It hurts Catalunya, it hurts Spain (II)

Voices in struggle 
Rebellion 




"Sometimes you can not see anything on the surface, but below it everything is burning" 
(YB Mangunwijaya) 



Today, more than ever, Catalonia continues to hurt and above all, Spain continues to hurt. However today we want to move away from the tone of our previous article on the Catalan question to, in the middle of the current historical context, to analyze some elements that we consider fundamental in this conflict. Symbols and references. Rags and flags. Emancipation and popular power. National identities Nationalism and Catalonia. Bourgeoisie and popular power. Left and independence. Self-determination and socialism.

A few weeks ago we were visited by an Argentine popular educator, Guillermo Cieza. Walking through the streets of Madrid we talked about the complexity of Peronism, and specifically about the revolutionary Peronism embodied by characters like John William Cooke. 

 After a while of conversation he commented that something similar to what is happening in Catalonia happens with Peronism. If one only listens to a right-wing type like Puigdemont, with a speech that contributes little in a popular sense, nothing is understood of the complexity of the process in Catalonia. Effectively,when one analyzes a political fact from the top, what looms in the bottom is lost. When one stops in the epidermis of the politics of media showcase, the blood that irrigates the circulatory system of a process is lost. When you look only at the surface, you may not see the flames burning , as noted by Indonesian writer Mangunwijaya. 
Count of facts
In recent years in Spain there have been events that have marked a before and after in the socio-political and popular reality. The 15M of 2011 was the first of these events. A flame that is lit in Madrid and extends to other parts of Spain and internationally. In Barcelona, ​​the flame is equally strong. The work of building a social fabric moves to the neighborhoods. "Surround the Congress", the "Marches for Dignity", historical events that we will all remember as major milestones. But if the well-known as movement of the indignant ones begins to deflate leaving,we do not forget, organizations and movements of great value, in Barcelona joins the popular mobilization an ingredient that comes from far behind and that includes many more sectors of Catalan society: the independence movement. La Diada 2012 is the first of the milestones that indicates a massification and an impressive increase in this political option. The statute of Catalonia promoted by Zapatero and then shortened, approved in the Parliament of Catalonia and in the Spanish Parliament, appealed by the Popular Party and amputated in its essence by a Constitutional Court of a conservative majority, encourages the boredom of a people towards the institutions of the Spanish State.The catalanophobia of society, the lack of understanding of its own historical characteristics and a long etcetera encourage the desire for independence expressed in a growing organization for the right to decide and self-determination. 
In recent months events have gone at a vertigo speed, to the surprise of much of the population, among whom we are. The fight for the referendum of the people of Catalonia obtains on October 1 a fundamental political achievement. In the midst of a brutal repression, this people gives a lesson in organization and dignity. Political forces on the left call for dialogue. Right-wing political forces threaten the application of an article 155 that they have de facto begun to apply.On October 10 thousands of Catalans in the streets await the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (DUI). Faces after the appearance of Puigdemont speak for themselves. From euphoria to disappointment in a matter of seconds. The word treason is heard. Among others, members of the Candidature of Popular Unity (CUP), whom the media continually refer to as the most radical sector of the independence movement, the bad bad guys, those who managed to get Arthur Mas down, criticize the behavior of the president of the Generalitat. Doubts invade the process. The government continues in its thirteenth and threatens to release a dog called 155. The doubts are cleared on October 27, a historic day for Catalonia and for Spain. What is feared by some and so desired by others happens.The Catalan Republic is declared in the Parliament with 70 votes in favor, 10 against and 2 abstentions. 53 deputies absent, from the PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos (Cs), refuse to participate leaving their seats, they know losers . Immediately it is approved in the Senate, with the support, there yes, of the mentioned trident, article 155. Or, as Jaime Pastor affirms, its "hardest interpretation, and at the same time more debatable". Euphoria and celebration in the streets of Catalunya. Movement of troops and repressive forces in the Spanish State. Expectation in the Spanish population. Disconcerting on the Spanish left. 
Catalan is not the only nationalism that has grown.As the conflict has been radicalized, the outbreaks of a Spanish nationalism, excluding and fascist in essence, have been increasing. They do not grow from nothing, they are the breeding ground with which the model of the regime of 78 has been culturally fed. The speech of Felipe VI, the ultimatum of a Popular Party interested in tightening the rope, the "for them", the militarization of the conflict, the political imprisonment of Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixartl ("leaders of the two main social organizations calling for the largest peaceful mobilizations that have taken place in Catalonia since 2012 in favor of the right to decide" 1), banners on the balconies, aggressions of extreme right groups, the faithful accompaniment of Cs (jovial appendix of the PP) and the position of a PSOE who swore had regenerated to the left, are small buttons of this shabby, rancid and corrupt nationalism . 
The day after the DUI, a demonstration takes hundreds of flags to the center of Madrid. Spanish flags. The day after the DUI, the left is absent on the street.The day after the declaration of independence, the Spanish corporate newspapers look like those of El País: "The State comes to quell the insurrection", ABC: "Spain decapitated the coup", La Razón: "Urnas frente al Golpe". 
We remembered our visit a few months ago to the lawyer and writer Joan Garcés, who then told us something like that the government was making statements that Catalonia was going to give a coup d'état, with what he was pointing out that it was they who were thinking in giving a blow. The argument was more complex and we little understood then. Unfortunately today we fully understand what he was referring to.Article 155 means the excuse to give a coup d'etat from the State to democratic institutions, to a government elected by its people, to a parliament elected by its people. The intervention is underway. Blow to the Parliament, hit the Government, hit the Mossos d'Esquadra (autonomous police), hit the administration. Blow to democracy. 
Legalities
A pacifist like Mahatma Gandhi already stated that "when a law is unjust, it is right to disobey it".
Continuously the argument of the right, until the day of the approval in the Senate of article 155, is parapeta in a supposed violation of the legality. A part of the left has used the same argument to affirm, from other parameters, of course, that it is not a matter of going against the laws, that it is about changing them. This, which is so nice, in a true State of Law would be very respectable, but considering that in this country the casino mentality governs, thatsovereignty is given to the great capitalist powers and our political power modifies, changes, cuts, hits and transgresses its own laws, it is not very wise for those of us who want a transformation towards a more just and egalitarian society, to be the greatest guarantors of laws made in the image and likeness of the interests of the great oligarchic powers. 
The philosopher Carlos Fernández Liria,the defender of the Rule of Law, in a recent text affirms instead thatin Catalonia there are two pretentions of legality: "There is so much less right to disobey the law, the more it is clear that there is a right to change it (legally). For some reason that must be reflected, the Catalan voters and their legitimate representatives have not seen very clear the channels by which they were offered that possibility of changing the laws. And when that happens, the legality is broken, conflicting legality claims arise ". And continues: "If, when faced with two pretensions of legality, one of them insists that the other is pure nature that must be civilized, the most probable thing is that, on the other hand, it is also reasoned in the same way. For some, Catalonia has tried to go beyond legality. For others, the Spanish State, doing what it has always done, is calling legality to the pure use of brute force. That, with weapons or without them, is called war. " Rags or banners



It is recurrent these days to hear that of: this is a fight between two flags, a battle for two rags. This reductionist vision of the conflict only adds fuel to the fire, places the debate where the reactionary trident wants (PP, PSOE and Cs) and is unable to account for the complexity of the particular scenario that is experienced in Catalonia or the importance of symbols for the construction of political, cultural and social identities.
Historically, people have constructed their collective signifiers around symbols, among which the use of the flag stands out. Revolutions of the world have revolved and revolve around national emancipation, national and patriotic symbols. The struggles for independence used their flag as an identity symbol facing the banner of the colonizing empire. Fights, large or small, have used and use their flag as a symbol of identity, as a unifying element of their liberating essence. In recent years, however, while globalization has been imposed, a kind of progress is growing where it is very powerful that "below the borders", "we want a world without flags", is the moment of "universal civilization". While this discourse cools, in the absence of symbols, the social fabric is decomposing. Never have societies been less cohesive or have they been more individualistic than they are today. And worst of all, the symbols are still there, others have filled them with content, others have made theirs, others have imposed them.
In this country we have a huge unresolved problem with the subject of symbols. Dodging the problem only means that others occupy that space with meanings of fascist ideology. Let us rescue some clues from Manuel Vicent's article, when he affirms that "the enormous brutality with which Spanish nationalism prevailed in Catalonia explains, for example, that the Spanish Bourbon flag, the highest expression of such nationalism, has never been very popular in this territory, a fact that is presented maliciously by Spanish nationalism as the reflection of an anti-Spain sentiment, a feeling that does not really exist in Catalonia. It must be understood that when the coup troops - who called themselves the "nationals" (who were characterized by enormous brutality and repression) - occupied Catalonia, they did so by flying the Bourbon flag and playing the Royal March as a national anthem. How does the political-media establishment want such symbols to be popular in Catalonia? Do not you realize that people have a memory? In Catalonia the red flag has been popular only in wealthy neighborhoods, where such a flag represented those who regained their interests. But, at street level, the Spanish flag was the republican one, a flag that, along with the senyera in Catalonia, carried the soldiers who defended the democratic system in the front. Thousands of Catalans have in their tomb the senyera and the Spanish flag, which was, and emotionally continues to be, the republican one ". How does the political-media establishment want such symbols to be popular in Catalonia? Do not you realize that people have a memory? In Catalonia the red flag has been popular only in wealthy neighborhoods, where such a flag represented those who regained their interests. But, at street level, the Spanish flag was the republican one, a flag that, along with the senyera in Catalonia, carried the soldiers who defended the democratic system in the front. Thousands of Catalans have in their tomb the senyera and the Spanish flag, which was, and emotionally continues to be, the republican one ". How does the political-media establishment want such symbols to be popular in Catalonia? Do not you realize that people have a memory? In Catalonia the red flag has been popular only in wealthy neighborhoods, where such a flag represented those who regained their interests. But, at street level, the Spanish flag was the republican one, a flag that, along with the senyera in Catalonia, carried the soldiers who defended the democratic system in the front. Thousands of Catalans have in their tomb the senyera and the Spanish flag, which was, and emotionally continues to be, the republican one ". the Spanish flag was the republican one, a flag that, along with the senyera in Catalonia, carried the soldiers who defended the democratic system in the front. Thousands of Catalans have in their tomb the senyera and the Spanish flag, which was, and emotionally continues to be, the republican one ". the Spanish flag was the republican one, a flag that, along with the senyera in Catalonia, carried the soldiers who defended the democratic system in the front. Thousands of Catalans have in their tomb the senyera and the Spanish flag, which was, and emotionally continues to be, the republican one ".
Let's talk about those alleged rags. The current Spanish flag is the direct result of a fascist coup d'état to a democratic, constitutional and republican regime that eliminates the purple color of the flag by installing a national-Catholic dictatorship that lasts almost 40 years. Then, with the left massacred or exiled, it undertakes its great work of reform and modernization, the so-called regime of 78. With its great powers distributed and adapted to the new neoliberal times, it records on these colors the monarchical shield, symbol of the imposed power and inherited from the best medieval times of the empire. Despite this, it is still strange that some of us affirm that this flag does not represent us. The other cloth, the independentista star, which carries a triangle and a star, is an addition of early twentieth century independence content rescued from the Cuban and Puerto Rican flag, in turn symbols of the liberation and independence of Spain, what was called here "Disaster of 98" . There are always perspectives.The flag of blue triangle and white star is known as estelada blava, and is the official flag proclaimed in the provisional Constitution of the Catalan Republic approved by the Constituent Assembly in Cuba in 1928. The estelada vermella, of yellow triangle and red star, is created in the 70s by the Socialist Party of Alliberament Nacional (PSAN), thus contains a Marxist, socialist or communist symbology. This flag, although minority with respect to the blava, is increasingly visible in the separatist marches, and is the one that carries the environment of the CUP . As you can see , the history of the peoples and their processes fills the symbols with content. They are therefore not something rigid, static and invariable. They are in movement and permanent construction.
The Left  
These days our Latin American friends write to ask us about the 'procés'. Interested in a fact that they describe as revolutionary, enthusiastic about the challenge to structures that are still anchored in the colonizing mud. This internationalist attitude contrasts with the silence, the elusive look or the equidistant words a large part of the left of the Spanish State.
Today, trying to resolve the issue by proposing a socialist federal state or a plurinational state, is a decontextualized approach. Although suggestive, we must recognize that it is a distant scenario. The reality is that on the table there is a context of confrontation between those who defend that Spain "one, big and free!", And with a truncheon or rubber ball they administer their legality, and those who, given the impossibility of finding paths for dialogue, they have decided to explore the path of the right to decide and self-determination.
Manuel Delgado, in 2012 stated: "I continue to think that the aforementioned federalist option - ours - is the most reasonable, but we must foresee the likelihood that this" third way "will be completely impracticable. As much as we do not like it, the dynamics of the events will make a hinge between neocentralism and separatism, in favor of a federal redefinition of the structure of the State, will not find space and will be gripped and unrecognizable between a yes / no dialectic, within / outside, that is the one that can drag down the socialists and whoever wants to escape from it, with the risk that even those who resist or ignore it will end up appearing aligned with the anti-Catalanist thesis. We do not even have the guarantee that a possible popular consultation will accommodate this intermediate alternative.. And he continues: "Just as happened with 15M, the task of the revolutionary left is to try to give critical and transforming sense to social forces that social circumstances - not always triggered by it - have set in motion. Staying on the sidelines and not letting them get in the way is an unforgivable irresponsibility and irresponsibility. " In 2014 the Catalan anthropologist in an interview says the following: " Those of us who could defend a reasonably federal or confederal position, I have the conviction that we will not have space. We will have to choose between nationalists and nationals . " This anthropologist from the PSUC and affiliated with EUiA, in 2015 appears in the list of the CUP in a symbolic way. In 2016, he writes:"Put to convert what is known and lived in political decisions, you conclude that a confraternal ecumenical between the so-called" peoples of Spain " is the most unlikely of chimeras.You think that perhaps you can rescue Catalonia from the social parasites that have spent decades selling it and now proclaim theirs. You imagine that perhaps this is an unrepeatable opportunity to start over and to inaugurate another way of living and coexisting. You have understood that, interpellated by the facts, you have to choose, with the intuition that the most probable thing is that somewhere near the road awaits disappointment. But the times that run do not wait for you and you end up immersing yourself in the events believing that you are starring and that your future depends on you. Conscious of your own naivete, you feel then vainly called ... and go. " 

Among the institutional sectors of the left there are examples of dignity.Àngels Martínez Castells, deputy of Podem in the Parliament, has defended that Carles Puigdemont is the "president of the Catalan Republic" and has affirmed that the Official State Gazette (BOE), which publishes his resignation as president of the Generalitat, "can say mass. " 
Leftist nationalism? 
The disorientation of the left with respect to nationalism is an issue solved by anthropology. When we say that nationalism or patriotism is right, façade, retrograde or elitist, it is because we look at it with an ethnocentric lens. From the West, from Europe and above all under the symbolic prism built by Franco's Spain. Unidirectional visions of the concepts nation and country.
Nationalism or patriotism are collective identifications of a symbolic nature related to the territorial. The content (popular, elitist, oppressor or fascist) of that symbolic set is what places it on one side or another, in its emancipatory or reactionary character, in the popular majority or in the elite, on the left or on the right . To associate nation-right or fatherland-fascism is not to understand what is happening, not only in Catalonia, but in a large part of experiences and social processes in Latin America and other latitudes. And the territorial issue is fundamental. That right understands it wonderfully.Despite being ideological strategists of economic and cultural globalization, it does not forget the territorial key. And it has done so well that it has managed to get many left in such mental cacao that makes believe that the symbolic identification with the territorial is elitist and right or something of the past before the arrival of that being overcoming nationalism: " world citizen".
We are not going to deny the existence of a sector of Catalans who adopt elitist, chauvinist or even racist positions, who look over their shoulder at other peoples such as Spain. Manuel Delgado says: "There is a part of Catalanism that is racist and part of supremacist premises". This sector would be in the ideological orbit of the PDeCAT environment. But that position does not represent either the totality or the majority of the pro-independence positions. Therefore, continues Delgado, "to this ultramontane sector that believes that there is an essence of Catalanness, we must clarify that this is a truce" to achieve the common goal of independence.
In the name of nationalism or of the fatherland people have been conquered, massacred people, destroyed cultures and destroyed lands. That's true. As true as in the name of nationalism or of the fatherland, peoples have been liberated, people liberated, cultures created and territories respected. There we have the anti-imperialist and anticolonialist struggles or the wars of national liberation. It is impossible to fight against a colonizing situation if one is not constituted as a collective subject, as a differentiated entity from the colonizing 'other'.And for this the symbols are essential. It is the collective use made of these national or patriotic symbols that gives them a meaning or another. In that sense, Marxism and communism are absolutely compatible with nationalism, in fact, they tend to go together. See some experiences in Latin America such as Cuba, Venezuela or Bolivia, or the anticolonialist struggles of the 20th century such as Algeria, Vietnam or Angola . Likewise, many of the antifascist struggles in Europe have been raised in patriotic terms. We can find nationalisms flagged by social sectors of opposite sign. Isthe case of Catalonia, where there are historical examples of nationalist claims driven by the bourgeoisie and others in which the oppressed sectors take that flag as a symbol of liberation. Lenin's thoughts on self-determination strongly rooted in the labor movement of the early twentieth century. This goes back to the present, where both sectors converge in the same tactical objective, although not strategic . In the present, the PDeCAT would be the best heir of that historical bourgeois nationalism while the CUP would be the best heir of the Marxist nationalist tradition2. 
Tactic Alliance
One argument often used by a sector of the left to disassociate itself from Catalan nationalism is that the 'proces' is led by the bourgeoisie, censoring the tactical alliance of the Catalan left with the bourgeoisie. We see this argument in moderate views but also in others of the harder left. The latter should be suggested to re-read Lenin.
Not all independence and nationalism is represented by the Pujol, Arthur Mas and today Puigdemont. In Catalonia there is nationalism beyond the conservative nationalism of PDeCAT. There is a separatism and an internationalist nationalism, like the one that represents the CUP. A CUP that, like other sectors of the population with political visions of the left, like some of the political forces that converge in Junts pel Yes, decide to ally tactically with this bourgeoisie to get rid of the other bourgeoisie españolista. It would seem nonsense. To get rid of a bourgeois power to submit to another, some say, ignoring that they are now subject to doubly. Put to choose, the Catalan bourgeoisie, even defending the same interests of capitalist accumulation, even allied these years economically to the Spanish, it is clear that it is not as caveman like this. In that sense, the liberation is with respect to the political powers of the Spanish State, not with respect to the peoples of the Spanish State, with whom it is evident that the possibility of collaborating from a vision of equal to equal, compatible with a nationalism built under emancipatory paradigms. Here we present the internationalist vision of nationalism. Something that many today describe as nonsense. According to the economist Arcadi Oliveres, " the well-understood independence must always be internationalist, the opposite is selfishness. You love your country, your people, your language, very well. But you must also want the gentleman from Bangladesh and the one from Thailand. " As an example of another vision of nationalism, we can also mention the aforementioned John William Cooke: "Nationalism is only possible as a consistent anti-imperialist policy." But no one expressed it better or so briefly than the writer, philosopher and hero of the Cuban independence movement José Martí, staunch defender of that idea of ​​compatibility between nationalism and internationalism, when he said that of "Homeland is humanity". As an example of another vision of nationalism, we can also mention the aforementioned John William Cooke: "Nationalism is only possible as a consistent anti-imperialist policy." But no one expressed it better or so briefly than the writer, philosopher and hero of the Cuban independence movement José Martí, staunch defender of that idea of ​​compatibility between nationalism and internationalism, when he said that of "Homeland is humanity". As an example of another vision of nationalism, we can also mention the aforementioned John William Cooke: "Nationalism is only possible as a consistent anti-imperialist policy." But no one expressed it better or so briefly than the writer, philosopher and hero of the Cuban independence movement José Martí, staunch defender of that idea of ​​compatibility between nationalism and internationalism, when he said that of "Homeland is humanity".
This is not, for now, an independence process of a socialist nature. Of course it is not a socialist revolution. Neither were the French Revolution nor the independence of Cuba nor the other wars of independence against the Spanish Empire in Latin America. But taking into account the history of Spain, we can qualify the extraordinary Catalan popular movement today as a revolutionary event. A process that without being a socialist claims a fundamental right recognized internationally, the right of peoples to decide their political destiny, the right of a people to become a political subject, the right to sovereignty, to self-determination.A process radicalized by the attitude of a repressive state that the only thing it has done is stoke the fire of the popular movement in Catalonia, at this point unstoppable. It is true that we are not facing a socialist revolution. Now, it is also true that there are socialist sectors that have painted and paint a lot in the 'procés'. And they do not seem to have played their cards wrong. We can not forget that the supposed nationalism of the CIU de Pujol never had the slightest interest in independence. It is the popular sectors and the left political forces that pressure the bourgeoisie represented by the PDeCAT to promote the process of self-determination.
Lenin, in his text Leftism, children's disease in communism, makes a clear distinction between the strategic objective of communism, the achievement of a classless society, and the need for a tactical alliance with certain political sectors to move towards that strategic goal . For this it is necessary to detach from doctrinal positions that understand the revolution as a pre-established path and path defined by a supposed instruction manual of communism. In your textThe right of nations to self-determination, Lenin argues: "Accusing supporters of the freedom of self-determination, that is, freedom of separation, of fomenting separatism is as foolish and hypocritical as accusing the supporters of freedom of divorce from fostering the breakdown of family ties. Just as in bourgeois society the freedom of divorce is opposed by the defenders of privilege and venality, on which bourgeois marriage is founded, denying in the capitalist state the freedom of self-determination , that is, of separation of nations it means nothing more than defending the privileges of the dominant nation and the police administrative procedures to the detriment of the democratic ones.(...) The masses of the population know perfectly, from everyday experience, what the geographical and economic ties mean, the advantages of a large market and a great State, and they will only decide to separate when national oppression and friction nationals make life in common absolutely unbearable, holding back economic relations of all kinds. " 
 If the Catalan people achieve independence from Spain, they can establish themselves as a political subject capable of sovereignly deciding their destiny, the popular movement will have to deploy other cards in this new scenario to achieve that strategic goal. The intentions of a part of the independence actors to continue within the European Union would be a worrying fact for the social transformation of Catalonia. After liberating itself from the heavy yoke of Spain, remaining within that other yoke that is the Europe of capital would pose a different but similar national scenario as a political subject subjugated to the slave capitalist structures imposed by the current European scenario.This, which is worrisome, will have to be solved by the Catalans themselves if they manage to win this difficult battle. The motion for a resolution presented on October 27 by Junts pel Yes and the CUP to initiate a constituent process creates a promising horizon that opens all options for the social issue to be debated and thus lay the foundations of a republic where all and all fit . If this constituent process is carried out, the key to change and transformation, as always, will be the ability of the process to enable and achieve the participation of broad sectors of Catalan society, also those who do not share the wishes of independence. 

However,If, as stated, this is a rebellion that favors bourgeois interests, it will be necessary to ask why the Ibex 35 companies are threatening to leave Catalonia, hand in hand with the reactionary and coup government, including pressure from the King. Why 1681 companies have taken out their social or tax headquarters in Catalonia? Why does the commercialized European Union and all the major capitalist states offer their support and support to the government of Spain? 
And now that?
What will happen now? Has the declaration of the Independent Republic of Catalonia been a good strategy? It is being, also from progressive sectors, qualified as madness, falling to the void, backward movement, suicide kamikaze. We have no answers to what will happen, there is no crystal ball to see if this will constitute a historical sum for the wishes of sovereignty of the Catalan people, if this is really the constituent moment of the Catalan Republic, if it will serve to overthrow the wobbly structures of the regime of 78, or if on the contrary the independence struggle will be crushed by the terrorist interpretation of Article 155 and the balance will definitely lean towards this fascist polarization of the State and the society that we have been suffering. We have no answersWe have no answers because the future is open. Tomorrow is transformable. This, which is obvious, is what a large part of the left, let us be sensible, has stopped believing that it can occur in an emancipatory sense. Anchored in the defeat, we are not able to see that the current crisis wobbles the foundations of an institutional regime that never supposed a rupture with the Franco regime, but a facelift, a continuity and an evolution of the model of exploitation towards the working class. . We can not deny thatthe Catalan people have been increasingly fighting for their sovereignty and their self-determination and this huge upward popular force has been promoting political steps that have led to the declaration of independence. We can not deny the popular and political value of this fact. We can not deny the consequence, the coherence, the courage and the heroic determination of a huge sector of the people of Catalonia in this process. There are those who stop to tell if they are majority or not, if they have given the guarantees for a consultation full of legal and repressive obstacles, if supported by the Spanish legality, the one from which the Catalans intend to divest.Sometimes we are not aware of how enormously difficult it is to build a popular power with the extraordinary capacity for mobilization and organization demonstrated by the Catalan people. And not only that, to accompany this extraordinary popular capacity of instruments of political power that materialize the popular aspirations. This is a fact in Catalonia today. A fact that we can describe as revolutionary for Catalonia, but above all for the Spanish State. 
Now many things can happen. Of course, the secret that the future of Catalonia is inclined towards the emancipation of the Catalan people, in all senses, depends on the capacity of mobilization and organization of the people.The future of the sovereignty of Catalonia lies in popular power. The people have pushed their political representatives to this situation. The political class, despite the doubts, has not betrayed. The ball is back on the roof of the town, where it came from, where it never stopped being and where, although what is coming will not be easy , let's hope it continues.
And Spain? Where is the ball in Spain? In the Civil Guard, in the army, in the tanks, or on the football fields? And the Spanish people? And the other towns of the Spanish State? And the popular power? And the left? Where has the left been meditated? We lose a historic opportunity if we do not collect the witness and the lesson that the people of Catalonia are giving us. We lose a historic opportunity to rebel against the same thing that the women and the conscious men of Catalonia rebel against: against the monarchy, against a regime that still does not know something similar to a democratic rupture, against the great powers, against the cultural and economic colonization , against oppression. And, why not, in positive terms: for the restoration of the republic, for the construction of a socialist state, for the sovereignty of the peoples.
Concluding 
Today The left is facing the challenge of reinventing itself. To be aware that revolutions are not made with squares and squares, that there are historical facts and popular rebellions that constitute challenges and opportunities that must be taken advantage of. That the revolutionary and transformative paths are not pre-established in a road map. That revolutions sometimes surprise us. That the future is uncertain and moldable.Regardless of whether or not we a priori agree with the independence of Catalonia, what we can not deny are two things: one, that the popular mobilization in favor of this process is historical and marks a turning point of difficult return, and two, that the turn to the right on the part of the supposedly democratic institutions of the Spanish State are of an equally historical gravity. 
The rebellion inCatalonia is a popular event. And if anyone had any doubt the Spanish State has been commissioned to point out as a criminal act. An increasing peaceful popular rebellion that has pressured its political class to boost the process in its democratic and institutional channels. These institutional representatives seized that flag, for different reasons that will have to be analyzed, and they have launched an order that acquires more legitimacy in that it has a huge mass of people. A people that tired of structurally stagnant institutions that do not allow them to develop and grow politically, decides to promote a process that has generated a conflict of capital dimensions. But that's what politics is about. That's what revolutions consist of. That's what social transformations consist of.
They do not serve equidistant positions. Given the current reality, we must take sides. Staying on the sidelines only helps those who enjoy coercive and repressive power. The progressive, democratic, left-wing forces in the Spanish state, regardless of our initial political positions and ideals, we must respect the will of a people in their struggle for sovereignty and self-determination, we must support, accompany this popular will and take the witness to, Taking advantage of the gap that opens, take a step forward.

The king is naked. The monarchy is naked. The power of the Spanish State is naked. They have evidenced what is their essence. Given this fact, and before the righting of our political and social environment, before the fascist, interventionist and coup measures of our institutions, before the approval in the Senate of Article 155 by a reactionary political class embodied by the trident PP, PSOE and Cs, to the left, to the town and to the progressive forces of the Spanish Statethey only have one coherent answer: to accompany and support the Catalan people and take the witness of the Catalan rebellion. Peaceful rebellion, citizen and popular protest that today, before institutions delegitimized by their own acts, in the face of such political, moral and institutional crisis, should be extended to the national level. This seems like a scream in the desert. However,to end with a dose of optimism we want to bring here those beautiful words that Guillermo Cieza reminded us a few weeks ago as he passed through these beaten lands: "we should never underestimate the power of the people". 
Notes:
1 Jaime Pastor, "Article 155 or democracy in suspense"
2 See Manuel Delgado, Notes on revolutionary patriotism and other discrete identities
Voices in struggle. Communication space on movements and social processes in Latin America and the Caribbean 
www.vocesenlucha.com


Rebelión has published this article with the permission of the authors through a Creative Commons license, respecting their freedom to publish it in other sources.

Global emergency: Dollar fall today, financial collapse in sight

The US military power is weakening and the consequences of this process are quite remarkable. In a world full of conflicts caused by Washington, the economic and financial evolution of many countries is an expected and predictable development of the situation, says the daily VestiFinance. 

The important role of the dollar in the world economy is due to three main factors: the petrodollar, the dollar as a world reserve currency and Nixon's decision in 1971 not to convert the dollar into gold.

Dollar-petrodollar-gold

The greatest geoeconomic changes in the last fifty years occurred in 1973 after the conclusion of the agreement between OPEC, Saudi Arabia and the US on the sale of oil exclusively in dollars. Billions of dollars were transferred in US Treasury bonds and other financial resources. In return, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries received US military protection. 

The second factor, perhaps even more important for the world economy, according to the  average, is that the dollar became the world reserve currency. The role of the dollar, obviously associated with the petrodollar trade, has almost always had its dominant share of more than 40% of the basket of SDRs - special drawing rights -, while the euro has maintained a stable share of 29-37 % since 2001. To understand the current economic changes, it is enough to remember that the  yuan  is being used more and more in the global trade of SDRs with an initial quota of 10%. 

A few years ago, almost all countries used the US dollar to trade with each other, even though they were countries opposed to the US and their imperialist policies, since the payment method required the use of dollars, the paper recalls.

"This continued use of the dollar had a devastating impact on the planet, and the US got the opportunity to print sheets of paper without the support of the gold value, and then exchange them for real goods," he adds. 

According to the media, the destabilizing factor for the world economy is Washington's ability to accumulate huge public debts without worrying about the consequences for international markets. 

"The United States created the conditions for a new financial bubble that could ruin the entire global economy when it explodes," the paper warns. 

Dollars and war: the end of the era? 

The decisive factor, which has changed the focus of countries such as China and  Russia, was the financial crisis of 2008, as well as the increase of the US aggression in Yugoslavia in 1999, says the media. The Iraq war, along with other factors, prevented Saddam Hussein from starting to market the oil in euros, which threatened the financial hegemony of the dollar in the Middle East. 

A few decades ago, any idea of ​​moving away from petrodollars was perceived as a direct threat to the US world hegemony that required a military response. In 2017, given the decline in confidence in the United States as a result of multiple failed attempts to subjugate, undermine and control other small countries, the general decline of the dollar system began, the author points out.

In recent years, many countries, which oppose Washington, have realized that the only way to adequately restrict the consequences of the fall of the US empire is to gradually abandon the dollar. This serves to limit Washington's capabilities for military spending by creating alternative tools in the economic and financial spheres that would help end Washington's domination. What is also important for the Russian-Chinese-Iranian strategy of uniting Eurasia and, therefore, reducing the US role.

"The US shot up in the foot to accelerate this process with the exclusion of Iran from the SWIFT system and open the way for the Chinese alternative CIPS, as well as by applying sanctions against Russia, Iran and Venezuela, which also boosted the extraction and acquisition of gold on the part of China and Russia ", analyzes the medium. 

De-dollarization

Beijing began to exert strong pressure on Riyadh in order to force it to accept payments for oil in yuan instead of dollars. Saudi Arabia  is in a difficult situation associated with the maintenance of the US dollar linked to oil, although its main ally, the United States, has implemented a controversial strategy in the Middle East. 

China became Saudi Arabia's biggest customer, and given the agreements with Nigeria and Russia, Beijing can quietly stop buying Riyadh oil if it continues to insist on payments exclusively in dollars. This would severely damage the petrodollar, a vicious system, harmful to China and Russia, the paper said.

"De-dollarization has become a strategic priority for Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, and eliminating the unlimited influence of the Fed and the US economy means limiting the expansion of the US imperialists and reducing global destabilization," the article stresses. 

More and more countries are beginning to see the advantages of a decentralized system, in contrast to the US dollar system. 

Iran and India, as well as Iran and Russia, often sell hydrocarbons in exchange for raw material products, thus avoiding US sanctions. 

In addition, China's economic strength allowed it to allocate a 10 billion euro loan to Iran, which allowed it to dodge the recent sanctions, the paper recalls.

Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, has just started a historic movement towards a   total refusal to sell oil in dollars. 

Beijing plans to buy gas and oil from Russia by paying with yuan, and Moscow will immediately convert the yuan into gold on Shanghai's international energy exchange. 

"This 'gas-yuan-gold' mechanism represents revolutionary economic changes due to the gradual abandonment of the dollar in trade," the article concludes.

https://mundo.sputniknews.com/economia/201710061072951344-economia-dolar-china-iran-rusia-estrategia/

Emergencia mundial: caída del Dólar hoy, colapso financiero a la vista

El poder militar de EEUU se está debilitando y las consecuencias de este proceso son bastante notables. En un mundo lleno de conflictos causados por Washington, la evolución económica y financiera de muchos países es un desarrollo esperado y predecible de la situación, asegura el diario VestiFinance.

El importante papel del dólar en la economía mundial se debe a tres factores principales: el petrodólar, el dólar como moneda de reserva mundial y la decisión de Nixon en 1971 de no convertir el dólar en oro.

Dólar-petrodólar-oro

Los mayores cambios geoeconómicos en los últimos cincuenta años ocurrieron en 1973 después de la celebración del acuerdo entre la OPEP, Arabia Saudí y EEUU sobre la venta de petróleo exclusivamente en dólares. Miles de millones de dólares se transferían en bonos del Tesoro estadounidense y otros recursos financieros. A cambio, Arabia Saudí y otros países de la OPEP recibían la protección militar estadounidense.

El segundo factor, quizás aún más importante para la economía mundial, según el medio, es que el dólar se convirtió en la moneda de reserva mundial. El papel del dólar, asociado obviamente con el comercio de petrodólares, casi siempre ha tenido su participación dominante de más del 40% de la canasta de DEG —derechos especiales de giro—, mientras que el euro ha mantenido una participación estable del 29-37% desde 2001. Para entender los cambios económicos actuales, basta recordar que el yuan se está utilizando cada vez más en el comercio mundial de DEG con una cuota inicial del 10%.

Hace unos años, casi todos los países usaban el dólar estadounidense para comerciar entre ellos, aunque fueran países opuestos a EEUU y sus políticas imperialistas, puesto que el método de pago requería el uso de dólares, recuerda el diario.

"Este uso continuo del dólar tuvo un impacto devastador en el planeta. EEUU obtuvo la oportunidad de imprimir hojas de papel sin el apoyo del valor oro, y luego cambiarlos por bienes reales", añade.

Según el medio, el factor desestabilizador para la economía mundial es la capacidad de Washington de acumular enormes deudas públicas sin preocuparse por las consecuencias para los mercados internacionales.

"Estados Unidos creó las condiciones para una nueva burbuja financiera que podría arruinar toda la economía global cuando explote", advierte el diario.

Dólares y guerra: ¿el final de la era?

El factor decisivo, que ha cambiado el enfoque de los países como China y Rusia, fue la crisis financiera de 2008, así como el aumento de la agresión de EEUU en Yugoslavia en 1999, opina el medio. La guerra de Irak, junto con otros factores, impidió que Saddam Husein comenzara a comercializar el petróleo en euros, lo que amenazaba la hegemonía financiera del dólar en Oriente Medio.

Todavía hace unas décadas, cualquier idea de alejarse de los petrodólares se percibía como amenaza directa a la hegemonía mundial estadounidense que requería una respuesta militar. En 2017, dada la disminución de la confianza en Estados Unidos como resultado de múltiples intentos fallidos de subyugar, socavar y controlar a otros países pequeños, comenzó el declive general del sistema del dólar, destaca el autor.

En los últimos años, muchos países, que se oponen a Washington, se han dado cuenta de que la única manera de restringir adecuadamente las consecuencias de la caída del imperio estadounidense es abandonar gradualmente el dólar. Esto sirve para limitar las capacidades de Washington para el gasto militar mediante la creación de herramientas alternativas en las esferas económica y financiera que ayudarían a acabar con el dominio de Washington. Lo que es importante también para la estrategia ruso-china-iraní de unir a Eurasia y, por lo tanto, reducir el papel de EEUU.

"EEUU se disparó en el pie al acelerar este proceso con la exclusión de Irán del sistema SWIFT y abrir el camino para la alternativa china CIPS, así como al aplicar sanciones contra Rusia, Irán y Venezuela. Lo que impulsó también la extracción y la adquisición de oro por parte de China y Rusia", analiza el medio.

Desdolarización

Pekín comenzó a ejercer una fuerte presión sobre Riad con el fin de obligarlo a aceptar pagos por petróleo en yuanes en lugar de dólares. Arabia Saudí se encuentra en una situación difícil asociada con el mantenimiento del dólar estadounidense vinculado al petróleo, aunque su principal aliado, Estados Unidos, ha implementado una polémica estrategia en Oriente Medio.

China se convirtió en el mayor cliente de Arabia Saudí, y dado los acuerdos con Nigeria y Rusia, Pekín puede detener tranquilamente la compra de petróleo de Riad si este sigue insistiendo en pagos exclusivamente en dólares. Esto dañaría gravemente el petrodólar, un sistema vicioso, perjudicial para China y Rusia, señala el medio.

"La desdolarización se ha convertido para Pekín, Moscú y Teherán en una prioridad estratégica. Eliminar la influencia ilimitada de la Fed y la economía estadounidense significa limitar la expansión de los imperialistas estadounidenses y reducir la desestabilización mundial", subraya el artículo.

Cada vez más países empiezan a ver las ventajas de un sistema descentralizado, en contraste con el sistema del dólar estadounidense.

Irán y la India, así como Irán y Rusia, a menudo venden hidrocarburos a cambio de productos de materia prima, evitando así las sanciones de EEUU.

Además, la fuerza económica de China le permitió asignar un préstamo de 10.000 millones de euros a Irán, lo que le permitió esquivar las recientes sanciones, recuerda el diario.

Venezuela, que cuenta con las mayores reservas de petróleo del mundo, acaba de iniciar un movimiento histórico hacia un rechazo total de vender petróleo en dólares.

Pekín prevé comprar gas y petróleo a Rusia pagando con yuanes, y Moscú convertirá inmediatamente el yuan en oro en la bolsa internacional de energía de Shanghái.

"Este mecanismo 'gas-yuan-oro' representa unos cambios económicos revolucionarios debido al abandono gradual del dólar en el comercio", concluye el artículo.

https://mundo.sputniknews.com/economia/201710061072951344-economia-dolar-china-iran-rusia-estrategia/