Read in Catalan

The illustrator Peridis in his cartoon in Spanish newspaper El País today has unleashed controversy. The image (which El Nacional has published in this article) shows Catalan president Carles Puigdemont flying off with a ballot box saying "we're continuing with the hoja de ruta (road map [to independence])" leaving behind two people who say "we're staying with the hija de luto (mourning daughter)".

The joke is cruel, certainly, but it also shows us the lie of the land. It paints a picture of the attitude which the Spanish Government has towards the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, and is a sign of things to come. They've arrived late to everything and they have left again as soon as they have been able to. When they have wanted to intervene, it has been for a whole lot of nothing: to have a photo opportunity (in plaça Catalunya, in Cambrils, at the hospital del Mar...) or to get things wrong, like the Spanish Interior minister this Saturday. They must be perfectly aware of this.

The "competitive" interpretation of any event that confronts both the Catalan and the Spanish governments is not at all unusual. The latest case is the strike at Barcelona-El Prat Airport. Everything is a battle where "primero se vence y luego se pacta" (first you win and then you negotiate), as former Spanish PM José María Aznar said. It's Spain against the secessionists. Also in the management of the attacks. But what can you do if you have been absent from the scene? Well, turn it into something else: a campaign against sovereignty, against the Catalan government, against Catalan president Puigdemont. A campaign that wants to sell the idea that independence is county politics, a stupidity, a risk in the face of the “jihadist challenge”, etc.

In this context, the joke from Peridis —an admirable cartoonist, perhaps the shrewdest in the the Madrid press— can also be read as black irony that perfectly illustrates this mentality of war.

Without fear

What scares Madrid (metonym)? It's inevitable that we're reminded of a similar event, which directly affects on the main protagonists of this drama: the attack in Madrid on 11th March 2004. Ten simultaneous explosions in three trains, 192 dead, 1,700 injured. Mariano Rajoy, on the cusp of winning that year's general election, lost it in three days with the deceitful information management after the attack, so determined was the Spanish government to pin it on Basque separatist terrorist group ETA.

Perhaps it's a malignant memory, but all in all it seems very similar to the current insistence by the media and commentariat in Madrid (metonym), as a unit, to associate the attacks with the Catalan government, the upcoming independence referendum, etc. It might be that 17th August will be for the 1st October referendum what 11th March was for the 2004 general election. The defeat.

Such unanimity in the views of such different media would be irrelevant if it were not that it all begins with an invention. It all starts with an interview (in Spanish) president Puigdemont gave to the morning program Más de uno, on radio station Onda Cero, the day after the attacks. Presenter Carlos Alsina asks him about that morning's editorial in El País, which, like the one in El Mundo the same day, mixes terrorism and the independence process. The news agency Efe, at 8:04am, makes it a newsflash. In the first paragraph they say: “[...] Puigdemont, has today described as 'wretched' mixing the Catalan government's plans for independence with the terrorist attacks [...] and has said that these attacks are not going to change his 'road map'”. Puigdemont did not say the second half of that sentence. On the contrary, he didn't want to talk about it. You can hear this in the recording of the interview from 2'35” (or read it in the tweet or the translation below). 

Alsina: What has happened in Barcelona and Cambrils in the last hours and what continues happening this morning, with the police operation that's in progress, will it change in any way the Catalan government's plans with regards to the "process" (the independence process)?

Puigdemont: I just think that it has absolutely nothing to do with it. What is certainly not going to change is our policy of public safety. I believe that mixing something which has to be a priority of responding to the terrorist threat and attending to the victims with other things seems literally wretched to me. Because it's not the only nor the first city in Europe where there has been a massacre of this style. It seems to me, honestly, that it's very unpleasant that at a time of pain for the victims, a time when the priority has to be and is for us the fight against terrorism and attending to the victims, that people take advantage of it for this kind of politics, which is not shared at all by the majority of the population of Catalonia

Soon the headlines came. “Puigdemont says that the attacks won't change his 'road map'’” (El País), “Puigdemont: ‘The attacks will not change the road map for the [independence] process’” (El Economista), “Puigdemont, 'stubbornly' hours after the attack: ‘I won't change the road map for the process’” (OK Diario), etc. The TV channels also explained it like that. (all links in Spanish)

Nobody listened to the audio. Nobody was surprised by Puigdemont mixing the topics. Nobody double-checked it. This unanimity in not reporting well is also remarkable. And here's where Peridis' cartoon comes in, . The world is crying, there are 14 dead and 126 injured –15 of them hanging between life and death– but the important thing is to damage the "process".

Without flags

Proof of the seny, the "sensibleness", of the Catalan public is that there were no independence flags in the crowd in plaça Catalunya. You can check this in any photograph or video of the event. Neither did people shout against the king or Rajoy, nor did they shout pro-independence slogans. The people knew what it was about. It wasn't about the process. The would be hard-pressed to let themselves use it. The pro-independence movement could have taken advantage of it, as they have done with the strike at Barcelona airport. Nothing. Not even a hint of anything.

The offensive to construct a story that links jihadism and process will continue. Here we have an example, let's call it "neutral". This Saturday, Deutsche Welle has published two articles in this vein. In one, the message is that Muslims in Catalonia find it difficult to integrate because they suffer from an "identity crisis" between being Catalan or Spanish. This "problem", that isn't exclusive to Muslims, would it motivate someone to run over people indiscriminately on the Rambla in Barcelona? Does the "identity conflict" explain the attacks in Nice, London or Stockholm? How do you fit that with the fact that the majority of the terrorists from Barcelona and Cambrils have Moroccan passports? It's all more complicated than that.

The other message is that “Catalonia needs Spain” to fight terrorism. It attributes a supposedly higher level of insecurity in Catalonia to the multiculturalism that runs through the Catalan government's and their resistance to constructing mosques, as well as the disconnection between the Catalan and Spanish police in anti-terrorist tasks. It's the Catalan police themselves who avoided a second massacre in Cambrils and have killed or arrested 12 of the 13 terrorists implicated.

Without sources

Nor does DW mention that in Catalonia there are 265 Islamic oratories and three mosques. Neither, that the Spanish Ministry of the Interior vetoed the presence of the Mossos, the Catalan police, –who have responsibility for the anti-terrorism fight– in the European police organisations and that just two months ago it refused to gather the national Security Board. Europol had already warned that this attitude compromises the security of the whole of Europe. The Spanish government, moreover, wanted to block the hiring of 500 new Mossos. These days, the available agents are working in shifts of 12 hours.

In a more general context, if in the Spanish State there is an autonomous community that knows how immigrants are integrated, it is Catalonia. The academic literature about the Catalan case is very extensive. DW says nothing about this.

The sources quoted by DW are some interpreted statements from the parliamentary spokesman of the ruling PP (Popular Party), Rafael Hernando: a generic allusion to a report in El Periódico that has been denied (link in Spanish); Ignacio Cembrero's book  La España de Alá ("The Spain of Allah"), and Fernando Reinares, an expert from the Instituto Elcano think tank, who report about the presence of Daesh (Islamic State) in Spain is manipulated. It does not speak to any Muslim leader nor any Catalan government official. Naturally, the information's bias is tangible.

Without ability

The Madrid (metonym) media, who this Saturday have no mercy for the Catalan government because it distinguishes between Catalan and Spanish victims, do not notice the little ability the Spanish government (or even they) have to manage a crisis like this. One fact stands out above them all: whilst the strike at Barcelona airport was worthy of an extraordinary meeting of the Spanish Council of Ministers, the attacks in Catalonia weren't.

They haven't even opened the traditional book of condolences in their embassies. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, had to sign one at the Catalan delegation in Paris. Meanwhile, the Catalan Foreign Affairs minister, Raül Romeva, is appearing on the main television stations around the world and of his Spanish counterpart, Alfonso Dastis, nothing has been heard, except for his controversial holidays in Ecuador.

In his appearance this Saturday, the Spanish Interior minister Zoido had the flags of Spain and the EU behind him with black ribbons on both. Was it so difficult to add the Catalan flag? The City Council of Melilla in the south of Spain has has hung it from their balcony. Madrid's City Council lit the famous Cibeles fountain with the red and yellow stripes of the Catalan flag. Etc. Very little ability. 

Another barometer of the attitude of the Spanish Government to the attacks is their, let's call them, "digital spokesmen". On the website of the Spanish Interior Ministry, the press releases that appear at midday this Saturday –two days after the attacks– are about the heat and the Vuelta a España (Cycling Tour of Spain), as well as two short ones with the emergency phone numbers and to denounce radicals. Nothing more.

A glance at the Twitter account of the National Police (2.4 million followers), on which the information about the attacks is nonexistent –almost everything is self-promotion–, gives an idea, always imprecise, of what they're thinking about. They don't even retweet the Mossos, who they never name. They always talk about “police” (Ongoing police operation in Cambrils..."), so that it is easy to believe that they are the ones taking action. It's childish. They do not refrain from sharing stories about Yoda, a police dog, Luckypunch, a dog that was run over and “needs all our help” or the World Photography Day either. Everything in Spanish, except two tweets in English and one in French giving the emergency phone numbers.

Without credibility

In this environment, the feeling of resignation and abandonment by the Spanish Government is solidifying in the bubble of social media. Two examples among many:

Translation: I'm not afraid. I've seen which is my police, how my fellow citizens are and who governs in case of emergency. Which is my country, dang.

Translation: It's curious // The situation required the Spanish state to act thoroughly in Catalonia but has ended up being evidence of Catalonia acting as a state

It's this fear of being "losing" that beats at the heart of the falsifications from the Spanish media and the struggle by the government of Madrid to appear, to turn up, to make headlines. They do not go out and they attack the process, constructing an artificial story. On the other hand, the Catalan government (and the Mossos) appear controlling the situation and maintaining order in the country, not only physically but through the media and looking abroad. The icing on the cake: the initiative to hold a public march against terrorism was taken by the Catalan government and Barcelona City Council. Of the Spanish Government we know nothing.

The shadow of 11th March looms over these dramatic days.