Thousands Protest In Barselona Over Police Violence During Catalan Independence Referendum

Thousands Protest In Barselona Over Police Violence During Catalan Independence Referendum

Several thousand people gathered outside the Barcelona headquarters of Spain’s national police force on October 3 amid strikes in protest of police violence during the contentious Catalonian independence referendum.

According to municipal police in Barcelona, the 15,000 demonstrators stopped traffic, as businesses and schools shut down.

Many small businesses across Catalonia have shut for the day. Schools, universities and medical services also closed their doors or operated at a minimum level. Tourist attractions were also closed, including the city’s famous Sagrada Familia church.

Metro stations in Barcelona that are usually busy were deserted as services were cut back sharply, and the Boqueria market was almost empty. Elsewhere, the response to the strike call was patchy: there were no reports of disruptions affecting big industry or Barcelona’s airport, according to the Guardian.

The protest came as a result of several labour unions and pro-independence organizations urging people throughout Catalonia to go on strike, including UGT, CCOO and ANC.

The Catalan independence referendum took place on October 1. 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who voted chose yes. The turnout was 42.3% despite Madrid using police violence in an attempt to prevent the vote.  At least 844 people and 33 police were reported to have been hurt during the attempts to stop the vote by the police.

The Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont, declared that Catalonia had “won the right to an independent state”, to which Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy replied by denying that the referendum took place.

Puigdemont has appealed for international mediation to help solve the crisis and called for police deployed to Catalonia from other parts of Spain to be removed.

The European parliament will hold a special debate on October 4 on the issue.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
10 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
TAzz Mannia

Although referendum was illegitit and against common sense, a big error was to send police to close poll centers and confrontating with people. There is much propaganda here and injured ciphrs are clearly overestimated, but anyway, it was a big error.

Barba_Papa

Aye, best thing Madrid could have done was nothing. Let the Catalans hold their illegal referendum. Ignore if would go pro independence, claim moral victory if it went against independence. Now they basically fueled the pro independence movement and alienated many moderate Catalans.

Serious Dude

Bunch of commies…

Johnpd

The more I read about this situation, the more I realise it’s a product of massive political stupidity from BOTH sides.

There is, rightly so, a growing resentment at Madrid’s ridiculous austerity policies, applied throughout the poisonous EU Bankster state.
There is a growing desire for more autonomy, which has not, as yet, reached a majority.
Legally & morally dubious actions by BOTH the stubborn & stupid Nazi Rajoy, AND the Catalan local politicians are increasing the chances of Catalan separation.

It’s almost as if they’re conspiring together. Weird.

The NWO project to destroy ALL nation & force a one world totalitarian govt takes a step forward.

AlexanderAmproz

There is an interesting viewpoint about Europe…

https://faustianeurope.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/the-idea-of-europe-in-the-work-of-denis-de-rougemont-and-french-non-conformists/
The Idea of Europe in the work of Denis de Rougemont and the French non-conformists
===================================
Denis de Rougemont was a main thinker of the so-called non-conformistes des années trente, a movement of young intellectuals that appeared in France at the beginning of the turbulentcover 1930s, in opposition to both the individualism of liberalism and the collectivism of the Soviet Russia. [1] The main bulk of their work was published between 1930-34 and was concentrated around three separate currents:

The founders and members of L’Ordre nouveau. An intellectual movement established by the Russian migrant Alexandre Marc (born in 1904 in Odessa as Aleksander Markovitch Lipiansky), its goal was to prepare the conditions for a ‘spiritual rebirth’ of the European culture. Its effort was concentrated on going beyond such dualistic divisions as nationalism-internationalism and capitalism-communism. Its inspirations came, among other sources, from the Christian existentialism of Kierkegaard, the federalism of Proudhon, the great critique of Modernity Nietzsche, or from the historicism of Péguy. The thinkers who were a part of L’Ordre nouveau also included Robert Aron, Arnaud Dandieu, Daniel-Rops, Jean Jardin and finally Denis de Rougemont.

The Catholic revue L’Esprit of Emmanuel Mounier, founded in 1932. From the beginning it evolved in tight collaboration with L’Ordre nouveau. In reaction to the events of the Second World War it radically shifted to the political left , in order to slowly move back to more moderate positions of the ‘New Left’, under which it still publishes to this date.

Young thinkers of Jeune Droite, who were mostly dissidents of the French reactionary and monarchistic right Açtion française. These thinkers included Jean de Fabrègues, Jean-Pierre Maxence and Thierry Maulnier.

Furthermore, Ferdinand Kinsky also includes among them those thinkers, from whom the non-conformists drew their inspiration: Stern, Blondel, Buber, Nédoncelle, Karl Barth, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain or Nicholas Berdiaeff.[2]

Although the non-conformists came from different backgrounds and their thinking took on some issues rather opposing positions, they all subscribed to the doctrine of ‘personalism’, and, consequently, to federalism. The non-conformists converged on the point that

‘man was above all not an “individual.” He is a “person,” that is both responsible and free, committed and autonomous, a being in himself, but related to his fellowmen by his responsibility’.[3]

As a person, human being is not a lonely monad, not even a rational being, which could exist outside of society, but a social entity whose nature is fulfilled only by sharing his life in common with others. To live within a society does not mean to be enclosed in a ‘homogeneous’ nation-state, but to be a part of multiple and overlapping ‘intermediary’ communities, which are most naturally formed around family, territory, or profession. For the non-conformists/personalists, these intermediary communities both historically and philosophically ultimately share the common European ‘well’ from which they draw their actual particular ideas and traditions. Europe and its culture for them necessarily precede nations and nation-states. The thinkers such as the Schlegels or Herder constructed the idea of a self-sufficient nation from already present, primordial European philosophical and historical traditions. The English historian Christopher Dawson best summarises this position in his 1932 work The Making of Europe, when he notes that

‘The evil of nationalism does not consist in its loyalty to the traditions of the past or in its vindication of national unity and right of self determination. What is wrong is the identification of this unity with the ultimate and inclusive unity of culture which is a supernatural thing.

The ultimate foundation of our culture is not the national state, but the European unity’.[4]

The nation-state was thus only one realised possibility of the European culture. A peculiar thing about nationalist movements was that they consciously denied the notion of their own continuity and grounding in the common European history and philosophical thought. Martin Heidegger would say this was a perfect manifestation of the ‘metaphysics of subjectivity’ – they picked up one particular set of characteristics out of their European heritage and by intellectual sleight of hand, suppressing the memory of their nations continuity with other European sources,[5] argued for their ‘homogeneity and cultural self-sufficiency’.

The French thinker Alain de Benoist recently argued from the same perspective, when he distinguished our ‘objective’ history as ‘a pile of representations of identity of past times and past protagonists’,[6] from our actual-assumed identity, whose dimension is always political since it is based on the projection of our past towards the future. In other words, our actual identity (in the 19th and 20th c., it was that of nations and nation-states), always grounds the collective ‘I’ in the past, based on values and necessities of the present and possibilities of the future. As Alain de Benoist adds, ‘memory screens [our timely, historical identity] and retains what conforms to its idea of the past and to the image it wants to give in order to give it a meaning’.[7]

Diversity of European identities

The purpose of Denis de Rougemont’s book The Idea of Europe is precisely to rip off our identity from the grip of the present and selective memory of nation-states and ground it in the timely and space-bound objective narrative of Europe. Rougemont’s preface to the book also forms the general leitmotif that weaves through the whole work:

‘ Europe is much older than the European nations. Their lack of unity and their ever more illusory claims to absolute sovereignty endanger its very existence. If only they could unite, Europe would be saved, and with it all that remains valuable in its richly creative diversity’.[8]

titian_rape_of_europa

The Rape of Europa by Titian

‘from that time onward the name of Europe and the concept of Europe will recur in even more solemn contexts down to the Carolingian Empire, in apostrophes to the Pope, in ecclesiastical panegyrics, in prose and verse chronicles, and in the lives of the saints’.[12]

The final step was taken with Charlemagne, whose dominium was called ‘Europe vel Regnum Caroli’ and on whom his court poet Angilbert bestowed the titles of ‘head of the world . . . summit [or tiara] of Europe . . . supreme father’.[13] Europe thus becomes a political entity, which is not merely constructed as one of the contemporary three divisions of the map of the world (Europe, Libya or Africa, Asia), it is finally an ‘autonomous entity, endowed with spiritual virtues’.[14]

As we know however, this was a premature spring and the fragmentation of Charlemagne’s empire under his three sons soon followed, as if in the anticipation of the things to come in the period from the 17th to 20th century. On 434 pages, Denis de Rougemont continues to recount various conceptualisations of Europe that followed. Nevertheless, what is probably the most intriguing section of the book is part seven,[15] where he tries to mend together various 20th century historians and thinkers to give us an idea what ‘European identity’ means, if it went through such diverse historical manifestations.

Rougemont’s conceptualisation of European identity

First of all, through his overview of different conceptualisations of Europe, Rougemont lead us to reject the idea that there could be one ‘ true’ atemporal European essence, which could be taken as the lowest ‘common denominator’ of everything European.[16] Europe is above all the totality of its representations – and a European is in the first instance the one who finds in its diversity something that resonates with his ‘present I’. The first step in the formation of any identity is thus conscious self-identification, finding one’s possibilities not by ‘returning to the sources’, but by resorting to the sources in order to discover how do they fit into one’s present and future. It might be therefore said that there are ‘two Europes’, the one which is philosophical and historical, i.e., the one which provides us through its totality with different representations of what it has meant to be a European, and the other which is inherently bound to politics. The latter is dependent on the way one answers the question of what one wants Europe to be – 0n the way how does one ‘chooses’ one’s identity from the possible sources. In other words, in one way Europe (‘unconsciously’) already ‘is’, but in the other way it is still dormant, waiting to be appropriated as a political project – consciously adopted as a part of our own present identity. Only when Europe materialises through the political process as a cultural entity, it will be possible to ‘grasp’ it and built upon it in our social life in new ways.

This idea of ‘two Europes’ is in fact very close to the constitutive or expressivist theory of language of Herder. Its importance was recently recognised by the Canadian communitarian thinker Charles Taylor.[17] Herder, and through him Taylor, argued that the language not only describes the reality (‘what is already there’, on the background), as such theorists as Condillac claimed, but also constitutes and recreates it anew, under a different perspective. For Condillac or Locke, linguistic expression was always linked to some pre-existing content, to the idea that ‘at each stage of [linguistic] process, the idea precede[d] its naming, albeit its discriminability results from a previous act of naming’.[18] Herder, however, adds to the language a new, ‘expressive’ dimension, claiming that the interlocution not only describes, but that ‘it also open[s] possibilities for us which would not be there in its absence’.[19] In other words, by saying something, we do not only describe what is already there, but also shape it to a new dimension. By creating a political Europe, we do not only re-represent what is already there, but we are giving Europe a new dimension by the creative process itself.

Perhaps this was also a reason why Heidegger in his later thought credited the poetry for allowing us to temporally ascend to the ‘authentic’ Being. As one of Heidegger’s interpreters Richard Polt notices, ‘if Heidegger is right, then our most authentic relation to language is poetic. Instead of using language as a tool for representation, we should respect it as a rich source of poetic revelation’.[20] The poet thus represents an authentic existence – instead of using old words and worn out meanings, he ‘appropriates’ the reality in relation to his own person. Does it mean that all great minds who try to build Europe politically are also poets?

The Abduction of Europa by Rembrandt (1632)

The Abduction of Europa by Rembrandt (1632own person.

This excurse to the theory of language might help us appreciate what Denis de Rougemont is ultimately suggesting in his search for ‘the’ European identity. Although there are undeniable sources of European culture such the ancient Greece, Rome and Christianity, the Celts, or the ancient German tribes, what Europe is for us will in the last instance depend on what do we want it to be. It is true that the most of the European thought arose as the positive or negative reaction to the ancient Greeks, be it the Romans with their sombre gravitas who unsuccessfully tried to emulate the joyous Greek spirit, or the Christians who upheld the rational Apollo at the expense of Dionysos. Nevertheless, in the last instance it always depends on ourselves whether we identify with these sources or not. Paul Valéry for instance felt closest to the Greeks, claiming that

‘what we owe to Greece is perhaps what has most profoundly distinguished us from the rest of humanity. To her we owe the discipline of the Mind, the extraordinary example of perfection in everything. To her we owe the method of thought that tends to relate all things to man, the complete man. Man became for himself the system of reference to which all things must in the end relate. He must therefore develop all the parts of his being and maintain them in a harmony as clear and even as evident as possible. He must develop both body and mind’.[21]

Denis de Rougemont would have certainly agreed with Valéry. One might even argue that personalism itself – with its conception of a person as against the liberal idea of a self-sufficient individual, is the conscious adoption of the Greek heritage on the part of the non-conformists. Rougemont keenly notices that our Greek heritage has become in the recent years more important, arguing that

‘the revival of our interest in things Greek is reflected in the twentieth century by the most varied symptoms: discovery of the pre-Socratic philosophers . . . the vogue for mythology (Freud’s Oedipus complex, the Ulysses of Joyce or Kazantzakis, Spitteler’s Prometheus, Gide’s Theseus, Cocteau’s Orpheus, etc); revival of the themes and titles of Greek tragedy by many playwrights, poets, and composers (“Choephores and Eumenides,” by Claudel and Darius Milhaud, to mention only one example, re-created the sacred thrill of the ancient drama, of which a poet like Racine retained only the plot); rediscovery of the secret of the Doric style; passionate researches into the mystery religions . . .[22]‘.

Philosophically and historically, as Denis de Rougemont shows us in The Idea of Europe, we therefore already are Europeans. Politically and in our memory, some still consider themselves to be enclosed within ‘homogeneous’ national entities and deny their shared European roots. Only the future will shows us, however, whether we will also manage to appropriate our identity politically.

[1] Probably the most exhaustive treatment of the movement’s history and its fundamental ideas is given by Bayle, Jean-Louis Loubet Del, Les non-conformistes des années 30 : Une tentative de renouvellement de la pensée politique française (Paris, Seuil, 2001[1969]). Bayle is also credited for being the first to call the movement ‘non-conformistes des années trente’.

[2] Kinsky, Ferdinand, ‘Personalism and Federalism’, Publius, 9:4 (1979), p. 132.

[3] Ibid., p. 133.

[4] Quoted in Rougemont, Denis de, The Idea of Europe (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1966), p. 422.

[5] Anthony D. Smith already showed that the ‘nation builders’ drew heavily from more primordial European ethnicities and regional identities, see for instance The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986).

[6] ‘On Identity’, Telos, 128 (2004), p. 48.

[7] Ibid., p. 50.

[8] Rougemont, The Idea of Europe, p. xi.

[9] Ibid., pp. 40-41.

[10] Ibid., p. 43. The French thinker Louis Rougier in the work Celse contre les chrétiens (Paris, Labyrinthe, 1997[1925]) used Celsus’ polemic against Christian monotheism and universalism as the starting point for his own critique of Christianity.

[11] Rougemont, The Idea of Europe, p. 43.

[12] Ibid., p. 44.

[13] Ibid., p. 46.

[14] Ibid., p. 47.

[15] Ibid., pp. 363-434.

[16] A terrific overview of what constitutes the exclusivist ‘identity essentialism’ and its critique is provided by Alain de Benoist, ‘On Identity’, pp. 52-56.

[17] Charles Taylor, ‘The Importance of Herder’, in C. Taylor (ed.), Philosophical Arguments (London & Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 79-99.

[18] Charles Taylor, ‘Heidegger, Language, Ecology’, in C. Taylor (ed.), Philosophical Arguments (London & Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 100-126.

[19] Ibid., p. 107.

[20] Richard Polt, Heidegger An Introduction (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 177,

[21] Quoted in Rougemont, The Idea of Europe, p. 367.

[22]Ibid., p. 370.

Johnpd

” The ultimate foundation of our culture is not the national state but the European Unity.” [4]

Cart before the horse much?

Two books which inform my thinking:
Pawns in the Game, by William Guy Carr, 1955. Carr was a WWII Canadian naval intelligence officer who spent 42 years researching for this book & others.

&: Our Occulted History
do the global elite conceal ancient aliens?
By Jim Marrs, award winning journalist. A fascinating read.

Occulted is in the sense of deliberately hidden.

& one website:
http://www.c3headlines.com

Click on Quotes.
Many good graphs & articles also.
George Carlin speaks for me. :)

JD.

AlexanderAmproz

Thank’s for your information,
I will go tomorrow to a library.

I have been a bit everywhere in-betwen
Norway highest mountain(Galdhøpiggen) to
Riga, Moscow, Bucarest, Budapest, Berlin, Roma,
Syracuse, Athenes, Istambul, London, Madrid, Paris,
a lot to Holland, Switzerland and France, didn’t travel
alike a casual tourist, but knowing where I go, why, and
often with local contacts.
Europe is a bit “my Country” and family History.
My main Reference is Switzerland with it’s Federalist,
Direct Democracy, and very different Cultures “System”,
put peacefully together with consensus, improved slowly
during Centuries…
A living miniature European laboratory deserving to be
study to find inspiration, and understand why the
Bruxelles EC “System”(lead by the US) doesn’t work,
and will never work !

What is missing in EC is the reason why Switzerland
succeed to put together 26 small and very different Cultures, still
independent with different ID after Centuries,
but quite strongly united by a common Patriotism

For Europe there is none hurry, it has to be done
smoothly, step by step with mutual agreement,
Countries by Countries, and Regions by Regions,
respecting everybody interests or it will failed.
Basically all European inhabitants are Europeans,
it’s already a good point for a diversified Unity start.
Good Politic priority should be the Peoples within
their Environment(Life support) and let them decide
what do they want, and need,
anything else is details(lol)

NB: What happened in Barcelone is an absolutely ridiculous
“coq fight” in-between idiot ego’s.
There is much more uniting Catalugna and Spain
than dividing them.
Even if there is more than half of the population who want
a choice, what about the others, if the vote will have happened
earlier or later, it wouldn’t have been the same(lol)
Nothing is black or white, negotiations, concessions have
to be find until a mutual agreement is found,
there is none hurry if it is to find everybody satisfaction.
If Peoples can’t talk to each others, change the Peoples !

Johnpd

OK.
Regards Switzerland, I regard it as a Bankster aberration: everyone is armed, by law; it never gets invaded because it’s where Banksters stash their ill-gotten loot; & it’s home to the BIS, Bank of International settlements, the Central Bank of Central Banks: the ultimate source & control center of money majicked out of thin air & lent out at interest.
This is the fraudulent heart of our totally corrupt Western World financial system.
See “Pawns…” & The Lost Hegemon, whom the gods would destroy, by F. William Engdahl, 2016.

Regards the counterpunch article, I had to force myself to finish this childish scare story: it’s totally incompetent.
CO2 “like a 4″ x 2 timber”? TOTAL RUBBISH.
CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) is the basis of ALL land-based life on Earth.
Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, & nutrients from the soil, & provide food for animals & humans. CO2 is plant food.
Above 400ppmv (parts per million by volume) where we are now, its effect as a greenhouse gas is miniscule, negligible.
EVERY winter, rotting vegetation in forests, etc, provide CO2 to the atmosphere. Every summer, growing vegetation absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. The largest source of CO2 to the atmosphere is warming oceans outgassing in summers, about 57%. Animals alone emit 25 times man’s output of CO2. Another major source is volcanoes, of which there is a 40,000 mile undersea chain, which is unmeasured.
“For ever & ever & ever”? What incompetent twaddle. There has been green vegetation growing on Earth for only about 10% of Earth’s approx 4,500 Million years life.

I recommend geology Prof. Ian Plimer’s great book: Heaven and Earth global warming: the missing science.

Try Climatologist drtimball.com
A great site.

Youtube & Matt Ridley Fossil Fuels Greening the Planet
19 minutes.

Make use of the search box at: http://www.wattsupwiththat.com
World’s top climate site 300 million hits +

JD.

AlexanderAmproz

Everything is an angle viewpoint question,
and which tree will be choose to hide the forest,
and how close to be.
For the Swiss banks it’s 10% of the GDP, 0,02%
is dirty money, for accountants to go bellow this
number is an very hard and expensive task.
Last night I have seen a very interesting documentary
involving HSBC Geneva among others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LdIR9cCeBE
Top US and GB Officials are implicated to the neck.

For Bank History, this is eloquent, and could be a reference
about what disgusting is going on today in the Middle-East
Anglo-American Money Owners Organized World War II
http://www.voltairenet.org/article187508.html

Switzerland is more worrisome with the Chemical
and Pharma Complex, but almost nobody talk about…

For Environment, during decades I was a snowman
for extreme ski and mountain climbing on
the Edward Whymper steps.
At that time the Environment was almost intact,
the Alps desert, farmers with mules.
It’s became a spoiled Disney land, places used
to have yearly a dozen visitors became thousands,
snow with visible pollution traces from Ruhrgebiet
getting mix with Sahara sand.
More peoples more destructive, I left my playing field
to avoid to contribute to it’s destruction, and swap it
with Scuba Diving on Corral’s Reef in the Philippines
surrounded by scary Dynamite Fishermen sponsored
by local politicians until nothing left.
Casual small scale fishermen catch went from 30 Kilos
a day to almost nothing, bellow the survival level…
Maldives Islands, 4 thousand km away used to have
cyanid traces from the Philippines…
South Philippines is the World Sea’s biodiversity center
out of one Million species, only 2% are known.
For the “Rain Forest’s” it isn’t much different, 2% left
untouched. Out of 300 thousands species, few % left…
The Philippines population was 50 Millions, today it’s
110 Millions, 30% didn’t eat every days !

The Philippines Archipelago looks alike one of the Planet
“Black Hole” swallowing all,
from a wonder Paradise to “The Gates of H E L L ”

Everybody watch the World from his village Bell-Tower

Personally I feel alike a worrisome Martian trying to watch
the Planet Earth with a spyglass…

Johnpd

A truly first rate video, thank you.

You will enjoy “Pawns…” It shows how foreign moneylenders financed & planned revolutions from the English Civil War on, gaining the Charter for the Bank of England, 1694, from where this evil derives.
I’ve read John Perkins’ New Confessions of a Economic Hitman, also first rate.

For some idea of how deeply the Banksters control the Brit parliament:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kick-bankers-man-remembrancer-out-1874811

The Banksters are the Western World’s greatest problem.

The environment is the next greatest.
I was born 1953. In 1952 London suffered a pea-souper fog which killed thousands. People could not see 4 inches in front of their faces. The fog was from burning coal in domestic fireplaces. Much good work has been done since to clean up. Do not forget this, please. More needs to be done, yes.

This is probably best achieved by allowing the poor to become a bit more prosperous, instead of the 1% grabbing all the wealth. They will then care for their environment, not just survival:
Youtube video: Matt Ridley Fossil Fuels Greening the Planet.

Too many people is NOT the problem. More People = More Progress = More Prosperity, IF it is allowed to trickle down.
Book: The Ultimate Resource 2, by economist Julian L. Simon.
Human Ingenuity (hard work + inventiveness) is the Ultimate Resource.

Again, thanks for excellent video.

JD.