Living Dangerously in Catalonia

Click here to access article by "Don Quijones" from Rigged Game. ("Don Quijones" is a pseudonym for a Brit who lives with his Mexican wife mostly in Barcelona.)

The province of Catalonia in Spain

This is the best article (together with its linked-to 2013 article by the same author) that I have read about the developing crisis in Barcelona and its province Catalonia. I have read several books (including Orwell's Homage to Catalonia) about the Spanish Civil War that began in 1936, and have wondered if this pivotal historical event were a direct antecedent of the current split between Madrid and Catalonia. Catalonia was the ideological and military center that defended the young, leftist Spanish republic from the attacks of Spanish, German, and Italian fascist armies. (Meanwhile the Western "democracies" stood passively by in neutrality and watched the destruction.) His linked-to article of 2013 affirms that this history has a very strong influence on what is happening today. I strongly encourage you to read it.

In the 2013 article he insightfully writes about the developing hostile relationship between the Spanish government and Catalonia and relates it to the earlier Civil War:

Franco’s dictatorship ended only 38 years ago — a mere blink of the eye in the great scheme of things — and Spain’s “transition” into a full-fledged constitutional democracy remains very much half-finished. Its institutions of democracy and civil society are still precariously young and extremely fragile.

Perhaps most importantly, Spain, as a living, breathing whole, is yet to come to terms with its recent past. The reason for this is simple: In the wake of Franco’s death in 1975, rather than confronting and reconciling themselves to the injustices and horrors perpetrated in his name, most Spanish people, including many on the left, simply swept all memory of them under the rug of collective amnesia.

Instead of confronting the fear and loathing that had built up during 36 years of brutal dictatorship, not to mention three years of bloody civil war, the Spanish people, egged on by the political and business establishment, chose to simply forget.

In today's article he writes about the current situation: 

...while all this frenetic flag buying, selling, waving and draping may be good business for some, it points to a very dark reality for society as a whole: two deeply rooted, diametrically opposed forms of nationalism with a bleak not-so-distant past are on the verge of a head-on clash. And it’s already having devastating effects on the social fabric as communities in Catalonia fracture, families splinter and friendships break apart.