Freedom for Catalonia!

“It is not nationalism to feel the vital necessity to defend oneself from someone that domineers you; true nationalism is just the imposition of a unique idea to sustain domination”

Víctor Alexandre

Published in El Singular Digital 24/05/2011

The recent solidarity camping demonstrations in Plaça de Catalunya (Barcelona) are very positive: they have caused Barcelona to appear in most of worldwide TV news, and have even turn into such a social movement that has crossed the Atlantic and has spread to capitals like New York, Mexico, Buenos Aires or Bogota.  Most interesting is that behind the scenes there is just one book that has influenced this situation remarkably. I am talking about “Indigneu-vos!” (Become indignant!), from Stéphan Hessel, the writer of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A book is a very humble thing, but very powerful indeed, because it can sharpen people’s thoughts, it can eradicate social lethargy and push many people to change forever their attitude towards life. And when a totalitarian regime arises, the first victims are always the hostile writers. A free human being is the worst enemy of absolutism, and therefore, the most dangerous to those who guard the “status quo”. They know that free thinking always plant its revolutionary seeds and they hate both revolution and freedom the same.

However, the camping demonstrations have been a more emotional than rational action. I mean that is seems to be more a reaction rather than a preplanned activity. Hessel has confessed the same, that “not having a leader can eventually become a problem”. Obviously, it is not about finding a leader that everybody follows blindly, but someone capable of communicating the idea that it is not enough only to become indignant. It is also necessary to have a roadmap against the denigration of our planet, a strategy to defend values like justice and respect for the freedom of people. Yet the eagerness of domination inherent to human beings, as a way of personal reaffirmation, is so blind that cannot even realize that it bears the germ of its own destruction.

This is exactly why it is so positive that the camping demonstrations at Barcelona have made a difference outside the” hispanocentric” concept of Madrid with their Spanish Revolution, and gained a genuine style of self-determination, as supported the Human Rights Declaration. The democratic legitimacy of the Spanish constitution is null and void because the Catalan people have not been able to freely express their will to organize their nation politically, economically, legally and socially. The Spanish state is not entitled to threaten the Catalan nation with a military intervention, since that would violate the resolutions adopted by the European Conference for Security and Cooperation that the Spanish state has undersigned. The Catalan nation does not recognize any sovereignty to the Spanish crown over our territory, because the Bourbons do not hold any dynastic right in our country. The citizens of Catalonia are not subject to the Spanish law, because the letter of Human Rights recognizes the right of every nation to develop socially, culturally and structurally without any external intervention. The political organization of the Catalan nation must sustain a system of open lists, since the legal existence of our nation is based in the principles of democratic legitimacy recognized by the European Conference of Security and Cooperation”.

But it is certainly not so odd that the Catalan voices of the Spanish nationalism, always disguised of a cheap universalism, have published the following declarations against the Catalan demonstrations: “This revolution must have no flag and no nation. It is for the sake of people and against this wild capitalism without morals and the worst corruption; and none of these concepts have a flag”.- “It is not the moment now to divide, but to unify forces; the last working class revolution failed because of nationalisms”; “What is this shit called Catalan revolution? No division in the movement now. All at once, altogether! Spanish Revolution!”.

It’s almost not worth to make any comment about the above delcarations, because these statements discredit themselves on their own. Let’s say, however, that precisely behind the oppression of people there is always some wild capitalism, lack of moral and the worst corruption. And the three of them can be found in governments of democratic appearance, like the Spanish one, and holding flags that step onto other flags. The working class is not a pariah, like some of their supposed defenders would like to. The working class is composed by human beings that have a mother and a father, like everyone else, and a nation, a culture, a language, and, of course, some roots they deeply love and that nobody can ask them to give up to. And when a human being leaves from home to go to a foreign country, they make their own those fair causes they find in the land that shelters them, because this is the beginning of solidarity. It is not nationalism to feel the vital necessity to defend oneself from someone that domineers you; true nationalism is just the imposition of a unique idea to sustain domination. Union? Yes, of course. But from the difference. Otherwise we do not have a unity, but just sheep. It is pitiful that we do not understand the genuine revolution, the most high and universal one, consists in respecting all the flags, and not to annihilate nations, because every revolution that does not respect this principle is condemned to failure. Thus this should be the genuine Catalan Revolution, this could be the most enriching contribution of Catalonia to Humanity.

http://catalanrevolution.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/catalanrevolt/