21st of February 2019: General strike in Catalonia.
Today, there has been a massive general strike in Catalonia. Hundreds of thousands of people did not go to work and instead they took part in demonstrations in towns and cities all around Catalonia and stopped trains and highways.
We protest against Spain’s repeated abuses against the rights of freedom of speech, assembly and protest of Catalan people, and against the false trial that is currently being held against the Catalan political prisoners Carme Forcadell, Dolors Bassa, Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Joaquim Forn, Jordi Sànchez, Josep Rull and Jordi Turull. Some of these people are activists and others are democratically elected politicians who, after having spent a over year in pre-trial jail, are being judged for the crimes of rebelling against the Spanish government and inciting an uprising. Their real actions were just organizing peaceful protests and organizing a referendum to let Catalan people vote on the future of our country.
Spain’s arbitrary arrests are crazy, the numbers keep growing. The Spanish police beat us up and arrest us without a judge’s orders anytime they want, and they never face any consequences (in fact, the policemen who caused over 1,000 injured Catalan people in just 1 day were condecorated by the Spanish government for this). Catalans are sent to jail for the lyrics of our songs, for our tweets, for our posts on facebook, for having taken part in protests, etc. And now, our democratically elected government is being trialed for letting us vote. But we know this trial is a farce, the condemn was established before the trial even started.
The whole trial seems like a joke. The judge is considering the fact that some protestor stuck 1 (one) pro-independence sticker in a policemen’s car as destroying the police’s car and threatening the policemen, and this together with 6 cars more for some reason the activists who were not even in that protest at the time are facing decades in jail. Meanwhile, the cops who violently attack Catalan people at the slightest opportunity are praised, and the Spanish military cops who “forgot” their cars unlocked and full of weapons with ammunition inside at the place of the rally do not even have to face justice. Who here was really inciting an armed rebellion?
I think that, for once, the king of Spain Felipe VI said something that accurately describes the situation: that we can’t “appeal to a supposed democracy above the law” (literally his words). Defending law even when contrary to democracy doesn’t make you cool Felipito, it just makes you a dictatorship.
Photos by Vilaweb, Pau Morales, ANC, CDR Catalunya, and CdrSeb.