{"id":834,"date":"2017-10-01T12:03:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T09:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/?p=834\/"},"modified":"2017-10-01T12:03:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T09:03:38","slug":"the-left-and-catalonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/the-left-and-catalonia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Left and Catalonia"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos <\/em><\/strong>\/ Critical Legal Thinking, 28 September 2017<\/p>\n

The Catalonia referendum this Sunday will become part of the history
\nof Europe, possibly for the worst of reasons. I will not discuss here the
\nsubstantive questions, which can be interpreted as being historical,
\nterritorial, respecting internal colonialism or self-determination. These are
\nthe most important questions, without which it is impossible to understand
\nthe current situation. My opinion on them is unassuming. Actually, many
\nwill consider my opinion irrelevant for, being Portuguese, I do tend to feel
\nparticularly solidary with Catalonia. In the same year that Portugal got rid of
\nthe Phillipes (1640) Catalonia failed the same objective. Of course, Portugal
\nwas a very different case, being a country that had been independent for more
\nthan four centuries and ruling an empire spread out through every continent.
\nNonetheless, the objectives had some affinity, Portugal\u2019s success and
\nCatalonia\u2019s failure being more related than it may at first seem. Perhaps we
\nshould remember that the Spanish crown only acknowledged the \u201cunilateral
\ndeclaration of independence\u201d of Portugal twenty-six years later.<\/p>\n

The truth is, however, that even if these are indeed the most important
\nquestions, unfortunately they are not the most urgent ones at the moment.
\nThe most urgent questions have to do with legality and democracy. I engage
\nwith them here because they concern all democrats in Europe and the world.
\nAs decreed, the referendum is illegal in the light of the Constitution of the
\nSpanish State. As such, in a democracy it can have no juridical effect. In and
\nof itself, it cannot have the effect that is its direct objective, i.e. to decide
\nwhether the future of Catalonia is within or outside Spain. The party
\nPodemos is right in asserting that \u201ca unilateral declaration of independence
\nis not to be accepted.\u201d But the complexity emerges when the relation between the juridical and the political is reduced to the previous
\ninterpretation. In the capitalist and asymmetrical societies in which we live
\nthere is always more than one reading of the relations between the juridical
\nand the political. What is different about such readings is what distinguishes
\na Left from a Right position regarding a unilateral declaration of
\nindependence. A Left position on the relations between the juridical and the
\npolitical would be grounded on the following assumptions.<\/p>\n

First, the relationship between law and democracy is dialectical and
\nnot mechanical. Much of what we consider democratic legality in a given
\nhistorical moment started as illegality, as an aspiration to a better and broader
\ndemocracy. It is therefore imperative to evaluate the political processes in
\nterms of their overall historical dynamics. In no case can they be reduced to
\nconformity with the laws of the day.<\/p>\n

Second, the rightist governments, above all those led by the neoliberal
\nRight, have no democratic legitimacy when they declare themselves as strict
\ndefenders of legality because their practices consist in often systematic
\nviolations of the law. I am not solely referring to endemic corruption. I am
\nreferring, in the case of Spain, to the violations of the law of memory
\n(referring to the crimes committed by the Franco dictatorship), to the
\nrecurrent violation of the statutory regions\u2019 autonomy concerning financial
\ntransfers, for instance, to the violation of constitutional guarantees such as
\nthe right to decent housing or to the implementation of repressive measures
\nof exception without the constitutional declaration of the state of exception.
\nThe Left must be careful enough to show no complicity with this conception
\nof legality.<\/p>\n

Third, civil and political disobedience is an inalienable patrimony of
\nthe Left. Without it, for example, the movement of the Indignados and the
\npublic turmoil it provoked a few years ago would not have been possible.<\/p>\n

From a Left perspective, civil and political disobedience must also be
\nconceived of in dialectical terms, not in terms of what it means under today\u2019s
\nlegal frameworks, but rather in terms of what it means as an aspiration of a
\nbetter future. This evaluation has to be made not only by those who disobey
\n(and who usually pay a dear price for it) but also by those who can benefit
\nfrom such an act in the future. In other words, the question to be asked is the
\nfollowing one: can it be hoped that the dynamics of disobedience will lead
\nto an overall more inclusive and more democratic political community in its
\ntotality?<\/p>\n

Fourth, the Catalonia referendum represents an act of civil and
\npolitical disobedience and, as such, it cannot produce directly the political
\nresults it intends. Which is not to say that it cannot have other legitimate
\npolitical results. It may well be the conditio sine qua non to reach in the future
\nthe intended objectives after the necessary political and legal mediations
\nhave been put in place. The Indignados movement was unable to fulfil its
\nobjectives of \u201creal democracy now!,\u201d but there is no doubt that, thanks to it,
\nSpain is today a more democratic country. The emergence of the Left party
\nPodemos and many other Left autonomic parties in the regions, as well as
\nthe Mareas<\/em> (citizens\u2019 movements) are, among others, the proof of this.<\/p>\n

Given the aforementioned assumptions, a Left position regarding the
\nCatalonia referendum could present itself as follows. First, stating
\nunequivocally that the referendum is illegal and cannot yield the effect it
\nintends (such statement was made). Second, stating that being illegal does
\nnot prevent the referendum from being a legitimate act of civil disobedience
\nand that, even without juridical effects, Catalonians have every right to
\ndemonstrate freely in the referendum. Moreover it is a political democratic
\naction of great importance in the current circumstances (such statement was omitted). This latter statement is what would distinguish a Left from a Right
\nposition, with the following implications.<\/p>\n

The Left would denounce the government before the European
\ninstitutions and sue it judicially in the European courts for violating the
\nConstitution by applying measures of the state of exception without formally
\ndeclaring it. The Left knows that the complicity of Brussels with the central
\ngovernment is solely due to the fact that the Spanish government is ruled by
\nthe neoliberal Right. It also knows that simply to uphold the law is moralistic
\nand useless, since, as I mentioned above, the neoliberal Right only respects
\nthe law (and democracy) when it serves its interests. The Left would get
\norganized to travel en masse from the different regions of Spain to Catalonia
\nthis Sunday in order to support, with their presence, the Catalonians\u2019 right
\npeacefully to exert their referendum, as well as to be actual witnesses to
\neventual repressive violence on the part of the Spanish government. It would
\nrequest the solidarity of all European Left parties and organizations by
\ninviting them to come to Barcelona and be informal observers of the
\nreferendum and of repressive violence, should it occur. The Left would thus
\ndemonstrate peacefully and, I would emphasize, like true Indignados, for the
\nright of the Catalonians to a peaceful and democratic public gesture. It would
\ndocument in detail all the illegalities by repressive forces and sue the
\nprevaricators in court. If the referendum were to be violently prevented, it
\nwould be clear that it had happened with no complicity on the part of the
\nLeft.<\/p>\n

The day after the referendum, with no juridical effect and whatever
\nthe result, the Left would be in a privileged position to play a unique role in
\nthe ensuing political discussion. Independence? More autonomy? A
\nPlurinational Federal State? A Free Associated State as distinct from the
\ncaricature that Puerto Rico is? Every position would be on the table and
\nCatalonians would know that they would not need the local forces on the
\nRight, which historically have always colluded with the Spanish government
\nagainst the popular classes of Catalonia, to make prevail the position that the
\nmajority deemed better. That is to say, Catalonians, Europeans and
\ndemocrats worldwide would learn about a new possibility of being Left in a
\nplurinational democratic society. It would be a contribution of the peoples
\nand nations of Spain to democratizing democracy in the whole world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos \/ Critical Legal Thinking, 28 September 2017 The Catalonia referendum this Sunday will become part of the history of Europe, possibly for the worst of reasons. I will not discuss here the substantive questions, which can be interpreted as being historical, territorial, respecting internal colonialism or self-determination. These are the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-left","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}