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MARKET-STATE-PRISON UNDER SPANISH NEOLIBERALISM DANIEL JIMÉNEZ FRANCO 2019 MUCHAS GRACIAS a Steve Tombs David Whyte Iñaki Rivera Alejandro Forero Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control EG Fear and Looting in the Periphery Working Group No more prisons in the killer state Stop hiding the system errors No to the terrorist state that imprisons the leftovers and those who fight power We don’t want anyone in prison and we’ll fight for that No more prisoners No more prisoners ¡No! La Polla Records [‘No más presos’. Álbum: Revolución. 10th track] 3 EG Press is the publisher of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control www.egpress.org/ www.europeangroup.org/ Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans www.ub.edu/ospdh/es unenormecampo.wordpress.com/ ISBN: 978-84-09-16944-3 Translation by Daniel Jiménez Franco Revision by Steve Tombs and David Whyte Cover photo: Arquitectura y Construcción - journal - nº149 (Barcelona, 1904) 4 Summary FOREWORD. The Paranoid Logic of the Repressive Capitalist State. By S. Tombs & D. Whyte ....... 7 INTRODUCTION. ON ECONOMY, POLITICS, AND PUNISHMENT IN SPAIN .......................... 9 I / HISTORY-THEORY. PROGRESS, ORDER, CONFLICT AND SECURITY ............................. 21 [full chapter available @ https://unenormecampo.wordpress.com/] II / GLOBALIZING EXCEPTION ........................................................................................................ 25 II.1. When Economy Governs. On the criminal spirit of economics ...................................................................... 33 II.2. Neoliberalism and (In)Security. Through Crime or Criminal? ..................................................................... 45 II.2.a. On Hyper-Incarceration in the US ......................................................................................................... 48 II.2.b. On Hyper-Incarceration in Europe ........................................................................................................ 52 II.2.c. Political Projects and Carceral Societies ................................................................................................ 54 III / SPANISH PUNISHMENT. MARKET-STATE-PRISON ............................................................ 61 III.1. Underdevelopment and Pseudo-Fordism in the Spanish XXth Century ..................................................... 61 III.1.a. Francoism .............................................................................................................................................. 63 III.1.b. Spain in Prison ...................................................................................................................................... 68 III.1.c. Transition .............................................................................................................................................. 74 III.2. Visible Hands. Market, State ........................................................................................................................... 84 III.2.a. The Spanish Anomaly. Post-francoism, Reconversion and End-of-Cycle .......................................... 87 III.2.b. First Phase. Neoliberal Transition. Modernisation and Restructuring. 1978-1995 ............................ 89 1978-85. An ‘Un-protective’ Welfare State And a Too ‘Free’ Market ................................................ 89 1985-95. Growth for Underdevelopment. First Bubble and Endemic Unemployment ........................ 93 III.2.c. Second Phase. Rise and Fall of a Virtual Global Power. 1996-2007 ................................................... 98 III.2.d. Then and Now. Elites, Economic Government and Political Power ................................................. 104 III.2.e. Game over. Body and Soul of the Fiscal Crisis .................................................................................. 113 III.3. Invisible Bodies. Growth, Underdevelopment .............................................................................................. 124 III.3.a. Over-Exploitation and Working Poverty. Labour Market versus Work ............................................ 126 Full Employment, Full Precarity, Full Unemployment ..................................................................... 126 Foreign Poors: Full Exploitation of the Dispossessed ....................................................................... 130 III.3.b. Exclusion, Dispossession and Failed Consumers .............................................................................. 136 III.3.c. Expulsion. Economic Dimension and Punitive Resources ................................................................ 142 III.3.d. Spain Wasn’t Doing So Well. The Middle Class and a Suitable Amount of Scum ........................... 146 III.4. The Functions of the Penal System under Spanish Neoliberalism.............................................................. 150 IV / END OF A CYCLE. AUSTERITY, LOOTING, AND EXPANDED PUNISHMENT ............. 169 IV.1. Debt, Debtocracy, Debtfare ............................................................................................................................ 169 IV.2. Punishment(s). Expulsion as a (Necro)Political Paradigm .......................................................................... 173 IV.3. What Only Austerity Can Achieve. The Example of USA .......................................................................... 181 IV.4. Spain, 2010. The Bubble Bursts ..................................................................................................................... 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................. 193 5 Foreword: The Paranoid Logic of the Repressive Capitalist State Steve Tombs and David Whyte In September 2019, the Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Barcelona, Iñaki Rivera, a long-term colleague of Dani Jiménez’s and a friend of ours, was hauled in front of a court in Barcelona. His supposed crime? He had done what he was supposed to do as a human rights monitor. He had publicly condemned torture and ill-treatment in Catalan prisons. To end up in court for this is something that we might expect academics to face only in the most authoritarian of regimes, not a liberal-democracy in the heart of Europe. Of course, state repression and neo-liberal capitalism are what they are. They share dynamics and contours across the globe. But there are always local contexts for understanding specificities. Spain must be understood in post Francoist terms. There is a purely Kafkaesque logic at work in the political and legal apparatuses of Spain. The state has become so intolerant of criticism that criticism of the state itself has become a crime. Iñaki is by no means the only one to experience this Kafkaesque logic. He is one of a growing number of people charged for offences like ‘hate crimes against the police’! In the past few years, a very long line of comedians, artists, rappers and singers have received prison sentences for ‘offences against the Crown’, for ‘sedition’ and for other charges that look like they are from a 16th rather than the 21st century justice system. The Spanish state cannot take a joke. And neither can it take a rap. In the same month that Iñaki was summonsed to court, 47 lawyers, doctors, psychologists and left wing political activists from the Basque Country were forced into a plea bargain that saw 20-year sentences for terrorism reduced to 2 years. Some of those convicted were lawyers who had been arrested while defending their clients in court. They had been accused of belonging to a terrorist group and financing terrorism. None of the charges related to accusations of activities before the ETA ceasefire. Yet facing 20 years, they were intimidated into accepting a plea bargain. Also in that very same week that Iñaki was summonsed to court, 7 non-violent pro-independence activists were arrested in a police raid in Catalonia, accused of terrorism and refused bail. The Guardia Civil announced to the world they had seized explosives and were charging the Catalan ‘extremists’ with terrorism. It was later discovered that the “explosives” were fireworks for the local fiesta, something the authorities had known all along. “Terrorism!” The daily wolf-cry in Catalonia. The peaceful civil disobedience campaign to demand the release of political prisoners in Catalonia is led by “terrorists!” When protestors blocked the Pyrenees border between Spain and France on the day of the 10th November election, the Spanish authorities launched an anti-terrorism operation. The French authorities opted to investigate them for “obstructing the highway”. Yet, for all its necessarily-grasped specificities, in many ways Spain is not a special case. In the 21st century “terrorism!” has become the reflexive cry of every democratic state facing the consequences of its own violent foreign and domestic policies. “Terrorism!” is the cry of a state that has no clue or ability to control the blowback. Every state has its own version. In Britain it is called Prevent. The legal obligations on public employees to report and place people in our communities under surveillance under the guise of ‘Prevent’ seeks to turn us all into state spies, and turn all of the problems caused by the state into the problems caused by terrorists. Virtually all advanced capitalist states now