From September, 6 and 7, to October 27, 2017: the history of those who fought a rebellion in four major movements
A judicial secretary fleeing over the rooftops, a vehicle of the Civil Guard busted, agents of the autonomic Police hiding information to the National Police and facilitating the harassment of the Civil Guard, the president of a Parliament improvising voting and twisting the regulations, members of Parliament silenced leaving the hemicycle, an autonomic President proclaiming independence for less than a minute ..., these are events that occurred in Spain between September, 6 and 7, and October 27, 2017. These are images that will always be with us, despite the fact that the promoters of the attempted coup try to dress them with the cloak of democracy. It was exactly the opposite: a coup in four movements: approval of disconnection laws, harassment of police and judicial officials, holding of an illegal referendum and proclamation of an independence "interruptus".
Nobody imagined that the pro-independence leaders would go so far, but they also did not count on an answer - this fully democratic indeed -: the King's speech on television, sending a message in defense of the Constitution and the unity of Spain, generated such enthusiasm in Catalonia and in Spain, that in a few days there was an unexpected event: the streets of Barcelona became full of demonstrators with Catalan and constitutional flags in defense of Spain. Fed up of being quiet, of feeling marked, of the single and only thought.
In those 52 days the Catalan government in full, the president of the Parliament, the pro-independence parties and the associations ANC and Omnium Cultural offered evidence that they were not bluffing and that they were willing to meet their threat and drag the Catalan society into a political and social breakup.
The criminal assessment is up to the seven magistrates of the Supreme Court who will judge the facts as of February 12, but next, or opposite, to the independence movement was the other Catalonia. The one who was an involuntary witness to a historical event of the first magnitude: the unilateral attempt to secede from a region of Spain in 2017. When there are barely nine days left until the trial begins, ABC has wanted to make its pages available to the witnesses of the failed attempt of a coup d'état, those who from their area of activity opposed the independence tsunami: from the members of Parliament of Cs, PSC and PP, to the police and judicial officials who fulfilled their duty with loyalty to the Constitution and Spain, or the hundreds of thousands of voices that unexpectedly took Barcelona to shout freedom and proclaim their love for Catalonia, Spain and, above all, Democracy.
José María Espejo-Saavedra and Andrea Levy were in the Parliament the day the disconnection laws were passed; Miquel Iceta and Xavier García-Albiol had no choice but to attend the declaration of independence of Catalonia, even with that ridiculous brevity. Enric Millo knew the disloyalty on the 1-O. Mario Vargas Llosa put voice to the political and social clamor, and Manuel Valls represented the international perplexity. All of them explain in ABC and in first person what they felt those days, when before their eyes a political class threw the discord on a prosperous and free society. These are their testimonies:
The days of «infamy», by José María Espejo-Saavedra and Andrea Levy
"What really happened these days was that the remnants of democracy in Catalonia were volatilized on the altar of secessionist bigotry". Andrea Levy, Deputy General Secretary of Studies and Programs of the PP
In the days of the infamy of September 2017, when the totalitarian face of secessionism showed itself most starkly, I was reading a book by a late French intellectual, Jean François Revel, which I had found in an old bookshop in Barcelona. I bought it because the title, "How the democracies end", represented very well what I thought was happening in Catalonia. Revel made an accurate diagnosis about a world that we thought vanished, that of the cold war, and warned that at the beginning of the 1980s the danger for the western democracies did not come from the interior as it had happened at other moments of our history, but from the Soviet expansionism.
It seemed to me to be an analysis that responded to a bygone era because, as it was so loudly demonstrated at the time, but which had stealthily been going on for decades, in Catalonia the threat to democracy came from within. While it was about crushing the parliamentary opposition on September 6, I remembered that everything started by not letting the people's business be labeled, then by starting up a TV3 that permanently shows a hemiplegic reality of what Catalonia is, then by prohibiting talking in Castilian in the schools, in penultimate place by inoculating hatred with respect to the compatriots –‘Spain steals us’ - and in the end, trying to muzzle that majority of Catalonia that in the Parliament proclaimed it’s enough already.
For that reason, what really happened those days was that the remnants of democracy in Catalonia were volatilized on the altar of secessionist fanaticism. Not only freedom and its graphic expression, the law, were annihilated, but it also ended with any possibility of politics. That's why at the end of those two sessions I only saw one way out for the recovery of Catalonia; the 155. Because if in 1978 the Constitution gave us back the self-government, in 2017 it had to return the freedom to us. Then many things happened and we learned that Russia was one of the epicenters of support for the secessionists through the dissemination of "fakenews" against Spanish democracy.
And then I remembered Revel and I regretted that those who had always wanted to annihilate liberties in Europe would have found in Catalonia faithful allies. After all, it is not surprising that in the international of hatred, Catalan secessionism is one of its most enthusiastic members.
«Some laughed making selfies with the summons that came to them from the courts» José María Espejo-Saavedra, Second Vice President of the Parliament
Remembering what happened in the months of September and October 2017 is not difficult. What will be difficult is for the Spaniards to forget it.
Just as we will not forget what happened on 23-F so that it does not happen again, we will not forget what happened on September 6 and 7, on October 1, and the culmination of the coup by the separatists on October 27th.
Many Catalans lived those days with fear and anger. We saw how totalitarian politicians wanted to take away our rights, our freedoms, our country ... I lived it in person as a member of the Board of the Parliament of Catalonia dedicated to the execution of what was planned by Puigdemont and Junqueras, knowing that they were skipping the most basic norms of any Parliament, and all this while some laughed making selfies with the summons that came to them from the courts.
But after fear, hope also came. And on December 21 the Catalans filled the polls with votes in favor of the union of all Spaniards and for the first time a non-nationalist party won the elections in Catalonia.
We said loud and clear: enough about speaking on behalf of all Catalonia, enough about insulting those of us who feel Catalans, Spaniards and Europeans!
A year has passed and some things have changed: we have a president of the Generalitat who calls us defective beasts and, instead of Rajoy, we have Sánchez, who owes the Moncloa to the separatists and is willing to forget what happened although the separatists keep trying to repeat their coup. A year later there is chaos in the Parliament, the misrule in Catalonia and the fracture in our society.
And they continue: they try to exclude us from the institutions; they cheer the separatist commanders to squeeze even more; they attack in the streets to those who do not think like them; Torra says he is going to face the courts. Many citizens wonder what will be next and feel helpless for the Sanchez Government.
It is not possible to normalize, as the Government of Sanchez does, the situation that millions of Catalans are experiencing, when we see how our rights continue to be violated without the Government doing anything. Catalonia needs the «procés» to finish, just to recover stability and tranquility and to focus its efforts on the real problems of the Catalans.
But there is still room for hope: whether the separatists like it or not, constitutionalism is stronger than ever in Catalonia. Finally there is a party that defends the union and equality of all Spaniards without insecurity. And that party, Ciudadanos, has won the elections in Catalonia. And soon will govern Spain.
Harassment of the Civil Guard at the Ministry of Economy
«I could not stand the pressure and I ended up fleeing through the rooftops of the Ministry» Protected testimony, Judicial Secretary.
At eight in the morning, when we arrived at the Ministry, there were already two men in front of the door taking pictures and at 11 there were already many people. The Lieutenant of the Civil Guard came and told me that the detainees were not going to come, that it was impossible for the Civil Guard to get close to the building and that he had been talking to Mr. Sánchez, who had become a mediator, and that he had said that he would not allow access for any of the three detainees if it was not under his conditions: without handcuffs and through a passageway, a path between the people. The security guard of the Civil Guard had many conversations with Mr. Sánchez, who at first seemed to be the one who organized what happened outside the doors. Also with Cuixart. There were so many people outside that we could not use the cell phones because the repeaters were saturated.
At 9.30 the next day I went down to the hall because I considered that I had waited enough, I saw what was outside and I was scared. I saw Jordi Cuixart leave from an office, two more people and the Guardia Civil, who made me a negative gesture, as if there was no possibility of reaching an agreement to allow the exit. I already understood that we should have to take measures in other instances or otherwise we would not be going to leave from there. Before I had been told that I would be accompanied, as a lawyer, by a couple of mossos of the citizen security team, which would allow me to cross the sea of people just until the point where there were no more people, but I could not leave without ensuring all the material intervened.
The lieutenant told a mosso that he had received explicit orders from his commander saying that they could not leave without the material, without securing the vehicles that had been exposed, because they had not been able to get into the garage and that they apparently had weapons.
I took the minutes, the material on computer support and said that I was leaving. I was accompanied by eight Mossos in civilian clothes through room 2, which has access to the adjoining building, a theater. I could not stand the pressure, I ended up fleeing over the rooftops.
The 1-O in the skin of a National Police agent and Enric Millo, Government delegate
«We soon realized that the regional police were not going to collaborate with us» Anonymous testimony, an agent of the National Police deployed
The national press had been anticipating it for some time and they placed us as the "saviors" who would guarantee compliance with the law of laws, our Constitution, and the defense of the unity of the national territory. According to pro-independence media we would be the opposite, a kind of "ogres", which would deprive them from exercising their rights and freedoms.
And on October 1 we were there. In the Provincial Headquarters of Gerona another atmosphere was felt, very similar to the political-social climate and tension of the Basque Country and Navarre that I also had to live through.
That day the Mossos had to evict the "polling stations" before 6 in the morning, but it was not like that, they only made some identifications. We soon realized that the regional police were not going to collaborate with us.
My group had to "measure and take the temperature of the streets". The youth Arran (youth organization of the pro-independence left) and the CDRs that were beginning to form, were very active. The morning passed with normality, the U.I.P. did their work without any altercations in the more than 30 points that we covered and this was so until 14.30 when we received a statement to finalize our presence until a new order would eventually come. This presence was not resumed again.
That was a day when many of us did not understand what had happened, but we did know for sure which our feelings were. We were annoyed by the news from local and autonomous media reporting about violence and brutal police charges, when our reality had been different. Annoyed and surprised because our Police Station was guarded by Mossos de Esquadra when the members of our U.I.P. were inside feeling their work usurped and seemingly having to thank them for not allowing to grow bigger the concentrations besieging us and expressing their contempt towards us in front of the police station.
Annoyed by the desperation of a companion who found his neighborhood that day papered with a photograph of him in which he was seen on target and accusing him of being a damn National Police; sad to feel that, like that partner, many others destined there are subjected to contempt and harassment in their own family environment. I am dismayed by the non-independent citizens who live there and feel abandoned to their fate and who only have the option to leave their own land or stay and suffer indoctrination, radicalism and social exclusion for all who do not think the same.
"There were many many attempts to convince Puigdemont that he could not drag Catalonia to a shipwreck" Enric Millo, Former Government Delegate in Catalonia
Constructive dialogue to overcome exclusionary attitudes: this was the road map that marked my period as delegate of the Government of Spain in Catalonia, from November 2016 to June 2018. It was not an easy task that was entrusted to me by President Rajoy and Vice President Sáez de Santamaría, but I deeply appreciate the trust I was given for such a complex challenge in such difficult times. It was the media that baptized as "dialogue operation" the infinite efforts made by the Government of Spain to face an unprecedented challenge to the State and avoid an undesired outcome. Ever since the very beginning in my position I opened the Delegation of the Government of Spain to the Catalan society. Never before there had been in the modernist Montaner Palace, headquarters of the Delegation, such an intense activity, so much presence of ministers, social and economic groups, media ... A "home for all" from which we worked unceasingly so that the pro-independence pretensions to achieve a rupture with Spain were not fulfilled.
I made many attempts in person with the then president Puigdemont to convince him that he could not drag Catalonia to a shipwreck with the serious consequences that his irresponsible attitude could bring to the whole of society. That commitment to dialogue within the law was affected, although it did not cease, from the moment the then president of the Generalitat made public the call for an illegal referendum on October 1. The blindness and reiterated refusals of Puigdemont to call off this illegal referendum, without any guarantee, without any recognition, and clearly disobeying the judicial mandate, culminated in an October day for which the independence scenography had developed, without sparing resources of all Catalans, all kinds of artifice to dye with false realism a performance absolutely lacking legality.
The State Security Forces had to comply with a very clear judicial ruling to avoid holding the illegal referendum, by seizing the electoral materials stored in the schools; they worked with the professionalism and prudence with which they always carry out their commendable work. The same October 1, with the aim of avoiding major problems, I convened a press conference in the early morning, in the Government Delegation, to ask for citizen collaboration in carrying out the work entrusted by the Higher Court of Justice from Catalonia to the security forces, and later I clearly asked Puigdemont to stop calling the Catalans to a false vote and provoke more agitation among the radicals who did not allow the police to comply with the court's ruling. The response of the then president of the Generalitat was to summon, by public call, the citizens to "defend" the ballot boxes and the electoral colleges facing the security forces to try to prevent the fulfillment of their duty.
Far from recovering common sense, the then president of the Generalitat and the main promoters of secessionism were responsible for everything that happened on October 1, when they refused to put a stop to the accumulation of nonsense that thousands of Catalans faced, and, in most cases in good faith, continued to believe in the massive deception of the independence movement.
The time has come to be held accountable before the Justice those who did not flee cowardly, and to face the accumulation of illegalities of which they had been repeatedly alerted about their possible consequences. The pro-independence propaganda has been reactivated strongly before this trial and resorts again to the exploitation of the feelings tinged with victimhood. But history will also one day judge the nationalist elites for the serious deterioration they have caused in Catalan society, fragmented in two, and despising more than half of Catalans who are not supporters of independence. We come to the trial against the “procés" with an added division, the internal one between the independence movement that must confront justice and the new-born secessionism that hides itself in comfortable European habitats, increasing its fictitious activity in favor of a supposed non-existent republic, just for the sake of being always in the media spotlight.
If for something has finally been of use that intense initial commitment to dialogue, and the subsequent determination with which the Government acted, dismissing those who struck against the rule of law and reestablishing the constitutional and statutory order, it has been for the fact that our esteemed Catalonia continues to form part of our beloved Spain in spite of the breaking up force that from the illegality have exercised those who now have to be held accountable before the courts and who have tried to escape from all responsibility.
The DUI of October 27, by Iceta and Albiol
"I never thought that I would be forced to leave the hemicycle abstaining from participating in a vote" Miquel Iceta, First Secretary of the PSC
The trial of the "procés" will begin within a few days in the Supreme Court. Contrary to what the pro-independence supporters say, it is not a matter of judging about an ideology or a political project, but rather that the judges have to determine whether or not twelve pro-independence leaders committed any crime by ignoring the Constitutional Court's resolutions, by calling and holding an illegal referendum on October 1, and by declaring unilaterally the independence on October 27.
Many political leaders have perhaps expressed too much our opinion on issues for which only judges and courts are competent, but it is obvious that the trial will highlight the failure of politics for lack of dialogue between the governments of Catalonia and Spain, as well as the serious and wrong decisions of the previous government of the Generalitat.
The final assault on legality takes place in the disastrous parliamentary days of September 6 and 7, 2017. On that day the pro-independence majority of the Parliament, violating the Regulation of the Parliament of Catalonia, disregarding the opinions of the lawyers of the same Parliament, preventing the Council of Statutory Guarantees from issuing their opinion on the bills of the referendum of self-determination and of the legal and foundational transition of the Republic, and running over the rights of the members of Parliament and opposition groups, decided to break the legality established in the Statute of Autonomy and the Spanish constitution.
On September 6 and 7, in a reckless and manifestly illegal manner, the rules of the game were broken and the institutions of self-government were put at risk. I never thought that I would be forced to leave the hemicycle, refraining from participating in a vote. But to show our radical opposition to that unfortunate political operation, condemned to a failure for sure, we had to act with exceptional forcefulness.
The Constitutional Court, logically, first suspended and then annulled the approved legal texts. Despite this, the government of Catalonia went ahead with the organization of an illegal referendum. The government of the PP, unable to stop the holding of the consultation, decided to repress with hard and forceful police action those who participated in it. The socialists, in view of the size of the mistake, asked that the police action cease on the same morning.
The pro-independence majority in seats in the Parliament considered, against all logic, that the day of October 1 allowed them to declare the independence unilaterally.
The sequel to this cluster of nonsense will be evident in the trial. It is up to the judges, therefore, in the exercise of their independence and with total impartiality, to establish whether or not crimes were committed and, where appropriate, what criminal sanction they deserve.
«I thought about all those people who are not pro-independence, those Catalans who were suffering a lot because of everything that was happening» Xavier García Albiol, Former President of the PP of Catalonia
The month of September 2017 marked, without doubt, a before and an after in politics and in society, not only in Catalonia, but also in Spain. Personally, as president of the Popular Party parliamentary group, I lived those sessions with the feeling of, indeed, being at the center of a historical moment, but with a huge concern: that some parties forced us to go through that extreme situation it would only provoke, as I was convinced, more political instability and much more social tension than already existed during those weeks.
A huge concern also, because the break that some of them raised in Catalonia with respect to Spain could not, and cannot, but sadden me more than anything. There was a very evident reality which some people insisted on not wanting to see: families that argued, friends that stopped talking to each other, or conflicts between different groups. We all had around us many examples of the damage that the discourse, full of fallacies and unrealistic, of the independence parties was causing. The excellent coexistence that we had always had in Catalonia, each with his way of seeing things and his way of facing the future, had broken abruptly. Time is proving that it will take us many years to recover it again.
Of course, I had the absolute conviction that this intention to break up Spain was going to be reduced only to that, to an attempt at something that, fortunately, neither the Government of Spain nor the institutions were going to allow. But, at the same time, I was worried, and I confess that it took away my sleep for many nights, that the whole situation could end in a civil conflict in the streets without precedent.
We were entering an absolutely unknown dimension; never before had such a situation been experienced throughout the democratic era in our country. And in that moment many things turn around inside your head. Apart from the political and social consequences, I thought about my family, whether somehow they were going to suffer my dedication to politics at such an important moment.
But above all I thought about all those people who are not pro-independence: those Catalans who were suffering a lot for everything that was happening, most of the times in silence, and about what could happen if that civil conflict really took place. The best, without any doubt, was the wave of solidarity from the rest of Spain; it made me feel very warm and gave us enough strength not to falter even in the most complicated moments. The feeling of belonging to this great country became even greater and, with it, the conviction that they will never be able to win against a Spain that feels very proud of its history, its values, of each and every one of its peoples and of its future.
https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-relato-golpe-estado-cataluna-contado-testigos-constitucionalistas-201902030232_noticia.html
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