![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/2.jpg\")
What are the lines of conflict in the Catalan independence movement as it spirals out of the control of parties and pacifists?
\nThe following breathless account of last week’s street fighting in Barcelona and the surrounding regions reaches us from anarchists in Catalunya, where the Spanish government’s crackdown on the movement for national independence has provoked a wave of popular resistance that threatens to transform the demands and consciousness of the movement itself.
\n\nFor background on the Catalan independence movement in English, we recommend “Catalan Independence and the Crisis of Democracy.” This nuanced text offering an anarchist analysis of the situation is still awaiting translation.
\n\nWe’ve just experienced the heaviest rioting in Catalunya since the 1970s. Six nights straight, starting Monday, October 14. It’s Sunday night now. Reports are coming in of a barricade on fire in Girona, so make that seven nights.
\n\nAccording to one journalist, 1044 dumpsters burnt, 358 city trash cans ripped out of place, and 6400 square meters of asphalt burnt. And that’s just in Barcelona.
\n\nA fascist—or just a good citizen—ran over two people in a highway blockade near Mataró. Earlier in the week, cops ran over two protesters with their riot van in Tarragona, then got out and beat one of them. We’ve had a few hit by cars this week. There’s a comrade in critical condition in the hospital right now; cops hit her in the head. A cop in critical condition, too, shot in the head with a slingshot Friday night; the steel ball broke his helmet. He had spent the week shooting and beating people who didn’t have any protection. Fucker never thought the tables would turn.
\n\nIn addition to the highway blockades, there are still big protests in Barcelona, roads blocked. It’s mostly peaceful at this point. The media have been trying to sound the death knell of the uprising for days now, and more independent twitter accounts are getting shut down. It could start up again at any moment; it hasn’t really ended. For now, the state hasn’t instituted martial law, though the conservative government of the Madrid region wants to ban all pro-independence rallies there. There are supposed to be clear sides, remember? Spain vs. Catalunya. But those aren’t the lines of this conflict.
\n\n What are the lines of conflict in the Catalan independence movement as it spirals out of the control of parties and pacifists?
\nOn Monday, the Tribunal Supremo gave seven politicians and two mainstream activist leaders prison sentences of 9-13 years apiece for organizing the independence referendum of October 1, 2017. Sedition. Several more people in exile would likely receive the same sentences. Fuck politicians and these politicians in particular: they were fine running a prison system while they were in charge, and in 2017 they preferred sabotaging the independence movement with the straitjacket of pacifism to losing control of it. My friends and I protected a polling station, starting at 5 in the morning. We hate voting, but we hate the cops even more.
\n\nRegardless, this one trial wasn’t the sole focus of the upheaval. The unions said if organizing a referendum is sedition, any protest could be, so they called a strike for the end of the week. And a month ago, seven members of the CDR [Committees to Defend the Republic, grassroots pro-independence and sometimes anti-capitalist assemblies formed in 2017] were arrested and accused of terrorism. They’re still locked up. We have our reservations, but we’re on the side of people fighting against repression and for freedom, always. So the liberal idea of self-determination is contradictory nonsense? Definitely, but that’s a long conversation and we’re still in the middle of it. A barricade in the street? It’s a good figure of speech. Metaphor, comparison? Spell? This is what we mean by self-determination.
\n\nBy Wednesday, lots of people in the streets were calling for the resignation of the whole Catalan government [which has been pro-independence throughout the last several elections]. Pro-independence politicians have been insulted and ejected from demonstrations. Meanwhile, el Cercle de l’Economia, a think tank representing a large part of the Catalan bourgeoisie, is pointing out that the crisis has political roots, stemming from Madrid’s attempts to reduce Catalan autonomy going back a decade, and they re-emphasize their proposals for more self-government and better financing… within the Spanish state. Their top priority is to put an end to the rioting, so if nationalism means an interclass alliance on the basis of putative ethno-linguistic sameness, this isn’t exactly that. The bourgeoisie have been against the movement for a while now.
\n\nIt’s Sunday, and a new week is about to start. Whether they are rioters or unlucky bystanders, 28 people are sitting in prison with no option of paying bail, beginning the two-year wait until trial; 194 people have been arrested. Fully 590 people have been reported injured, but a lot of us don’t go to the official medics, so the true number is surely two or three times higher.
\n\nThere’s a new blockade at la Jonquera, the principle highway connection between the French and Spanish parts of Catalunya. It’s maintained by 500 people, way out in the Pyrenees mountains. Earlier in the week, they blocked the road for 30 hours, drilling rebar into the asphalt and putting plastic bottles on top to make them visible. A group of gilet jaunes came to blockade the other side of the border. When the former blockade got cleared away, a group of truckers decided to make a blockade. Truckers!
\n\nThe Audiencia Nacional has started investigating Tsunami Democràtic, the nonviolent platform that organzied the airport protests, for terrorism. They just don’t learn. This whole uprising was sparked by repression.
\n\nAlready on Monday, things started to get out of control with the blockades at the airport, the highways, and on train lines. There was too much chaos, spread out too widely, for the police and the political parties to control it all. Tuesday, the blockades continued, but that night rioting broke out in all four provincial capitals—Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Wednesday, the National Assembly of Catalunya (ANC)1 continued with their plan for marches departing from five different cities in the farthest reaches of Catalunya to converge on Barcelona on Friday. The distance they would cross was 100 km in some cases. This plan was pacifist and pacifying, aimed at just tiring people out—but they didn’t go home, they blocked all the highways, god bless ‘em.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/1.jpg\")
Marching on the highways to Barcelona.
\nWednesday night, there was even heavier rioting, even in some smaller cities. When the police charged hard and laid out left and right, people didn’t like that. There were more burning barricades. Catalan politicians started saying it was the work of infiltrators, circulating bogus stories on social media about encaputxats [masked ones] getting envelopes full of cash. I’m still waiting for my envelope, Torra, you stingy Catalan prick! [Quim Torra is a member of the Parliament of Catalonia and the current president of the Government of Catalonia. This appears to be a play on the stereotype of Catalans being stingy.]
\n\nOn Thursday, the rioting in Barcelona lasted till 6 in the morning. It also continued in the other capitals. Protests took place in solidarity with Catalunya in Madrid, Donostia, Granada, and València. Fascists marched for Spanish unity, too; there were clashes in Madrid and València. They caught an anti-fascist in Barcelona and beat him badly. Another Nazi tried to knife some protesters; he was disarmed, stomped, and left in a coma.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/6.jpg\")
At the beginning and end of the uprising, the barricades represented a symbolic rejection of authority. Throughout most of the week, though, they also served the material function of preventing police from retaking the streets.”.
\nOn Friday, 500,000 protesters converged in Barcelona. Shortly after they arrived, the ANC cancelled the march. I heard some people complaining, “The Assembly calls it off, and everyone goes home,” even as they dutifully headed for the metro. All across the city, street after street, the asphalt was fire-scarred. Where haven’t the rioters been, this week? I picked my way through the crowd at Jardinets to meet up with the group with YPG flags, the Rojava solidarity demo. The Kurdish movement has long supported Catalan independence and Catalunya has been a hub of support for Rojava and democratic confederalism, though the latter is much easier to co-opt in Europe. For its part, Turkey hasn’t been interested in co-opting, only annihilating.
\n\nThe march managed to start off through the dense crowds, chanting and wrecking a couple BBVA’s [a bank heavily invested in Turkey].
\n\nThen it was done. Passeig de Gràcia was packed all the way down to Plaça Catalunya. One block over, Pau Claris was full all the way to Plaça Urquinaona, at the top of Via Laietana, which was guarded by riot cops. Plenty of those people were trying to get down there. The sun hadn’t even set and it was a war zone.
\n\nThe cops were holding a corner, shooting rubber bullets, and people were responding with stones. People would run when the cops made a particularly strong assault, but then immediately poured back in, edging closer and closer. Barricades went up, increasing in complexity and effectiveness. Every couple minutes, the cops would shoot off a few rounds of tear gas. People would extinguish them in seconds. The cops had to be conservative with their ammunition; after the previous night, they knew they could run out—and that the crowd won’t be merciful. Each gunner was easily shooting off 100-200 rubber bullets and 50-100 canisters of tear gas a night. Added up along an entire police line, that makes for a fierce barrage, but it barely slowed the crowd down.
\n\nEarly on Friday night, things were a bit awkward. Behind the front line, there were huge crowds of young people hanging out, eager to be close to the action, but not entirely sure that a riot is a good thing. Consequently, the rioters stayed with their own, breaking up rocks at the front, directly in the line of fire. If you tried breaking up the paving stones 20 meters back, where it made sense to do it strategically, a circle of gawkers would form, many filming, asking, “what are you doing?”
\n\nLet’s set the scene. There are all sorts of people here—mostly young, but some older. Many people have Catalan flags, plenty are speaking Spanish, some are tourists. Some are clad all in black, some have no masks at all. Of all the arrestees so far, only two have belonged to an independence organization or party, though of course the CDR has no formal membership. Some people question the necessity of the property destruction that is taking place; one has to explain, “rocks are needed up front.” No one questions the attacks on the police—they are the common enemy. Too many years of getting beaten, of peaceful protests and things staying the same. “Forces of occupation, out!” is one of the common chants, and it is hurled against mossos [Catalan police] and nacionales [Spanish police] with no distinction, although people chase after the vans of nacionales with a special fervor. Their presence in the streets here is hatefully symbolic: whereas the mossos live and work here year round, the Spanish cops were sent in just to repress the movement. They’re the ones who beat up people’s grandmothers for voting in 2017.
\n\nThe Spanish flag is like a red banner, taunting the bull. it provokes a special reaction, but all cops are targets, and the mossos are getting their share. Their more quotidian presence is no advantage: just the week before this all started, they were beating up people who were trying to stop evictions in the Raval and Poble-sec neighborhoods. Hundreds of people were there, thousands of neighbors saw it, everyone saw the videos.
\n\nIn the hinterland, behind the escalating combat, people are calm, enjoying the liberated space, building ever more complex barricades, occasionally pulling another dumpster to the front to serve as fuel for the fire. I pass some of the biggest barricades I’ve ever seen. Several banks are trashed, while others are oddly untouched. I glimpse what becomes my favorite graffito of the night: “Violent fags seeking revenge.” Another is also spot on: “in the riots, we aren’t so alone.” It’s true: people take care of each other.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/5.jpg\")
\nThere’s a lower street that angles back up to the police position at the bottom of the Plaça. If we take it, the crowd can flank the cops battling it out at close quarters at Urquinaona. A line of riot police holds the top of the street. The approach is 100 meters, under fire the whole way. People start picking their way up the sides, leapfrogging from doorway to doorway to get into throwing range, while one comrade keeps blinding the cops with a laser. The combat grows intense. Projectiles whizz by. People wince or fall when they’re hit, go limping back. Some old guy in an anarchist militia hat, 1936-style, stands in the middle of the road, taunting the police, magically unscathed. When you run out of rocks, you have to scramble, doorway to doorway, back to the mouth of the street.
\n\nAs the assault intensifies, the police counterattack. A column of riot vans charges down the street and people scatter, but as soon as the vans turn, people charge right back in. This happens over and over. Each time, the vans get to an intersection and they have to choose—they can only pursue one group. As soon as they turn or go straight, everyone who ran in the other two directions starts chasing the cops, pounding on the vans. At this point, all the vans are damaged.
\n\nIt’s too dangerous for the cops to get out of the vans like they used to do. There are too many people, too angry. They’d get stomped. We’d love for them to get out of the vans. What sorts of goodies might be found inside?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/9.jpg\")
A police van.
\nThe cops have retaken the dumpsters that people pulled across the lower street, which afforded a protected vantage point within easy throwing distance. They pull the dumpsters out of the way. It’s a naked approach again, all one hundred meters of it. People go back to trying.
\n\nSuddenly, a group in black is pulling their injured comrade back down the street, calling for medics. Something is wrong. We help them get to a clear spot. I know we shouldn’t crowd them, but I want to slip in, just for one second, to see if they’re all right. A cameraman is going in: I duck in to push him away, and while I’m close, I look. Hit in the face. Eyeball exploded. The medic’s hands are already covered in blood. I turn to my buddy. We’ll stay here, help keep the area clear—and if the cops charge again, we won’t move. No retreat. After what feels like a long time, the ambulance comes. Some reports say four people have had their eyes shot out this week. Other reports place the number at seven.
\n\nBack at the Plaça, there’s a burning barricade on the corner and people have sacked a restaurant terrace for the big cloth umbrellas, which they expertly place over a barricade just 10 meters from the police position. Now people can throw from a perfect distance, completely protected. The quarries for preparing projectiles have been set up where they should be, out of the way. People have fashioned tools to lift up the paving stones and the huge fire at the secondary barricade is burning off most of the tear gas. The cops are now pinned under a barrage of hundreds of stones a minute, not to mention the occasional discreet throw from a balcony. How many tons of stone will be thrown at them in the course of this night?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/4.jpg\")
\nThe collective intelligence of the crowd has increased exponentially. People have reconstructed the street so everyone is as safe as possible, so people can approach close to the cops and put them in constant danger. There’s a constant supply of ammunition and the whole crowd is protected from van charges from the rear. What a difference from just one hour ago. The cops are starting to get traumatized as more of them are injured. We’re no longer the victims. We’re winning.
\n\nStreet after street, the fires are growing bigger, reaching as high as the third floor. In Gràcia, this caused some problems with neighbors, who practically had flames scorching their balconies. But here around Urquinaona, right in the center, Airbnb has already destroyed the neighborhood; many of the buildings are empty. Who cares if tourists can’t get to their cheap apartments? They stole those houses from the people who lived here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/3.jpg\")
\nIt’s not entirely empty, though. At the moment of maximum conflict, an older couple, faces drawn, walk with a tense step past the rioters, towards the police line, which doesn’t stop shooting. I peek around the corner to watch. It looks like they make it to the door of their apartment without getting hit.
\n\nA little later, on the lower street, I take in a sight that stays with me. There are no more dumpsters providing cover in the middle of the street. Three young people have pulled a couple mopeds from their parking spots to fashion a makeshift barricade. They’re crouching down, just 15 meters from the police position, farther forward than those of us taking cover in the doorways. Two of them are masked, but the third, a teenage girl, has nothing in the way of protective clothing. All the same, she keeps straightening up, exposed to police fire, to throw more objects. If only she’d cover her face! Some people make a mad dash from cover to leave the three another pile of stones. People take care of one another as best they can.
\n\nThis fighting continues for more than four hours. It’s not as long as Thursday night, but far more intense, with more people and better technique. Only after repeated van charges and heavy assaults have hammered away at the crowds on Urquinaona—and after many people have slipped away due to exhaustion, injuries, or just plain satisfaction—do the police bring out their celebrated new weapon, a water cannon mounted on a tank. They make a video showing the tank advancing and extinguishing some burning barricades, but in practice it’s not as decisive as all that. They keep it in reserve until late in the night, only using it with massive police backup, and only after many people have already surrendered the plaza.
\n\nI can imagine the cops had a directive from the very top: use it, but under no circumstances let demonstrators destroy it. The crowds would have loved to tear that thing apart.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/8.jpg\")
Smoke engulfs the Barcelona skyline.
\nFriday is a high point, but it’s not the end. The police deploy some innovations on Saturday. They have a cordon of good citizens forming between their lines and the demonstrators at Plaça Urquinaona that helps to keep things peaceful. How quickly the pacifists agree to serve the forces of repression when people stop obeying them! No one prevented them from doing their peaceful marches, but they’re incapable of accepting any difference or multiplicity of opinion—much like the state itself.
\n\nAnd they don’t accomplish anything. They killed the movement in 2017—and while it’s true that this week of fighting won’t break apart the Spanish state, in these very same days, we’ve seen how people fighting fiercely in the streets have defeated austerity measures in Ecuador, Chile, and Lebanon.
\n\nSaturday in Catalunya isn’t a total bust, though. There are still riots in the Raval and Gràcia neighborhoods as well as in some other cities, much as the corporate media try to play that down.
\n\nSunday is definitely calmer, but still people don’t give up. In Girona, 1000 people surround the courthouse, trying to block the judges from sending the arrested to pretrial detention.
\n\nWe don’t know what will happen next. Society has been divided and the line does not trace any national or linguistic divide. It separates people on the basis of their chosen relation to social control: those who support the police and those who oppose them. Some people still talk about democracy, but they mean opposite things. They’re willing to shoot down helicopters to attain it—or willing to run over protesters and beat up old folks to preserve it. Some of the former people will eventually have to acknowledge that what they actually want is anarchy; some of the latter may admit that what they really favor is fascism. But for the most part, things will remain muddled and equivocal—and we anarchists will do our best to develop and share clear visions of the enemy, clear lines of flight, lines of attack.
\n\nIn any case, many, many thousands of people have experienced something they’ll never forget. Most of them will not join us in our projects and conspiracies over the next few months, but some will, and we’ve got to learn how to grow and share with them as they share with us.
\n\nThe rest, they’ll still be there, and we’ll meet in the streets once again. These are not calm times that lie ahead of us.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/7.jpg\")
Solidarity actions in Madrid.
\nThere are protests today outside jails and courthouses. Two of the detainees were sent to migrant detention. The cops have announced the arrest of a youth accused of shooting fireworks at the police helicopter on Wednesday. He has been charged with attempted murder, public disorder, and assaulting authority. This struggle will not end any time soon.
\n\nMeanwhile, in one small town outside Barcelona, masked individuals set fire to a couple police cars right outside the station. In a small village on the coast, some people pelted a cop with stones as he was driving away from the station in his private car. In both cases, the targets were mossos, the Catalan police.
\n\nOur overlords are also in the news. P. Sánchez, Socialist president of Spain, comes to Barcelona, but refuses to meet with the President of the Generalitat [the Catalan semi-autonomous government]. Dialogue is impossible. Not even the leaders of democracy are trying to fix the situation, if it means looking weak in front of their imagined voters.
\n\nThe whole circus tent is falling down.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/23/10.jpg\")
\nThe National Assembly of Catalunya (ANC) is a large pro-independence civil society organization. Their former leader got up on a police van at a moment of maximum tension two years ago and convinced the crowds to quit the streets. He is now serving a 9-year prison sentence for sedition. ↩
\nStarting Monday, in response to draconian sentences imposed on politicians who promote Catalan independence, tens of thousands of people across Catalunya have engaged in sustained rioting and disruption. Although the majority of the movement remains pacifistic, a few thousand participants have rejected the leadership of political parties and organizations, opting for open confrontation with police. The various mobilizations are still taking place in confluence, however, making it very difficult for the police to control. Protesters have reportedly used caltrops, Molotov cocktails, and paint balloons to disable police riot vans, while keeping individual officers at a distance with lasers and slingshots and driving away helicopters with fireworks. In the following report, we review the events of the past week and explore what is at stake in this struggle.
\n\nAs anarchists, we have a more robust conception of self-determination than mere national sovereignty. All governments are based on the asymmetry of power between ruler and ruled; nationalism is just one of several means by which rulers seek to turn us against each other so we don’t unite against them. We consider it instructive that the Catalan police have worked closely with Spanish national police throughout the last several years of repression; even if Catalunya gains independence, we are certain that independent Catalan police and courts will continue to repress those who fight against capitalism and seek true self-determination. At the same time, there is a longstanding tradition of anarchist and anti-state activity in Catalunya, and we are inspired to see some of this coming to the fore in resistance to the violence of the Spanish state. It is possible that the latest escalation of conflict in the streets of Catalunya will be a step towards the radicalization of the entire movement and the delegitimizing of state solutions.
\n\nLet’s look closer to see.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/18/1.jpg\")
Members of Committees for the Defense of the Republic gather outside the Civil Guard barracks in Barcelona after nine activists associated with the Catalan independence movement were detained on September 23, 2019.
\nIn retribution for the 2017 referendum and subsequent declaration of independence, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras to 13 years in prison; former ministers Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa, Joaquim Forn, and Josep Rull were sentenced to between 10 and 12 years apiece. Former parliament speaker, Carme Forcadell, received 11 and a half years for sedition. Activists Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart were sentenced to 9 years each, also for sedition.
\n\nSeveral independence groups called for demonstrations and blockaded major roads in Barcelona. Early Monday afternoon, the Tsunami Democràtic group called for demonstrators to blockade the Barcelona airport. There were also blockades on train lines and many highways.
\n\nShowing the integrated functioning of all the different subsections of the state, the Catalan and Spanish police—the Mossos d’Esquadra and Policia Nacional—worked together to repress the demonstrators. They brutally attacked a large number of people. While the majority of demonstrators remained “nonviolent” in response, as they had in 2017, some built burning barricades and pelted police with bricks, fire extinguishers, and luggage carts from the rooftops. It took the police hours of violent attacks to evict the airport. One clash in a parking deck started around 9 pm and continued until nearly midnight. Afterwards, thousands of people continued to resist; some erected burning barricades on the interstate.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/Arran_jovent/status/1183769859936718848\n\n\n
On Tuesday, the blockades organized by “Tsunami Democràtic” continued on a largely “nonviolent” basis, slowing and in some cases paralyzing rail, car, and air transit. More protests broke out that night. Goaded by police violence, more and more people began to fight back, throwing heavier objects and setting fires in the streets.
\n\nThe Assemblea Nacional Catalana (“Catalan National Assembly,” ANC) and various political parties had convened columns to march from across Catalunya starting Wednesday, taking the highways and thus blocking them, in order to arrive in Barcelona on Friday for a general strike and protest. The plan was for this action to be totally pacifist. This was basically a repetition of their 2017 strategy, in which they organized demonstrations on October 3, two days after the massive police beatings that occurred during the referendum on October 1, waiting an extra day before holding the protest in response to government repression so that people wouldn’t be reacting immediately to the violence without a chance to calm down.
\n\nYet they also gave their approval to Tsunami Democràtic, which had planned all along to organize flash-mob-style protests immediately following the verdict. These protests, too, were intended to be completely nonviolent, but to take a more effective approach—targeting infrastructure rather than merely symbolic points. Either the organizers underestimated how many people would show up and stay into the night, or they overestimated their ability to impose pacifism after the 2017 experience.
\n\nStarting Tuesday night, events were clearly out of their hands. In Catalunya, the extent to which people employ combative and destructive tactics is generally a useful indicator of the autonomy of a particular demonstration, even though in and of itself utilizing more confrontational tactics doesn’t necessary imply a radical agenda. The parties have always insisted that everything must be peaceful, just as they have watered down the meaning of “independence,” using nationalistic discourse to and suppressing the anti-capitalist objectives that used to characterize the movement.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/18/2.jpg\")
Thousands of people protest the sentencing in front of Generalitat local office in Girona, Catalunya on October 14, 2019.
\nIt’s not easy to summarize the political ideas of people fighting in the streets on the basis of their conduct, but it seems that the pacifists remain under the ideological dominance of the parties and “civil society” organizations like ANC and Omnium, whereas those putting up barricades appear to be open to a much wider vision of what the enemy is and the objectives of the actions could be. The former tend to be middle-class (or aspiring middle-class) and exclusively Catalan speakers; the latter group is much more diverse, including Spanish speakers (though still mostly Catalan speakers), immigrants, and others. When the more confrontational demonstrators express themselves, they tend to express opposition to the police, “the fascist Spanish state,” and to mention more economic issues.
\n\nWe should always challenge the assumption that a movement is about one thing. A movement is only about one thing where there is an effective leadership controlling it. Left to themselves, people don’t tend to reduce their concerns to single issues. Reality is intersectional.
\n\nHats off to the anarchists and other anti-authoritarian activists who have spent the last two years spreading non-statist, non-nationalist perspectives and analysis relating to this issue and creating the autonomous, horizontal spaces that have cropped up in this movement since 2017, outside the dominance of the political parties and the Marxist-Lenininsts who dominated the indepe movement before 2013. The emergence of this autonomous space is the key difference that distinguishes what is happening today from what happened in 2017—and we’re seeing its fruits in what is taking place in the streets.
\n\nAnother major factor in the way that people in Catalunya have behaved ungovernably this week is that the Spanish state was stupid enough to imprison the pacifist politicians and “civil society” activists who had effectively pacified the movement in 2017. The ones who had already effectively killed this movement, it seemed, until now.
\n\nNever underestimate states. Also, never underestimate statist stupidity.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/18/3.jpg\")
The Mossos face off with protesters in the center of Barcelona on the night following Tuesday, October 15, 2019.
\nOn Wednesday, high school and university students declared a strike, which continued through Friday. ANC marches and highway blockades set out from many major cities. In the evening, people engaged in very serious rioting in Barcelona; substantial rioting took place in all three other provincial capitals, not to mention smaller cities like Manresa. Many of the clashes occurred outside the Delegations of the (Spanish) government or Guardia Civil barracks. There had already been significant rioting in Lleida and Tarragona on Tuesday night.
\n\nCatalan president Quim Torra and ex-president Carles Puigdemont declared that the rioters were “infiltrators,” but only the immediate followers of those politicians were stupid enough to believe this. The usual absurd conspiracy theories spread across social networks about masked protesters getting paid in envelopes of cash.
\n\nIn Madrid, a fairly large anti-fascist, pro-Catalan demonstration took place at the same time as a fascist march against independence. The two demonstrations clashed and police separated them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/18/4.jpg\")
Police charged through the crowd several times with batons and fired foam projectiles at people.
\nANC marches continued. Rioting took place again that night in Barcelona and other three provincial capitals. Fascists marched in favor of Spanish unity in Barcelona, attacking some protesters in favor of independence.
\n\nToday, the general strike is taking place in Catalunya. A Spanish judge has ordered that webpages linked to Tsunami Democratíc must be shut down—something similar to China forcing Apple to shut down an app used by demonstrators in Hong Kong.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/el_pais/status/1185255038878285825\n\n\n
The conservative People’s Party (PP) is calling for the application of the National Security Law—essentially, martial law. Meanwhile, it appears that a new political consensus may be forming. For a couple years Spain hasn’t been able to form an effective majority government; elections took place earlier in the year, but will have to take place again in November, because disagreements prevented the Socialists from forming a coalition government with Podemos. The fighting in Catalunya is driving a wedge between Podemos (which takes a soft approach based in dialogue, potentially open to a “legitimate” referendum) and Socialists (who take a hard approach rejecting any possibility of dialogue or self-determination). This creates the possibility of a coalition government involving the Socialists and the PP—assuming the PP, Citizens, and Vox parties don’t get enough votes to comprise the majority on their own, which they very well might not, as Spain remains majority left.
\n\nThe riot cops are exhausted, probably only running on cocaine at this point. There are videos circulating of riot vans carousing down the streets with the cops using their sound cannons to shout “Som gent de pau.” This means “we are people of peace”—it is the slogan of the independence parties, but the cops mean it in a mocking, provocative tone. There are cases of the Mossos discipline breaking, of individual officers being isolated and beaten up, which never happened during the strikes of 2010 to 2012 or even the week of the eviction of the anarchist social center Can Vies. Several times, police were forced to retreat by combatants hurling rocks and even some Molotov cocktails. Even at the high point of the resistance defending Can Vies, it was rare to see police retreat; they just had to work really hard to advance, at which point rioters simply went elsewhere.
\n\nA mainstream newspaper reported today that fully half of the police riot vans have been decommissioned by damages, primarily to tires. It’s unclear how quickly they can repair them. If they lose their vans, they will be powerless; there are too many people in the street, using too much force. The state would have to send in the Guardia Civil or the military proper to maintain what they call “order.”
\n\nThe real question is what will happen on Saturday. Today could serve as a catharsis, ending the unrest; it could be effectively repressed, if police bring in new resources and tactics; or it could be the day that the state recognizes that it has lost control and has to esclate repression. During the riots defending Can Vies, it was after the fourth day that the state recognized it had lost; on the fifth day, everyone was exhausted so the march was just a victory lap. But now, with perhaps double the number of police but several times as many participants, spread throughout Catalunya, the movement won’t tire as quickly. Though the pacifists condemn the rioting, they’re still marching and blocking highways, thereby adding to the difficulty for the state.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/10/18/5.jpg\")
The Mossos cross a burning barricade in Barcelona to charge protesters.
\nThe Iberian peninsula has seen conflict between monarchists, capitalists, fascists, and proponents of state democracy, on one side, and anarchists and other proponents of liberation since long before the Spanish Civil War. It’s important to remember that the independence movement only took center stage in Catalunya after countrywide anti-capitalist struggle reached an impasse, undermined by many participants’ erroneous belief that democracy—direct or otherwise—could bring about the changes they desired.
\n\nIn 2011, the 15M movement, a forerunner of Occupy, broke out in Spain, occupying plazas and clashing with police. That was just one chapter in a phase of struggle arguably peaked on March 29, 2012 with massive riots during a nationwide general strike. All around the world, this was a high point of grassroots struggle against the inequalities of capitalism and the violence of the state.
\n\nYet rather than continuing to invest energy in grassroots direct action as a means of enacting change, many who had promoted direct democracy in the plaza occupations shifted to trying to rehabilitate state democracy via new parties like Podemos. Ultimately, as we chronicled here, the results were disappointing, serving to pacify the social movements without achieving their original goals.
\n\nIn the ensuing vacuum, the independentista movement gained momentum, proposing a referendum as a way to make Catalunya independent—promising a state solution to the problems that had originally inspired people to mobilize against capitalism and government oppression. When Spain cracked down violently on the referendum, this left anarchists in an awkward position, wanting to oppose police violence but not to endorse national independence as the solution to the problems engendered by capitalism and the state. Of course, it wasn’t just Spanish police participating in the crackdown—it was also Catalan police. All the institutions that would supposedly serve the people after independence were already being used against them, as they surely will continue to be if Catalunya does at some point become an independent state.
\n\nAll this shows the problems with nationalism and democracy. We support people in Catalunya defending themselves from police, courts, and other institutions of power; this is why the events of this week have been inspiring. But ultimately self-determination means abolishing these institutions, not reforming or reinventing them. The question remains whether the current struggle in Catalunya will radicalize more of the participants towards anarchist solutions or simply towards more violent means of pursuing national sovereignty. But those at the forefront of events will surely have disproportionate influence on the answer to that question.
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