Published originally in Spanish. Arcadi Espada. El Mundo.
The Spanish democratic government drew yesterday a red line. This is a hackneyed image, but still has some colour left. Red lines are sometimes drawn with blood. However, Spanish police’s exemplary work made possible that only a little were needed to draw that line. Their work yesterday will go down into the annals of the use of force by the rule of law. Thousands of irresponsible citizens, pettily called by the Catalan government, which had abandoned already any pretension of legality —thousands of people to which the state’s government (this is, the political authority of the exemplary Police) failed to solemnly warn about the dangers they faced if they engaged in illegal action— tried to seize control over a territory trough the misdeed of a supposedly democratic referendum.
The thousands of people scattered across all Catalonia did not act peacefully. Peace is law, and those thousands practised actively moral and physical (mostly) passive violence against the enforcement of court decisions declaring unlawful the anti democratic manoeuvre.
Police’s action —an action of force and not of violence— prevented any speculation about the authenticity of the so-called referendum, and did something far more relevant: it incarnated democratic reason and power. Furthermore, they did it with science and conscience, remarkably restricting the overacting in terms of proportion, despite their own injuries due to aggressions —few but real—, and and the continuous insults and humiliations.
The list of the hundreds of injured people provided by the Catalan disloyal government, immediately accepted by our media without any fact-checking, probably includes mere scratches. And only one serious injured person, hit in the eye by a rubber ball. We could compare this action —in terms of proportion, indeed— with the scale of the different efforts by German, British, American or French polices when it comes to clear the streets.
And, as if irresponsible people were not enough, Police had to deal as well with disloyal colleagues. The so-called Mossos d’Esquadra showed since early that morning an uninhibited connivance —sometimes purely cynical— with the battalion of the irresponsibles. Not just that: protected by the action of a media-conscious mob, they even dared to rebuke the national policemen that, unlike them, were trying to restore the democratic order.
Thus, they circumvented the law, their acquired commitment and the trust of any citizen who could still have in them. Catalan regional police became yesterday the private security guards of secessionism, and this probably the most serious problem left by the October 1st on the Spanish government’s table.
As National Police made its dangerous way through the existential fragility of grandmothers and teens —the community’s brain muscle, which ranges from 30 to 61 year-olds, is often underrepresented in the nationalist Kermesse—, the socialists Pedro Sánchez and Miquel Iceta used the situation with their usual demoralizing humanity to demand the cease of democracy —which also is the force— in the Catalan streets.
Both belong —without their knowing, but specially without their getting to knowing it— to one of the most maleficent clans of social democracy: the beautiful souls. A beautiful soul is a conscience that refuses action the moment it gets muddy, and nevertheless it demands others (!) to act for the resolution of its practical problems.
The genealogy of the concept goes through Schiller, Kant, Goethe and, above all, Hegel. But was Nietzsche who eventually rounded off its political utility, as acutely observed by Manuel Ruiz Zamora in an article in El País few years ago: “Nietzsche, always the most malevolent, would never stop sniffing an unequivocal yet reactive will of power behind that pretended innocence”. Will of power, exactly, was what both socialists stank to, and still stank so disgustingly until late yesterday in the socialist leader’s more-or-less institutional statement.
The state prevailed the October 1st. The specific challenge of that date only required expertise and police strength on streets, because it was on the streets —and not in the ballot boxes, as claims this masquerade— where nationalism had posed its delusional revolutionary dispute. The democratic state sent yesterday an unambiguous message to nationalist leaders, but also to the irresponsible group in the Catalan region: they won’t impose their plans by force, and therefore Catalonia won’t be pushed aside of the rule of law.
No one reasonable person, neither inside nor outside Spain, can reproach anything substantial to the Spanish government regarding its yesterday action. Not even the apocalyptic skewing of reality brought by the new reporting paradigm —an enormous yet microscopic eye that puts meaning at bacteria level— can deny that the revolutionary action of a few thousands has reached its limits. As every time in History that nationalism employed the violence, Catalan nationalism has lost. Now it will be return to negotiation. By force.
