Why EU is silent over Spanish poll violence

IN any European country, the sight of paramilitary- style riot police storming through polling stations, seizing ballot papers and attacking voters with their batons and fists would be deeply shocking.

That it should happen in Spain – which emerged from the long shadow of fascism just four decades ago and where bitter civil war is still within living memory – truly chills the blood.

And what dire threat to the Spanish state prompted this brutal show of force? Insurrection? Anarchy? Terrorism?

No, it was something apparently even more dangerous – democracy.

This was an attempt by the regional government of Catalonia to hold an independence referendum. The poll was ruled illegal by the Spanish courts but instead of allowing it to go ahead and simply telling the Catalans the results would have no force in law, Madrid sent in the heavy mob.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Catalan separatism, it was a grotesque over-reaction. So what was the EU’s response? A deafening silence. As far as Brussels is concerned, this is ‘an internal matter’ on which it has no opinion.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. For all their lofty rhetoric about protecting fundamental rights and freedoms, the EU commissars don’t just despise democracy – they positively fear it. If Catalonia strikes out for independence, then who next – the Basques, the Bretons, the Walloons?

And if individual regions get a taste for greater self- determination, why not whole countries?

This is precisely why fanatical federalists like Jean-Claude Juncker have to punish the British people for voting to leave. If we make a success of Brexit they are terrified others will follow our lead. What price then the great EU superstate?

Doesn’t this sorry episode show once again how right we are to be distancing ourselves from these tin-pot tyrants and their increasingly dysfunctional empire?