears to be at the beck and call of the government.

  • Enemies of the People

    At the height of the Vietnam War, torching U.S. flags at anti-war demonstrations became something of a burning issue for many patriotically-minded Americans. Most states brought in laws criminalising such actions, but the US Supreme Court twice struck these down, holding that desecrating the star-spangled banner is protected by the First Amendment, which regulates freedom of expression.

    In a society as divided as the United States of the late 1960s and early 1970s, flag-burning was a provocation seized on by self-proclaimed patriots to clamp down on ‘Un-American’ activities. Today in Spain, a similar scenario is being played out, but people offending Spain’s sacred cows are not afforded protections equivalent to those under the First Amendment.

    Spain is not currently involved in a foreign war, but is instead embroiled in an existential conflict with itself. One of the most unpleasant aspects of this is a deluge of draconian sentences being handed down, mostly to young people for ‘offending the symbols of Spain’.

    There is no large far-right or anti-immigrant movement in Spain. The animus of Spanish ‘patriotism’ has not, as one might expect, been directed against North African Muslims, or even sub-Saharan Africans, who make up a substantial minority of the population. Instead, the enemy lies within, namely Catalan and Basque nationalists, as well as those on the Spanish left perceived as sympathetic to separatism.

    The prime example of this was the long-running mass hysteria generated by Basque terrorist organisation ETA. Yet since the turn of the century, ETA has killed just a quarter of the number of the victims of Islamist terrorism in Spain. But Islamists have not aroused anything like the level of frenzied antipathy, as they are not perceived as threatening Spain’s national integrity, whereas an independent Basque state would see Spain ‘dismembered’.

    During the Basque conflict the Parot Doctrine – named after ETA member Henri Parot who first to feel the brunt of it – was introduced in a 2006 decision by the Spanish Supreme Court. It proved controversial and ultimately unlawful. To the chagrin of Spanish conservatives, the European Court of Human Rights declared the approach invalid in 2013 for retrospectively adding years to sentences.

    About a decade ago, Basque nationalists, both constitutional and violent, began to calm down. ETA declared a definitive end to its campaign in 2011. Enter Catalan nationalism. Losing Catalonia would be far more catastrophic for Spain as it has three times the population of the Basque provinces and is responsible for almost a fifth of the country’s GDP. It would also be, in the view of many Spaniards, an indescribable blow to the country’s pride and self-esteem.

    To counteract these challenges, the central government in Madrid of the right-wing Partido Popular (PP), has chosen stick rather than carrot. A harsh sentencing regime has become the norm for acts of politically motivated vandalism, with prison terms of more than ten years handed down for offences such as setting fire to public buses, ATMs or wheelie bins – violence against property in which no one was injured.

    Such measures could previously have been construed as a proportionate response to a genuine threat posed by terrorism. But in recent times, perpetrators of seemingly innocuous crimes – in some cases hardly crimes at all – have begun to feel the full force of these laws.

    Listed are a sample of the numerous cases that have made headlines in Spain, and which raise serious doubts over Freedom of Speech in Spain. Some appear almost comical, albeit distasteful, and in only one case was anyone actually physically hurt.

    • – Five feminists sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for interrupting a Catholic mass in Palma with chants in favour of abortion.
    •  Josep Miquel Arenas, a greengrocer’s assistant from Sa Pobla in Mallorca, sentenced to three-and-a-half years for releasing a rap song, which ‘calumnies and slanders the crown, glorifies terrorism and humiliates its victims’. Among the lyrics were gems such as ‘the Bourbon king and his whims; I don’t know if he was hunting elephants or whoring’; and ‘fucking police, fucking monarchy, let’s see if ETA places a bomb and it explodes’. Hardly Byron or Shelley but worthy of a jail sentence? A decision of the Spanish Supreme Court is imminent as to whether he serves the time.
    • Cassandra Vera, a student teacher from Valencia, given a suspended sentenced of one year’s imprisonment for tweets containing jokes about Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. Blanco was heir apparent to Generalissimo Franco who was dictator of Spain until 1975. Blanco’s assassination by ETA in 1973 is widely reckoned to have removed the biggest obstacle to a democratic transition after the dictator’s death.
    Generalissimo Franco with heir apparent Blanco.

    There also ongoing cases in which no sentences have been handed down, and where the state brings indeterminate charges, recalling the shadowy manipulation of the judicial process in Kafka’s novel The Trial. Perhaps the most notorious, concerns Catalan separatist leaders accused of misappropriation of public funds, sedition and violent rebellion. The latter charge is highly contentious as the only violence throughout the Catalan Referendum Crisis was perpetrated by Spanish police, especially the Guardia Civil. Incredibly, state prosecutors are arguing that the ‘violent language’ of separatists should be equated with actual violence. The charge of violent rebellion carries a sentence of up to 30 years.

    One has to question the extent to which fair trials are possible in circumstances where a sitting cabinet minister makes statements such as: ‘the jail to which [deposed Catalan president] Puigdemont will be sent has all the mod-cons that most people, not just prisoners, would desire’; and where a government spokesman says: ‘they’ll probably end up in jail’.

    Exiled Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont.

    Even these prosecutions pale in insignificance compared to the plight of nine youths from Altsasu, a town of fewer than 7,500 inhabitants in a Basque nationalist heartland. In October 2016, they became embroiled in a bar fight. The two men they tussled with were off-duty police officers. The state prosecution alleges the youths were aware of this, and the court deemed it was an intentional assault against police officers. All nine were arrested and transferred to Madrid, three have been under arrest since, without bail conditions being set.

    The eight now face sentences ranging from 12 to 62 years on a variety of terrorism-related charges. It is instructive to note the draconian penalties faced by just one, Oihan Arnanz: eight years for terroristic public disorder; two years for attacking agents of authority; eight years for non-terrorist lesions; and twelve-and-a-half years for making terroristic threats. In contrast, Rafa Mora, a reality TV star was involved in another barroom fracas that same year with off-duty police officers, and fined €300.

    The list of injustices grows daily: Oleguer Presas, a former professional footballer with Barcelona and Ajax, and outspoken Catalan separatist, is about to go on trial for a bar fight with police 14 years ago.

    There is also the case of Jordi Pelfort a 48-year-old barber from a town near Barcelona who has been charged with incitement to hatred and threatening to kill the leader of the virulently anti-Catalan nationalist Ciudadanos (Citizens) party. He posted on Facebook that Albert Rivera, the party’s leader, ‘deserves to be shot in the head’.

    The Facebook comment of Jordi Pelfort which led to criminal charges.

    Wishing someone to be shot is very different to actually threatening to do so, yet that is what he has been charged with. It is indicative of an alarming trend towards highly disproportionate sentencing against those who ‘offend the symbols of Spain’

    In fairness, recently a court handed down a suspended sentence of fifteen months against a Catalan man for making threats against Puigdemont on Facebook. But the overwhelming majority of prosecutions have been brought against those expressing views unfavourable to Spain, and its sacred cows. 

    Sadly, Spanish civil society beyond the Left and the nationalist parties is hardly questioning this disturbing spiral. Faced with an existential crisis, the dominant approach has been to circle the wagons and deny ‘the enemies of Spain’ ammunition by questioning the Rule of Law or the Separation of Powers. Spain remains to a large extent a liberal democracy, but there’s an unsettling authoritarian trend, which is being orchestrated by its main conservative party. Moreover, the European Union has failed to censure this approach, unlike its condemnation of similar repressive measures in Poland and Hungary.