![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/11.jpg\")
\nThe Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, played for time today, suspending the declaration of independence mandated by the referendum in order to continue negotiations with the central government of Spain, the European Union, and—presumably—hardliners in his camp who desire to proclaim Catalan independence unilaterally. As these two sides face off, jockeying for position on the world stage, how should we relate to this conflict? We’ve translated another text from anarchists on the Iberian peninsula addressing this question.
\n\nOn the Spanish side, we see old-fashioned brute force covered with the usual thin veneer of legalism. When the Spanish minister of the economy says “This is about a rebellion against the rule of law, and the rule of law is the foundation of coexistence,” he is issuing the sort of veiled threat that emperors have always used to keep their vassals in check. The police and military forces converging in Catalunya are not an exception, but the rule on which this rule of law is based; there would be no Spain if not for the sort of violence with which Spain tried to block the referendum, and no other states either.
\n\nThis explains the fascist flags and Nazi salutes in Madrid, and the spokesperson for the ruling party in Spain suggesting that Puigdemont may end up like the last Catalan President to declare independence, who was murdered by a fascist firing squad with the assistance of Nazi Germany. When democracy does not serve to legitimize the state but threatens to split it asunder, partisans of pure, unmediated violence will always come to the fore within the ruling party.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/Juanmi_News/status/914106872025804806\n \n
On the Catalan side, we see a large number of courageous people from all sectors of society coming together to struggle heroically for a misguided and counterproductive goal. The independence movement brings together left-wing and right-wing nationalists with capitalists seeking to increase their control of the market, socialists who believe that a Catalan state would pass better laws, and anarchists simply concerned with defending their neighborhoods from the Spanish police. The politicians within this movement are likely to disappoint rank-and-file participants by not following through on their promises, but the problem goes deeper than this.
\n\nThe bigger problem is that establishing a new state is one of the least efficient ways to pursue the laudable goals that the best parts of the independence movement espouse. Self-determination is not achieved through government; it is the opposite of government. If the objective is to promote autonomy and create a more egalitarian society, this will not be achieved by passing and enforcing laws, however liberal, but by dispersing power throughout participatory social movements capable of opening spaces of freedom and solving their own problems directly.
\n\nThose who have traded their vision that “another world is possible” for the slogan “Un altre país és possible” (another country is possible) may believe themselves to be engaging in realpolitik, but routes that appear to be shortcuts often turn out to be ways of getting more rapidly to the wrong destination. One does not simply advance incrementally towards stateless freedom by breaking states into smaller pieces. Everything that appears to temper or divide up the power of centralized government also serves to stabilize and legitimize it. The best way to defend ourselves against oppression is not to try to put another government in place over us; it is to build the capacity to defend ourselves against all who aspire to govern.
\n\nSocial change is never easy; it requires sacrifice and hardship. Let’s make those sacrifices and undergo those hardships in order to address the roots of our problems, rather than to help the latest wave of opportunists take power.
\n\n\nThe unfolding conflict between the Spanish and Catalan governments calls to mind the predicament anarchists found themselves in during the Ukrainian revolution, which pitted fascists and nationalists against an oppressive regime. When the struggle came to a head, anarchists were forced to take the streets alongside fascists rather than suffer the crackdown that would have ensued if the uprising failed and the regime survived; yet they were forced to fight behind nationalist and fascist banners, as fascists outnumbered them and attacked them when they tried to express their own political objectives. This worst-case scenario occurred because Ukrainian anarchists had not been able to establish a third front within the social unrest from the outset, rejecting both nationalism and the regime.
\n\nSome outside Spain are calling for anarchists to support the bid for independence on the grounds that it is a cut-and-dried struggle of authority against the people. In practice, this would mean doing on purpose in Catalunya what anarchists were forced to do in Ukraine. On the contrary, we believe that, presented with a choice between two bad options, anarchists should follow advice of the Yiddish proverb and choose the third. We should take the streets to defend our neighbors and communities against police and oppressive governments, but we should always make it clear that we do this out of opposition to all police and governments, however unpopular this is. This holds open the possibility that later, when people are disappointed by the success or failure of the nationalist movement, they will be able to consider the anarchist alternative.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/12.jpg\")
\nUnfortunately, this will not be the last time we have to face this challenge. Civil war is on the horizon in many different parts of the world. As soon as human beings are divided into separate polities according to ethnicity, religion, or other markers of belonging, war inevitably follows as the rival powers contend for territory. Because ethnic purity and cultural homogeneity are myths, the lines on which such divisions should be drawn are always blurry. Nationalists of every stripe will be eager to enlist us in these conflicts. When they are fighting against an oppressive ruling force, we may find ourselves beside them, but this only makes it more important for us to retain our autonomy and take pains to distinguish our agenda from theirs.
\n\nTo learn more about how social movements in Catalunya went from being ungovernable to calling for an independence government, read “From 15M to Podemos: The Regeneration of Spanish Democracy.” To learn how Catalan anarchists regarded and participated in the struggle during the referendum, read Anarchists on the Catalan Referendum: Three Perspectives from the Streets. For more discussion of the relationship between nationalism, democracy, and the state, read Democracy, Red in Tooth and Claw On the Catalan Referendum: The Old State, a New State, or No State at All?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/5.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/4.jpg\")
\nOur comrades in former Yugoslavia, having lived through a civil war in which ethnically defined nationalist blocs split apart and fought for territory, have watched the situation in Catalunya with apprehension. They recommended that we translate and publish the following text, “Reflections on Catalunya, September 2017,” comprised of the correspondence between two veterans of the anarchist movement in the Iberian peninsula, Tomás Ibáñez and Miquel Amorós. In the words of Tomás Ibáñez, One never takes power. It is power that takes us.
\n\nWhen such drastic changes happen in Catalunya as the ones that have occurred since the massive demonstrations of May 15, 2011, it is quite difficult not to experience some perplexity.
\n\nWhat happened so that some of the more combative sectors of Catalan society went from “surrounding the Parliament” during the summer of 2011 to wanting to defend the institutions of Catalonia in September of 2017?
\n\nWhat happened so that these same sectors went from facing the autonomous police force of Catalonia—the Mossos d’Esquadra—in the Catalunya square, and from reproaching their atrocities, like those suffered by Esther Quintana1 and Andrés Benítez,2 to applauding their presence in the streets and fearing that they may not possess full autonomy?
\n\nWhat happened so that some of these sectors went from denouncing the government for its antisocial policies to voting for its budget? But also, what happened so that certain sectors of anarcho-syndicalism went from stating that freedoms have never been obtained by voting to defending the possibility for a referendum to be given to the populace?
\n\nWe could add many more questions to this list and one could give multiple answers to each of the questions I’ve asked. We could cite factors like the decline of the regime of ‘783; the economic crisis and the austerity measures that were imposed, rendering life ever more precarious; the establishment of the far-right in the Spanish government with all its authoritarian policies and curbs on civil liberties; the scandalous corruption within the majority party, and many more.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/1.jpg\")
\nHowever, I think it would be naïve not to take into account the extraordinary rise of nationalist attitudes. Without a doubt, the rise of nationalism is connected with the factors I mentioned, but it also also received a lot of fuel from the Catalan government and Catalan public television.
\n\nSeveral years of persistent nationalist propaganda have inevitably shaped how people think, and the strategies to expand the base of Catalan nationalism have been extraordinarily intelligent.
\n\nThis narrative constructed on the basis of the right to decide, on the basis of the image of the ballot box and the demand for the freedom to vote, served to conceal the fact that all along it has been an apparatus of the government working to promote this tale.
\n\nToday, the starred flag (red or blue) is, without a doubt, an emotionally charged symbol under which the masses mobilize. And precisely this aspect should not be overlooked by those who, without being nationalists, see in the mobilizations in favor of the referendum an opportunity that anti-authoritarians should not pass up in order to open up spaces of potential that, if not revolutionary, could at least serve to agitate society. And so they throw themselves into the battle between the governments of Spain and Catalonia.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/2.jpg\")
\nThey should not take this lightly because when a struggle includes a strong nationalist component, and this is, without a doubt, the case in the current conflict, the possibilities for emancipatory change are strictly null.
\n\nI would like to share the optimism of the compañeros who wish to open up cracks in the current situation in order to make emancipatory paths possible. However, I cannot shut my eyes to the evidence that popular insurrections and movements for social rights never extend across society regardless of class: they always find the dominant classes circling their wagons on one side of the barricades. While in movements for national self-determination, like the current movement, there is always an important interclass component.
\n\nThese movements always connect the exploited and the exploiters in pursuit of a common objective, which never turns out to be the abolition of social inequalities. Consequently, as history shows, movements for national self-determination always end up reproducing class society, subjugating the common people once more after they have served as cannon fodder to advance these struggles.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/10.jpg\")
\nThis does not mean that one should not fight against dominant nationalisms with the aim of destroying them, but one has to do this while constantly denouncing rising nationalisms, instead of converging with them under the false pretext that this common front could create the possibility of spreading emancipatory ideals and isolating those who only wish to create a new national state that they could control.
\n\nLet there be no doubt: these travel companions will be the first ones repressing us as soon as they don’t need us anymore, and we should have already learned not to let them off the hook.
\n\n-Tomás Ibáñez
\n\nBarcelona, September 26, 2017
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/9.jpg\")
\nAlacant, 27-09-2017
\n\nCompañero Tomás—
\n\nYour “untimely perplexities” are the greatest exponent I have read of common sense and of the revolutionary seny4 which should reign not only among anti-authoritarians, but among all who wish to abolish this society rather than managing it.
\n\nNonetheless, it doesn’t surprise me that so many people who call themselves anarchists have signed up for the nationalist movement and enthusiastically claim the right to decide the material their chains will be made of. Poor Ricardo Mella and the “law of the number”!5
\n\nAnd back in the day, there was no shortage of those who jumped on the Podemos bandwagon or the platformist bandwagon and changed their class struggle attire for the clothes of the new citizenry.
\n\nIt is characteristic of philistine anarchism, in the face of any minor historical dilemma, to opt for playing the game with the established Power. The Spanish Civil War is a clear example of this. Confusion, the irresistible attraction of the racket [i.e., taking positions within the state], losing class-based structures, the lesser of two evils, the enemy of my enemy, whatever.
\n\nThe final result is this: a mass of slaves who will serve any outside cause and a bunch of unhealthy egos in the style of Colau6 or Iglesias7 who would pay to be sold. Black storms stir up the skies and dark clouds block our sight. Lets try to disperse them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/8.jpg\")
\nThe question one should ask oneself is not why one local sector of the dominant class should decide to resolve its differences with the State via street mobilizations, but rather why a considerable portion of the population with opposing interests, mainly youth, acts as the theatrical scenery and striking force for the caste which has inherited Catalonia; a caste that is classist, catholic, corrupt, and authoritarian at that.
\n\nThe game of Catalonian patriotism is not difficult to disentangle, and those who promote it and benefit from it have never sought to conceal this. The process in favor of national independence has been a daring class operation. The consolidation of a local caste associated with economic development demanded a qualitative jump in national autonomy.
\n\nThe refusal of the central plutocracy to dialogue, in other words, to transfer responsibilities, mainly financial, blocked the ascent of this caste and reduced its influence and political capacity with regards to some businessmen, industrialists, and bankers who were willing to be led by a sovereign class in order that they could they could triple their profits.
\n\nThe decision to go head-to-head with the Spanish state meant a radical rupture with the pacts of political Catalanism.
\n\nThey weren’t too serious. In other words, the goal was never a unilateral declaration of independence, since this caste only hoped to force a new negotiation from a more advantageous position. However, since it needed to appear as though that was the intention, it needed a well-oiled apparatus of agitation in order to inject a jingoistic mysticism into the public that could boil up in a controlled manner in the caldron of identity. And the mobilization became a reality. It was quite a sight.
\n\nArmed with the marketing of identity, this pro-independence demagoguery was able to perpetuate itself within a democratic citizenry. The demagogues were able to take these masses out to the streets, because the people were too domesticated to go out on their own accord. With great skill, they played on the repressed emotions and gregarious feelings that remain hidden inside the servants of consumerism. In other words, they used alienation to their own advantage.
\n\nIn my opinion, they have achieved their goal, and the ruling state caste is much more willing to modify the post-Franco constitution so that it may better suit the Catalan caste. Although for that to succeed, it might have to sacrifice some figures along the way, perhaps including Puigdemont8 himself. This seems to be suggested by the powerful representatives of big Capital, such as Felipe González, for example.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/7.jpg\")
\nNationalism is controlled by con men, but in itself it is not fraud. It is an emotional reaction to a situation that is frustrating for a lot of people whose agency has been thwarted. It doesn’t function in a rational way, since it is not the result of reason; it’s more like a psychosis than a stirring towards liberation.
\n\nTo understand the emergence of patriotism in Catalan society, one must study mass psychology, and for that Reich, Canetti, or Nietzsche are more useful than theoreticians like Marx, Reclus, or Pannekoek.
\n\nThe conviction and enthusiasm of the crowd do not emerge from cool-headed, logical reasoning, or from rigorous social or historical analysis. They have more to do with finding an emotional release without risk, the feeling of power that crowds produce, the fetishism of flags and other such symbols, the virtual Catalan spirit of social networks—the characteristics of a rootless, atomized, and déclassé mass, lacking their own values, goal, or ideals, predisposed to agree with whatever is given to them.
\n\nColonized by the market and the State, everyday life is full of latent and internalized conflicts, endowed with an excess of energy that surfaces in the form of individual or collective neurosis.
\n\nNationalism, of any kind, offers an excellent mechanism for channeling these impulses which, if they were to rise to consciousness, would constitute a terrifying force for revolt.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/10/6.jpg\")
\nNationalism divides society into two paranoid blocs, artificially confronted by their obsessions.
\n\nMaterial, moral, cultural interests do not count. Nothing to do with justice, liberty, equality, or universal emancipation.
\n\nThe Catalan people is something as abstract as the Spanish people: each is an entity that serves as an alibi for a sovereign caste with its famously repressive police.
\n\nA “people” is solely defined against any power that does not emanate from it or that separates it from itself. So it follows that a people with a State is not a people.
\n\nYou might agree with me that history is made by common people via assemblies and organisms born from assemblies, but as things are right now, history belongs to those who manipulate it most effectively.
\n\nWhat these people do is provide the popular frame for a bad theater play in which we can see an all-too-typical distribution of power.
\n\nAnyone may make their own calculations and navigate inside or outside of the nationalist waters, in their tame turbulence, but you must never lose sight of the heart of the matter.
\n\nFraternally, Miquel Amorós.
\n\nEsther Quintana is a journalist who lost an eye as a result of being attacked by the Mossos in 2012. ↩
\nAndrés Benítez died in 2013 after being beaten by a group of Mossos. ↩
\nThe current Spanish constitution and political regime, which was instituted in 1978 after four decades of right-wing dictatorship under Franco. ↩
\nSeny is a form of ancestral Catalan wisdom or sensibleness. It involves well-pondered perception of situations, level-headedness, awareness, integrity, and right action. ↩
\nRicardo Mella was one of the first of the writers, intellectuals, and anarchist activists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Spain. ↩
\nAda Colau is a Spanish left-wing representative and, since June 13, 2015, Mayor of Barcelona, the first woman to hold the office. Colau was one of the founding members and spokespeople of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages), which was set up in Barcelona in 2009 in response to the rise in evictions caused by unpaid mortgage loans and the collapse of the Spanish property market in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. ↩
\nPablo Iglesias Turrion is a Spanish politician who has been the Secretary-General of Podemos since 2014. Before then, he was a lecturer in political science at the Complutense University of Madrid. He hosts the online programs “La Tuerka” and “Fort Apache” and frequently appears in Spanish political TV shows. ↩
\nPuigdemont is a Catalan politician and former journalist. He is the current President of the Generalitat of Catalonia. ↩
\nOn October 1, during a referendum on Catalan independence, Spanish police attacked crowds of voters, smashed out the windows of schools hosting polling stations, and beat senior citizens at random. In response, a massive general strike took place in Barcelona on October 3. You can read eyewitness reports and analysis of these events here.
\n\nBy setting up this opposition between the violence of the Spanish police and the self-organization of Catalan voters, proponents of independence have created the impression that nationalism and democracy offer a solution to state oppression and police violence. In the process, they’ve invested Catalan police and politicians with renewed legitimacy. Yet what if democracy, nationalism, and police violence are not opposing phenomena, but three aspects of the same thing? Here, we argue that the way to achieve self-determination is not to create a new state, but to abolish the state as a model for human relations.
\n\nDon’t take our word for it, though. Let’s back up and see if there’s any coherent way to resolve this conflict over state sovereignty besides the anarchist approach.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/04/5.jpg\")
The ones who put out the fires.
\nBoth sides claim to be fighting for democracy. The Spanish police present themselves as the defenders of law and order, while the proponents of Catalan independence say they seek self-determination through elections. These are two different visions of what democracy entails.
\n\nOr are they? Let’s look closer.
\n\nIf democracy simply means being assaulted by police in the name of constitutions ratified before you were born, there isn’t much to distinguish it from dictatorship. The fact that the salaries of the officers who beat you are paid with tax money they extort from you just adds insult to injury. The Spanish state needs to legitimize those laws, police, and taxes with democratic elections or else it will be obvious to everyone that their rule rests on force alone. This explains some of the innuendo about how the majority of Catalan people don’t actually want independence.
\n\nBut the partisans of Catalan independence face a version of this same paradox. What weight will their referendum carry if the result is not implemented via laws, police, and taxes? In calling for an independent Catalan state, they are calling to replicate everything they currently object to in Spanish rule. Catalunya already has its own police and tax collectors who treat those who resist them just as violently as the Spanish police treated aspiring voters on Sunday.
\n\nSo it’s not a question of which side is democratic. They both are. The question, rather, is which elections, laws, and police should hold sway—the Spanish ones or the Catalan ones? To answer that question, we have to confront a deeper problem, the question of sovereignty.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/04/1.jpg\")
The defenders of democracy.
\nWas the referendum on October 1 legitimate? The Catalan government asserts that it was. Meanwhile, Spanish President Rajoy maintains that “a self-determination referendum in Catalonia didn’t happen,” in the longstanding tradition of politicians like Donald Trump who proclaim reality by fiat.
\n\nWhat does it take to make a referendum legitimate? Is it a question of what proportion of the population participates? Or is the important thing whether the vote adheres to an established protocol?
\n\nAccording to the Catalan government, 90 percent of the ballots cast on Sunday were for independence. On the other hand, only 42 percent of registered voters participated in the referendum—2.2 million people out of 5.3 million registered voters. That still seems like a pretty good turnout, considering that 12,000 Spanish police were violently attacking voters all over Catalunya, inflicting nearly 900 documented injuries and surely a great deal more that went unreported. But it still accounts for less than half of the registered voters and considerably less than half the population.
\n\nOpponents of Catalan independence boycotted the election. Even if they hadn’t boycotted it, most of them probably wouldn’t have risked being beaten by Spanish police in order to vote for those police to continue to wield authority. It’s entirely possible that the majority of the residents of Catalunya don’t want independence, regardless of the results of the referendum.
\n\nFor reference, no Presidential election in US history has ever included more than 43% of the total population. Countless people have boycotted US elections, but this has never discouraged those who rule from Washington, DC from assuming that they hold rightful authority. If we decide the Catalan referendum wasn’t representative enough, we should probably reject the legitimacy of every US Presidential election as well.
\n\nOthers argue that what makes an election legitimate is not what proportion of the population participates, but whether it takes place according to proper protocol. This argument is most popular with the extreme center, the sort of people who are sticklers for the rules regardless of what the rules are or who wrote them. Before we buy into this argument, let’s recall that it was protocol that kept women and people of color from participating in elections for the first century and a half of US democracy, just as the current rules still serve to prevent many people of color from voting today. Adherence to protocol does not guarantee inclusion or egalitarianism.
\n\nBut the real problem with relying on protocol is that it returns us to the problem of sovereignty. If two different governments establish two different sets of rules, how do we determine which is legitimate? Every existing government came to power by rejecting the authority of its predecessor. We can’t simply do whatever the authorities tell us; we have to make our own decisions about what is right.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/04/2.jpg\")
Catalan demonstrators—and Catalan police.
\nWhat should determine which polity people belong to? Nations generally make this determination according to place of birth or parentage. The former approach perpetuates the feudal system; the latter makes nationality a kind of caste system. Neither of these models is “democratic” in the sense of guaranteeing everyone equal rights and participation in society. They also don’t offer any guidance as to what we should do when competing polities demand our fealty, as will occur in Catalunya if this conflict intensifies.
\n\nShould the answer to this question be determined by majority rule? There are many problems with this approach. For example, it doesn’t address the question of scale. Partisans of independence may comprise the majority of the population of Barcelona—does that mean they should be able to force their agenda on the minority that opposes it? Catalans comprise a minority within the Spanish state—does that mean Spain should be able to force them to remain Spanish subjects? Spain comprises a minority within the European Union, which itself is a minority within the United Nations. Should world politics simply be a matter of ever bigger majorities forcing decisions on minorities?
\n\nNationalism has developed as a response to this quandary. Understanding the question of sovereignty as a competition to amass majorities at all costs, people form blocs on the basis of superficial similarities such as ethnicity, language, religion, and citizenship. These blocs contend for control within each state and in conflicts between states. This struggle takes place nonviolently as democracy and violently as war—wherever you find democracy, war is never far away.
\n\nThere are two grievous problems with this approach. First, it exacerbates internal hierarchies; second, it imposes conformity and the struggle to dominate others as the dual basis of all relations. In practice, nationalism means being oppressed and exploited by people of your own ethnicity, language, religion, or citizenship. To defend ourselves against those who aim to rule us, we have to join forces across the boundaries of identity, forming common cause on the basis of shared aspirations for freedom and peaceful coexistence. Nationalists promise to deliver self-determination on the basis of shared identities, but true self-determination demands symbiotic relationships that transcend identity.
\n\nThe principle of majority rule itself is the problem. On the one hand, the theory of majority rule suggests that we are obligated to accept whatever the majority desires, prescribing a complete abdication of ethical responsibility. On the other hand, the practice of majority rule tacitly implements the principle that might makes right, reducing all relations to cutthroat competition.
\n\nBecause majority rule is the foundation of democracy, we should not be surprised when democracy serves to legitimize and mobilize the violence of the state, provoking rival states to do the same thing in response. This is the dual risk posed by the independence movement in Catalunya: it could establish a new state just as oppressive as the previous one, but more difficult to question on account of appearing more representative—and it could trigger open hostilities between entrenched state actors who become incapable of imagining each other as anything other than enemies. The latter scenario appears very unlikely for now, but we are not the only ones to speculate that as economic and ecological crises intensify, the Syrian civil war will become a more common template for the politics of the future than the social democracies of the 20th century.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/04/3.jpg\")
Beware the tides of nationalism.
\nAnarchists have long sought a way out of the traps of nationalism and democracy.
\n\nIn place of citizenship, a holdover of feudalism and the caste system, we propose voluntary associations that do not claim exclusive control of populations or regions. In place of nationalism, we propose mutual aid across all lines of identity. In place of the state, we propose true self-determination on a decentralized basis. In place of democracy, the principle of majority rule, we propose the principles of horizontality and autonomy. In place of the wars that nationalism and democracy always foment, we propose solidarity and transformative justice.
\n\nWhat could this mean in Catalunya today, where partisans of Spanish sovereignty clash with partisans of Catalan independence? Our answer is utopian, but it offers a point of departure to imagine what we could aim to accomplish in our social movements besides setting up new state structures.
\n\nLet Spain be a voluntary association comprised of everyone in every land who identifies with it, and let Catalunya be another such voluntary association among a thousand more. Let all of these associations coexist on the condition that none seeks to rule the others or deprive them of resources. Let each association set out to create commons rather than to amass private wealth, and let all join forces to defend themselves whenever anything threatens these commons or the liberty of the participants.
\n\nIn this vision, each person could participate in as many different associations as she saw fit. Each association would function as an experiment in collective creativity, shaped alternately by consensus-based decision-making and by the spontaneous interplay of the participants’ self-directed activities. In place of the cutthroat competition of capitalism and statecraft, each of these associations would strive to offer the most fulfilling model for cooperative human relations. A process of natural selection would reward the most generous and nourishing projects rather than the most selfish and brutal, without reducing them to a lowest common denominator or imposing competition as a winner-take-all zero-sum game.
\n\nThis vision predates the anarchist movement; it has antecedents in a variety of indigenous societies and federations. It is already the model by which anarchists in Barcelona and elsewhere around the world organize themselves in networks of assemblies, social centers, organizations, and affinity groups. Even if we can’t implement this vision on the scale of a region or a continent yet, we can act according to its logic, building networks of mutual aid and standing up to tyranny wherever we encounter it.
\n\nFrom this vantage point, we can see that when police attack people attempting to utilize voting booths, anarchists should intercede—not to defend the voting booths, but to protect people from police. We should make it clear that winning referendums will not bring us closer to the world of our dreams—the important thing is to become capable of creating the relations we desire on an immediate basis, in a way that can spread rhizomatically throughout society.
\n\nAt the same time, we have to make clear everything that the Catalan police have in common with the Spanish police and other police the whole world over. We’ve seen the Catalan police attack demonstrations over and over just as the Spanish police did on Sunday. If they provoke less outrage when they attack migrants, workers, and anarchists than when they attack voters, that only shows us how far we have to go.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/04/4.jpg\")
\nOn Sunday, October 1, the Catalan government held a referendum about Catalan independence from Spain in flagrant defiance of the Spanish government. Massive open clashes between Catalan voters and Spanish police took place throughout the region. A general strike is called for October 3 as a showdown looms between rival politicians and, perhaps, rival states. This situation poses complex challenges: how do anarchists show solidarity to partisans of Catalan independence against police repression without legitimizing nationalism, democracy, or a new Catalan state and its police? We spoke with several anarchists throughout the region and translated these three reports to offer insight into how Catalan anarchists are approaching these questions. You can read our own analysis of the situation in Democracy, Red in Tooth and Claw: The Old State, a New State, or No State at All?
\n\nThe Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police) announced that the polling locations would be closed or evicted by 6 am Sunday morning. This can be understood as a way to to encourage people to turn out to protect the voting centers. The Guardia Civil and riot police of the Policia Nacional (Spanish police) had been ferried into Catalunya on cruise ships and accommodated at hotels. They began evicting voting centers early in the morning, inflicting at least 844 documented injuries across Catalunya. Over a hundred people were hospitalized, some in serious condition. The actual number of injuries may be considerably higher. In one instance, an old man had a heart attack after a police charge; police attacked again as people were trying to revive him. Another was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/10/02/1.jpg\")
Farmers blocked the streets from the Port of Barcelona to prevent more Spanish Guardia Civil from exiting their cruise ships.
\nYesterday, October 1, the referendum for Catalan independence took place in the middle of an enormous police operation. The government in Madrid threatened to close the places where voting was going to take place; in order to prevent that, people occupied those spaces, which included half of the high schools in all of Catalunya, two days ahead of time. In some towns, people even took off the doors so that they could not be closed to lock out potential voters.
\n\nPeople came together starting at 6 am to protect the ballot boxes, while police showed up outside many polling stations to remove them. The watchword of the day was to defend the ballot boxes nonviolently, and within this framework we saw many diverse displays of spontaneous resistance including tractors blocking roads and people running and organizing themselves to make sure that all of the points where police could go were covered. In some towns, the police were stopped with barricades. One highlight for me is that in the town of Sant Carles de la Rapita, the Guardia Civil were forced back with a hail of stones.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/interiorgob/status/914457752528916480\n\n\n
In thousands of towns, people opposed the police. It’s difficult to know how far self-organization reached, although in the big cities, most people drank the Kool-Aid of nonviolence and let themselves be beaten. This created some surreal situations: police beating people who wanted to vote and confiscating ballot boxes in order to “defend democracy,” firefighters forming security cordons to protect voters from police, and confrontations between Spanish and Catalan police. All of this generated sympathy from the people towards the Catalan police (who are known for being real motherfuckers), to such an extent that people applauded when they saw the Catalan police vans pass by. It was Kafkaesque.
\n\nAt the end of the day, President Rajoy was pleased with the actions of the police and affirmed that in Catalonia “there had been no referendum.” On the other side, Puigdemont, the Catalan President, said that Catalonia would apply the referendum law according to which they must proclaim the new Catalan Republic in the days following the referendum. He appealed to European and international heads of state to mediate the process.
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Catalan firefighters showed up to act as a barrier between the Guardia Civil and those trying to access polling places.
\nSpanish police beating Catalan firefighters.
\nThere is no single anarchist position on all of this. All anarchists reject institutional politics, bourgeois nationalism, and class collaboration, and we will never applaud the Catalan police. At times, the situation is not inviting to anarchist participation. Even so, there are many who affirm that where they live, they find themselves on the side of those who decided to take the streets. What anarchist can stay indoors while police threaten and beat people who desire to have more of a say in their lives? It is tempting to want to break up the Spanish state or, if not to destroy it, at least to debilitate it through a popular struggle. And when people are in the streets, this presents the possibility that things might overflow, exceeding their limits… although at the moment, this is difficult since it is politicians who hold the initiative.
\n\nAnarchist and antiauthoritarian organizations and unions and independent unions have called for a general strike on October 3. Yesterday, at the eleventh hour, the CCOO and the UGT (the “fire-extinguishing” unions that re-absorb and domesticate popular struggles) and the ANC along with the Omnium Cultural (the organizations that articulate bourgeois nationalism in its purest form) joined the call for the general strike.
\n\nVisca la terra lliure de patriotismes! Here’s to an earth free of patriotism!
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Guardia Civil raided over 300 of the 2300 polling places around Catalonia.
\nGuardia Civil raiding a polling station.
\nI’m writing this to you just after getting out of an assembly because tomorrow there will be a general strike in Catalunya. Actually, they don’t consider it a strike, more like a work stoppage. From the neighborhoods, people are organizing piquetes (blockades) and some demonstrations. These have been tireless days, filled to the top. I’m guessing you have seen the images of the day’s events on October 1, which were really, really crazy.
\n\nAnarchists have showed up late and ill-prepared for the independence process. For five years, the proposal for independence has been gestating from both the Generalitat (the Catalan government) and leftist, independentista Catalan political parties like the CUP. Anarchist and anti-authoritarian movements haven’t really kept up with the movement for an independence referendum, so this whole thing has caught us almost by surprise, which doesn’t put us in a good light considering that it’s been going on for five years. Often, we live in our own bubble while the world changes and forces build without us realizing it.
\n\nStarting some months ago, various neighbors, including some who belong to the (independentista) National Assembly, others to the CUP party, and other people who are closer to the independentista movement, all started to organize themselves into committees in defense of the referendum. Spanish censorship was ramping up ahead of the vote, and the state was taking measures to control what appeared on the internet, especially in the moments right before the referendum.
\n\nThrough these neighborhood defense committees, people organized assemblies that are not controlled by the (indepedentista) National Assembly, nor by the Catalan government which is the driving force behind the referendum. There have been tensions between representatives from the National Assembly, the government, and the neighborhood assemblies because the assemblies questioned instructions from the Catalan government about how to defend their towns. In the days leading up to the referendum on October 1, there was a lot of nervousness on the part of the government because there were many parts of the independentista movement that they couldn’t really control. In the end, the neighborhood assemblies were responsible for much of the logistics of what happened on voting day, determining how people organized themselves and how they defended the polling stations.
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The violence of the Spanish police.
\nAnarchists hadn’t thought about what to do in relation to this movement until the referendum was approaching and the Spanish state began to crack down on civil liberties. Faced with the censorship imposed by the state, a large number of anarchist groups from different parts of Barcelona, who have already been organized in their own neighborhood assemblies and social centers, decided to give support to the local independentista movements.
\n\nWithin the anarchist movement, there are people who support the referendum itself and also people who don’t. Independentista people are demanding basic democratic rights and civil liberties such as the right to vote, and some anarchists believe that anarchists should be out there with them. There are also people involved in the independence movement who we lost track of years ago when the political parties like CUP and Podemos that gained momentum after the 15M movement in 2011 institutionalized the energy from the streets. With the referendum, people are returning to the streets, so we decided it was an important moment for us to be out there too. But this has created a good deal of debate within and between anarchist collectives, because we are definitely not coming from the same place politically as many of the independentistas.
\n\nFor us, it has been really complicated. For me personally, sure, I hold contradictory positions all the time, like supporting certain reformist campaigns or engaging with single issue movements… but to defend a democratic process towards national independence… it’s very hard to figure out where I stand. Many of the comrades in our neighborhood are trying to figure it out too.
\n\nWe have been organizing ourselves and coordinating with independentista groups that have been active in the neighborhood. We attended some assemblies and announced that on the day of the referendum, we would open up our social center as an info-point with food and outlets for charging cellphones, a place where you could rest up and get hydrated. This was also a way of suggesting to people who believed in self-determination, albeit through statist means, that there are other ways to take direct control over our lives, in these spaces at the margins of society.
\n\nSo yes, we decided to lend our support. Yesterday was the day of the vote, and there was no other topic either on the news or in discussions on the street. It was the only subject of conversation.
\n\nAnarchist graffiti in Barcelona, September 2017.
\nOn the street where I live, there were two polling stations. Starting at 5 am, we went out onto the street and erected barricades. Catalan police came to tell us we weren’t allowed to do that. Then they marched, and from 8 am the whole voting thing commenced. There were so many people out. Honestly, it was difficult not to get swept up in what was happening—lots of elderly people, lots of excited people. On one hand, it was really exciting; on the other hand, it was a bit surreal, in that the independentista voters were acting like they were doing the most clandestine, badass thing in the world.
\n\nI’m sure everyone has already seen the scenes of violence showing the Policia Nacional and the Guardia Civil in high schools in Barcelona and other towns around Catalunya. We heard that the Policia Nacional were deployed close to where we were. Things intensified from there and that lasted the whole day.
\n\nMany Catalan anarchists have voted. I voted too. The truth is it was difficult not to let yourself get carried away by the moment.
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More police violence.
\nAs for an anarchist analysis of what’s going on…
\n\nMany of us went home yesterday very annoyed because we had a lot of differences with what was happening. About two weeks ago, the anarchist collective here in my neighborhood had a discussion about whether or not to defend the process of national “self-determination.” There were many people close to us, with whom we share a lot of political affinity, who said it was better to struggle against the institutions of a Catalan state because it would be a smaller state. Many people also supported the process in hopes of destabilizing the Spanish state because at the moment the Spanish state is very weakened. It’s a moment that could tip either way.
\n\nPersonally, I don’t like either of the options. We can’t lose track of where we stand as anarchists. I think we should be supporting people in the streets, but I truly believe the worst thing that could happen to us would be if a Catalan state gained independence. In the end, it’s just a way to legitimize the social and political exclusions that exist today to believe that we’d have more control over them in a smaller state. But it’s hard for people to see a Catalan state as something other than their own, especially after struggling for years to achieve it.
\n\nWhile people went out to vote impassioned to the point of tears, several police murders have taken place in Barcelona in the last several months without any response. Meanwhile, thanks to the referendum process, the Mossos d’Esquadra have gotten a PR makeover as the good guys; until this, they always received negative press coverage. The Policia Nacional (Spanish police) have practically tortured people, leaving many with visible injuries. On the good side, they’ve turned public opinion against them. So the militarized Policia Nacional now look very dirty, and the Mossos d’Esquadra seem more “clean”—although their current “clean” image just means they will be able to utilize this legitimacy to employ violence with fewer obstacles.
\n\nI believe we have to acknowledge the disobedience of the Catalan people, their confrontation with the police, and the resistance that they’ve demonstrated. It has been incredible. Like I’ve mentioned, the anarchist movement has arrived late and ill-prepared to a process that has been gestating for five years already. We can’t expect to do the work of years in just a couple weeks. Carving out our own space is difficult and we have to take a humble approach to it.
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The people of Catalunya against the police of Spain.
\nSpanish nationalists sending off the Guardia Civil on their trip to Catalunya.
\nThe point isn’t to help build a new state, but rather to demonstrate through practice that self-organization, networks of mutual aid, and assemblies are the real alternative to the Spanish state, and through this we find each other, some of us being anarchists, but many others too. What is clear is that the struggle against statist hierarchies is not on its way out: it simply continues in a different context. If a Catalan state comes to exist, we will maintain our opposition to the state from the very same networks with our own practices, our own communities, our own economies of mutual aid.
\n\nMy enemy continues to be capitalism, the military, the clergy, the farcical politicians and bankers. Anarchists don’t stop being anarchists just because they express solidarity with people facing retaliation from the state. I know perfectly well what happened in 19371 and that we must not abandon our memory of the previous times we were betrayed by statists, but we also must oppose current state repression—or else will we simply stay put, watching? Our struggle is to be present in the streets to offer our vision and denounce the violence of the state, whether it be Spanish, Catalan, or Chinese!
\n\nWe must learn about what happened in the past, when anarchists were betrayed. We should try to make sure it doesn’t happen again, which is to say, we should foment a consensus among anarchists and anti-authoritarians for when this situation is over, when we will continue building self-organization. I, at least, for many years now, have been working for this 24/7, and whatever happens I will continue doing it as I’ve done every day.
\n\nAnarchism is not a dogma, neither is it a religion. It is a form of life, a way of feeling and acting as a human in harmony with the earth. Every era has its context, and it’s true that those who believe in the state have betrayed us before, but we forget that without us, they won’t change either! We will continue influencing society despite ourselves.
\n\nThe anarcho-independentista current is criticized by comrades who are more “orthodox” or dogmatic, depending on how you see them. There are some who support the idea of independence without a state. It’s not a majoritarian position, but I consider it a valid one. For a long time, anarchists have not focused attention on the subject of independence. Now this issue has served to inspire debate and discussion; we disagree with each other, but we try to come to some consensus.
\n\nI don’t know if we ought to vote or not, but I do know that the Spanish government is getting more fascist by the day. It’s not that it surprises me, in any case I am against a government that approves the slogan “better bloody than broken,” referring to the Iberian peninsula and so-called Spain, which already indicates how old this subject is—something that has been going on for centuries.
\n\n#Jo també soc anarquista.
\n\nPeople applauding the Catalan police.
\nAs for which anarchist organizations have taken positions on this issue…
\n\nThe CGT has called for a general strike in Catalonia which will be supported by the CNT-AIT, the historic organization that nowadays is much smaller than the CGT, an anarcho-syndicalist union that is more “open” and participates in union elections, with over 25,000 members in Catalunya. The CNT-AIT, sadly, does not represent even a 25th of this amount. The other CNT has a very hard split with the independentistas and is against anarco-independentistas.
\n\nThe Cooperativa Integral Catalana, despite not being a specifically libertarian (i.e. anti-authoritarian) organization, has many members who are activists. Their structure is horizontal, based in non-hierarchical assemblies, and they make decisions by consensus. It’s dedicated to building self-organized economic networks and protecting small non-hierarchical projects in Catalunya. They are supporting the strike.
\n\nOca Negra and Proces Embat are anarco-independentista organizations that organize with the CGT in some aspects of the struggle.
\n\nThe Federació Anarquista de Catalunya is another relatively new organization with a position in favor of celebration of the referendum.
\n\n1O: El Poble i les Seves Gàbies: an anarchist analysis in Catalan, speculatively exploring possible scenarios in the independence referendum, that appeared on September 20.
\n\nVoting in Catalonia: An Anarchist Glance on the Catalan Referendum from Athens: an analysis from Greece
\n\nFire Extinguishers and Fire Starters: An Anarchist Analysis of the 15M Movement of 2011
\n\nThe Rose of Fire Has Returned: The General Strike of March 29, 2012
\n\nAfter the Crest: Barcelona Anarchists at Low Tide, an analysis from 2013
\n\nFrom 15M to Podemos: The Regeneration of Spanish Democracy
\n\nHere we refer to the situation created by the ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia), the Catalan State, and the PSU (Communist Party) in 1937 in the middle of open revolution and civil war. They were determined to annihilate anarchists and wipe out their important contributions to the collectivization of farms and workplaces and to the struggle against the fascist reaction led by Franco. They forcibly integrated anarchist militias into the state military. There were fierce confrontations between the Stalinists and the anarchist CNT-FAI, who had the support of non-authoritarian communists of the POUM. This produced numerous armed confrontations between both sides. Let’s just say that many comrades remember this and don’t want to have anything to do with the contemporary ERC, even less with the Catalan Democratic Party (PD Cat), nor with the CUP, although this last party seems to harbor certain libertarian tendencies in its ranks. ↩
\n![no Presidential election in US history has ever included more than 43% of the total population.](\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections#/media/File:U.S._Vote_for_President_as_Population_Share.png\"){kind=link}