Open Letter to Philip VI, by Ramón Cotarelo

Dear Sir, in 1716, his ancestor, Philip V abolished in one fell swoop the rights and freedoms after subjecting Barcelona Catalan by military conquest. Three hundred years later the fate wants you to come to prevent recover.

You have just blurt a speech to a democratic government elected by the ballot box, as you have not been, whose essence lies in remembering the need to respect the principle of supremacy of law, without which it is not possible society civilized.

By what authority do you say that a president who, as he said in a later interview, never has skipped the law? Let's answer this vexing question.

His personal authority on the subject that, by dint of republican, this blog does not recognize, is nonexistent. His power comes directly from the appointment of a military coup, he perjured criminal who rebelled against his government and you have not had the courage and gallantry of countersigned by querying citizenship, a referendum on this decide whether to continue He prefers the monarchy or the Republic, the last legitimate regime that existed in Spain since yours is not.

You no authority but echo the Spanish government is, that yes, elected by universal suffrage. Is this who sent you to Catalonia to recite the elemental catón the rule of law: respect for the law, which obliges us all, including rulers.

In abstract terms this is true. In concrete terms, here and now, in Spain, not only it is not, it is a mockery. The government requires Mas compliance with the law, change it at will, unilaterally, without consensus, using his parliamentary roll when it suits him, so that law is no longer a rule of universal, general and abstract reason that serves the common good, but a dictate of the vagaries of the PP government, as you well know, is the most corrupt, arbitrary and incompetent of the second restoration. One example clarifies:the same day the president of the government, a man with no credit or authority some, suspected of having been collecting bonuses of dubious origin for years, claims that sovereignists Catalans try to "change the rules of the game" by disobeying the law, his acolytes They presented a bill to reform the Spanish electoral system to change the rules three months of an election. And no one in Spain, no media, no publicist has denounced this arbitrariness, this law of the funnel.

Certainly, leaders say that if the Catalans do not like the law may change, but legally, as they have them. I have you for a port, but I imagine it will not escape the shameless hypocrisy of this argument because the Catalans never be majority as Catalans in Spain and, therefore, can not materially change the law and are condemned to live under the the majority imposes. Always. For if you do not know, that's called "tyranny of the majority" and is as odious as that of the minority.

No, sir, the matter is no longer respect for the law . The issue is legitimacy , that is much deeper and older. But, not to abuse their patience, I would unfold to you in three easy steps in imitation of the Hegelian dialectic triad which serves to explain the evolution of reality, but also its involution.

First came civil war and forty years of dictatorship that forged a Spanish reality in which the dreams of imperial fanfares mingled with the rags of a third world country, ruled by the military and priests, as always. Fascism, nacionalcatolicismo, centralism, ignorance, repression and systematic theft. It was the thesis.

Then came the transition, the denial of thesis, antithesis. Spain became a democracy homologable with the rest of Europe. The dictatorship refused. Decentralizing the state and returned to the territories freedoms, a constitution enshrining the separation of church and state and advocated a social and democratic state of law was enacted. And the illusion that it was possible a normal continuity of the state, above the historical vicissitudes stroked.

Finally came the denial of the antithesis, the negation of the negation, synthesis. With the landslide victory of the PP in 2011, returned the spirit of the dictatorship, the government of priests (or their sectarian Opus Dei), the nacionalcatolicismo. The shell of the Constitution was retained, but the vacuous with the help of the main opposition party, complicit in this involution and proceeded to re -centralize the country, attacking the autonomous regime and making fun Catalan expectations, so that its statute lacks content. Again with the help of the PSOE and diligent cooperation of all state institutions.The most widely used has been a Constitutional Court lacking any prestige and moral authority to be plagued by magistrates in government service or sectarian of Opus Dei, with its president at the helm, activist and contributor of the PP. 

So are things in Spain today, sir. A neofranquistas and nacionalcatólicos government, determined to impose their convictions as the law of the community, steeped in corruption, based on a party to which a judge considers an association of criminals. A government that has caused an involution unprecedented deep social breakdown (read you the statistics of poverty, unemployment, the productivity, the real, not what makes this sleeve tricksters) and a much deeper territorial bankruptcy, he himself recognizes extremely serious and which are solely responsible for their incompetence, authoritarianism and corruption.

Do you believe that government has the authority to speak about the law? Did you have?

Do not be surprised that the Catalans want to break free from this tyranny personified by provocateurs stupid like that he wants "more Spanish to Catalan children." Many others, if we could, we would do the same. They do not want, do not want, to live again Franco. 

And you, like it or not, it represents.

Ramón Cotarelo

Source:  Palinuro