Repression and Resistance in Catalonia”
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Revista Internacional de Sociología RIS vol. 77 (4), e144, octubre-diciembre, 2019, ISSN-L:0034-9712 https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2019.77.4.19.007 REPRESSION AND RESISTANCE REPRESIÓN Y RESISTENCIA EN IN CATALONIA CATALUÑA Thomas Jeffrey Miley University of Cambridge (UK) [email protected] ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4360-7446 Cómo citar este artículo / Citation: Miley, T. J. 2019. Copyright: © 2019 CSIC. This is an open-access article “Repression and Resistance in Catalonia”. Revista distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Internacional de Sociología 77(4):e144. https://doi. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. org/10.3989/ris.2019.77.4.19.007 Received: 10/12/2018. Accepted: 19/09/2019 Published online: 29/11/19 Abstract Resumen This paper focuses on a dialectic of repression and resis- Este trabajo trata la dialéctica de la represión y la Resistencia en tance at work in the most recent wave of contentious poli- la reciente ola de política contenciosa en Cataluña. Ponemos tics in Catalonia. It emphasises the brief but certain resur- énfasis en el resurgir breve pero cierto del repertorio discur- gence of a discursive and performative repertoire recollect- sivo y performativo del recuerdo del pasado revolucionario ing Catalonia’s revolutionary past in the wave of contentious de Cataluña durante esta ola que ha barrido la región desde politics that has swept the region over the past decade, since hace una década, desde el inicio de la asi-llamada crisis de the onset of the so-called Eurozone crisis. The paper seeks la Eurozona. El trabajo intenta proveer una interpretación del to provide an interpretation of the region’s recent cycle of ciclo de política contenciosa de la región a través del enfoque contentious politics through the lens of state repression. It de la represión estatal. Afilamos en un momento emblemático, hones in on an emblematic moment, from the spring of 2011, de la primavera de 2011, asociado con el movimiento de los associated with the Indignados movement. It pays particular Indignados. Prestamos especial atención en su desalojo violen- attention to their violent removal by the police from the Plaça to por parte de los Mossos d’Esquadra en mayo, y el intento en Catalunya in May, and to the attempt to surround the Catalan el mes siguiente del cerco al Parlament Catalán, con el fin de Parliament to disrupt the budget debate the following month. interrumpir en el debate presupuestario. Sostenemos que la re- It contends that the violent repression of the Indignados presión violenta del movimiento de los Indignados en Cataluña movement in Catalonia by the “regional” authorities is best por parte de las autoridades ‘regionales’ mejor se entiende understood as a reflex response to an incipient challenge to como la respuesta a un desafío incipiente a las constelaciones existing constellations of hierarchical and oppressive social jerárquicas de relaciones sociales oprimentes – un desafío que relations - a challenge that echoed, indeed threatened to re- se hizo eco, de hecho amenazó con revivir, recuerdos larga- vive, long-suppressed memories of the region’s revolution- mente reprimidos del pasado revolucionario de la ‘región’, un ary past, to “blast” this past “out of the continuum of history,” desafió que pudo haber hecho “explotar” este pasado fuera to “appropriate its memory as it flashes up in a moment of del “continúo de la historia,” para “apropiarse de su memoria danger” (Benjamin). This moment of violent repression by cómo se enciende en un momento de peligro” (Benjamín). Este the Catalan authorities proved the precursor, the condition of momento de represión violenta por las autoridades catalanas possibility, for the subsequent re-channelling of contentious demostró ser el precursor, la condición de posibilidad, para la politics within the more comfortable confines of hierarchical- posterior canalización de la política contenciosa dentro de los ly-structured, nationalist imaginaries. confines más cómodos de imaginarios nacionalistas – imagina- rios, por supuesto, estructurados jerárquicamente. Keywords Palabras Clave Catalonia; collective memory; collective amnesia; 1936 Cataluña; memoria colectiva; amnesia colectiva; revolu- revolution; Indignados. ción de 1936; Indignados. 2 . THOMAS JEFFREY MILEY Introduction “there are as many collective memories as there are groups and institutions in a society” (Coser 1992, This article focuses on a dialectic of repression p.22). We follow Benedict Anderson ([1991]2006), in and resistance at work in the most recent wave of particular, in emphasising the intimate interconnec- contentious politics in Catalonia. It seeks to illumi- tion between memory and forgetting. At the same nate the ways in which this dialectic has shaped and time, we seek to situate collective memory (and col- constrained the contours of contention, with a focus lective amnesia) firmly within the terrain of hegemon- on the fate of the Indignados movement in the re- ic and counter-hegemonic projects.1 The historical gion. It emphasises the consequences of the repres- event, whose memory has been repressed, though sion of the memory of a particular historical event, not entirely forgotten, is that of the anarchist revolu- or conversely, the cultivation of a particular instance tion, a revolution that broke out in 1936 in Catalo- of collective amnesia, provoked by a sequence of nia, in the immediate aftermath, and in response to, traumas and series of ruptures, reinforced, even the fascist uprising against Spain’s Second Repub- consolidated, by the contours and confines of par- lic. The revolution’s all-too-short-lived-but-still-heroic ticular counter-hegemonic projects. The so-called victories and achievements, not to mention its liber- Indignados movement, a form of youth mass mobili- tarian and decidedly internationalist bent, had been sation that built on the ideas of the ‘Arab Spring’ to nearly drowned out not only by forty years of fascist challenge de-democratisation and corruption, visibly propaganda, but also by a “conspiracy of silence” expressed itself in Barcelona with the occupation of (Ealham 2010) perpetrated by an alliance among Plaza Catalonia, undoubtedly the heart of this large counter-hegemonic communist and neo-republican city. Daily assemblies and a plethora of community currents, whose predecessors and idols were re- activities performed a collective exercise of participa- sponsible for rolling back the revolution in the first tory democracy from below. After almost two weeks place. These memories have been repressed but of ‘occupation’, however, the police forces of the re- never fully forgotten. The irruption onto the scene gional government violently intervened, forcing the of the Indignados movement in the Spring of 2011, dismantling of encampments amidst scenes of great th with its radically-egalitarian, direct-democratic and violence. Early in the morning on the 27 of May, staunchly internationalist inspiration and outlook, if 2011, the regional police force used the pretext of the but for a brief moment, threatened to “blast open the need to clean the Plaza in preparation for possible continuum of history” (Benjamin [1940]1968, Thesis celebration of Barça fans after the upcoming Cham- XV), to revive long-lost revolutionary horizons of con- pions’ League final. They arrived on the scene wear- sciousness, and thereby to transcend and confound ing anti-riot gear, and proved themselves quick to use the narrow “national” confines in which the struggle their batons. Over one hundred were injured when for “self-determination” has been constricted. Faced police forcefully removed protestors from the Plaza with such an incipient threat, the “regional” authori- (RTVE 2011). ties proved quick to resort to the state’s monopoly This paper argues that the violent repression of over violent coercion. the Indignados movement in Catalonia in 2011 by the In an introduction to his classic, Animal Farm, “regional” authorities is best interpreted as a reflex George Orwell famously and incisively insisted: “The response to an incipient challenge to existing constel- sinister fact about literary censorship in England is lations of hierarchical and oppressive social relations that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be – a challenge that echoed, indeed threatened to re- silenced, and inconvenient facts kept in the dark, vive, long-suppressed memories of the region’s revo- without the need for any official ban” ([1945]1972). lutionary past, to “blast open the continuum of histo- Charles Lindblom (1990) and Elisabeth Noelle-Neu- ry” (Benjamin [1940]1968, Thesis XV), and thereby to mann (1993) have more recently elaborated a set resurrect the horizons of consciousness of a “heroic” of mechanisms by which unfashionable ideas can time when the struggle for “self-determination” could come to be marginalised and silenced, even in the be forged and fought in decidedly internationalist absence of explicit censorship. With respect to the and radically-egalitarian, radically-democratic, rather silencing of and systematic distortions about the sig- than banal national and nationalist, terms. In search- nificance of the anarchist revolution (and counter- ing for the long-term rationales behind repression, revolution) in Spain, Orwell himself left an eloquent this article seeks to contribute to our understanding testament, in his Homage to Catalonia. Along similar of the intersection of structural conditions that raise lines, in the 1960s, Noam Chomsky would