Franco looms large as tensions rise over Catalan vote
Memories of fascist regime reignited as independence poll declared illegal by Spanish government nears
WAVING the Spanish flag with pride, Ruth Ruiz and Maria Rosa Ortiz cut unusual figures in the Barcelona street. In a city bedecked with banners of the Catalan independence movement, passers-by eye their display with curiosity, others with suspicion.
But on June 4, the pair attracted a much more negative form of attention. Volunteers for the football campaign group Barcelona Con La Selección (Barcelona With The Selection), Ms Ruiz and Ms Ortiz were collecting signatures calling for the Spanish national team to play a match in the Catalan city for the first time in 15 years. They were descended upon by a group of five or six men, who allegedly tore down their tent, beat and kicked them, and called them “Spanish whores”.
“How is this happening in Spain? This is shameful,” said Ms Ruiz. “Things are getting very complicated here.”
She describes herself as anti-independence, but her colleague Ms Ortiz does not. “I’m neither for or against it,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “This is sport. I just want to watch the national team play.”
The suspected perpetrators, from a Catalan football fan group that describes itself as ultra-Left and anti-fascist, are awaiting trial. The alleged attack is an extreme example of the tensions that have sometimes erupted in the run-up to the October 1 independence referendum, called unilater- ally by the Catalan government and declared illegal by the Spanish state.
Independence supporters have also come under attack from radical opponents, while both sides relate tales of family feuds and broken friendships.
As Madrid and Barcelona both refuse to give ground, political leaders have been locked in an exchange of threats and invective.
The Catalans accuse the government of Mariano Rajoy of an authoritarian repression of the popular will. Mr Rajoy claims totalitarian behaviour by the Catalan government, likening it to “the worst dictatorships”.
This week, Catalans woke up to a menacing visage from the past: the face of fascist dictator Francisco Franco loomed from posters commanding “Don’t vote on October 1”. The posters, swiftly torn down by authorities, were the work of a small pro-independence group, which described the Madrid government as a “regime that wants to extend Franquismo”.
Joan Coscubiela, the spokesman for Catalunya Sí que es Pot, a Left-wing alliance which backs the Catalan right to decide but is not explicitly pro-independence, said there were some who had an “inquisitorial attitude against everyone who disagrees with them, and they have no limits”.
Joan Maria Piqué, international communications director for the Catalan government, told The Sunday Telegraph he was certain most members of the movement and of the administration disliked such an approach. The independence movement had always been peaceful, he noted, and isolated incidents of tension the work of radicals on both sides. Such views are undoubtedly restricted to the fringes. But they tap into lingering wounds from the Franco era which figure large in the independence crisis.
Under the dictator, Catalan language and identity were brutally repressed and institutions abolished. The resistance of the Spanish state to confronting the crimes of the dictatorship – which has remained subject to an amnesty law since it ended 40 years ago – has fuelled the sense among some in Catalonia that Franquista sympathies remain in the national government.
But opponents of independence – including Catalans – say that conjuring associations with fascism is a cynical attempt to silence dissenting voices and stir up historical hatreds.