Ultra-nationalist Spain rises from its ashes every time the "unity of the State" is touched. With new laws, new sentences, and the centralist zeal of the Bourbons, backed by police and military forces, Spain imposes fear on entire populations in the face of a basic right in modern democracies, which is the right to demonstrate.
It's not about not giving legal room to a consultation on the sovereignty of a People, it's that it is considered illegal and organizers and voters are threatened when a consultation is glimpsed that could be considered, only, non-binding politically: almost a survey.
The funny thing is that all Spanish parties, in a more or less covert exercise of Spanish nationalism, refuse to give the option of popular consultation or referendum, whether to see what you think about the energy model or about issues of greater scope.
In Spain, it has been so easy to carry out a democratic overflow, so that an absolute democratic deficiency is evident, that it does not matter if it is the PP who is at the head of the government of the State. The same would have happened with the PSOE, UPyD, IU or Podemos. The heirs of Franco's national-Catholicism have grown tired of treating as undemocratic everything that opposed Spanish nationalism, now, it is clear that laws are being passed to limit freedoms as fundamental as freedom of expression.
Even Podemos, or its newly created political arm, avoids officially speaking out about it, and when it uses professional rhetoric to do so, it shows a state vision in accordance with the "unity" that the Spanish crown itself proclaims and directly confronts the emancipatory aspirations of the Peoples subjected by the Spanish State.
In the Canary Islands, we learn from the gap that the Catalans have been able to open in a rotten system that disguises itself as democracy. But we are left with the desire to have a worthy political representative, a little braver, who goes out with us to the street when we are the majority and represents us in the same way outside: openly and not always proposing a third, fourth or fifth way, further and further away from our real problem, which is none other than the lack of sovereignty.
They make it clear that in this house, the one who appears as the owner is not in charge. He will pay his taxes and comply with what is decided outside, because if not, that is what the army of Felipe VI and his legislative repression made to measure are for.
Here it is increasingly clear that in Spain we will only be respected when our representatives speak of independence, when the polls find candidates with sufficient courage. Meanwhile, I am left with encouraging the Catalans to overcome 9N by wielding ballots and giving lessons in democracy to that Spain and part of the foreign country, whatever the result. For my part, a big round of applause for them.
Pedro González Cánovas, Member of the Canarian Nationalist Alternative
