Hands off Puigdemont, Ponsatí

Independence for Catalonia!

The following is based on an article in Workers Vanguard (no 1131, 6 April 2018) which was written by our comrades of the Spartacist League/US in collaboration with the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, German section of the International Communist League.

On the morning of Sunday, 25 March, as one of its first acts, the new German coalition government of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and the Social Democratic Party arrested the exiled president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at an autobahn rest stop near Schleswig and threw him in prison. This action was in response to a European arrest warrant issued by Spain. The Spanish state has charged 13 leading representatives of the Catalan independence movement, including Puigdemont, with “rebellion”. Madrid is demanding the extradition of Puigdemont and former ministers in the Catalan Generalitat government Antoni Comín, Lluís Puig and Meritxell Serret, who are in Belgium, as well as former education minister Clara Ponsatí, a professor of economics at St Andrews University. Relying on a separate international arrest warrant, Spain is also demanding that Switzerland extradite Marta Rovira, general secretary of the Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left party).

Like the others, Ponsatí faces a long jail sentence in Spain. On 28 March, she presented herself at an Edinburgh police station where she was arrested and released on bail. Her case has prompted an outpouring of support, especially in Scotland. An online appeal to help with the legal costs of her fight against extradition raised £230,000 within a matter of days.

Theresa May’s Tory government has been as unbending as Angela Merkel and the rest of the EU leaders in support of Madrid’s crushing of the Catalan independence movement and the persecution of its leaders. For its part, the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration of Nicola Sturgeon claims to support “the right of the people of Catalonia to determine their own future” and to oppose the arrest and imprisonment of independentistes. But the SNP bourgeois nationalists are avid supporters of the EU, which opposes Catalan independence and the liberation struggles of all oppressed nations in Europe. The workers movement throughout the British Isles must support Ponsatí’s fight against extradition.

This persecution of Catalan bourgeois nationalists is part of the broad crackdown on the oppressed Catalan nation. Indeed, protests in Catalonia demanding the release of Puigdemont and the others have been brutally suppressed by the police. The “crime” of Puigdemont and the others was that they organised a referendum on Catalonia’s independence last October and declared independence after some 90 per cent of voters, braving the attacks of the Spanish police, voted in favour. As proletarian internationalists, we demand hands off Puigdemont, Ponsatí and all Catalan and Basque independence activists! Both North and South of the Pyrenees, we are for the independence of Catalonia and the Basque Country and for workers republics. As for the EU, it is an enemy of the working classes and the dependent countries of Europe. Down with the European arrest warrant! Down with the EU!

Puigdemont was arrested as he returned to Belgium, his home in exile, following a tour of Switzerland and Finland, where he had held discussions on support for Catalan independence. The Spanish and German intelligence services and police authorities closely co-operated in the arrest operation, including through a liaison officer of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office in Madrid. On 6 April, a German court released Puigdemont on €75,000 bail and ruled that he could not be extradited on the charge of “rebellion”. However, he still faces extradition on corruption charges into the hands of the vindictive Spanish state, which would not hesitate to prosecute him for “rebellion”.

The co-operation between the capitalist rulers of Germany and Spain in the suppression of Catalans has a history. In 1940, following the occupation of France, the Gestapo handed over former Catalan president Lluís Companys to Spanish dictator Generalissimo Franco. Companys was brutally tortured and executed by a firing squad. Last year, the spokesman of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular, Pablo Casado, stated that there was “nothing to negotiate” with the Catalan government. He stated that Puigdemont could “end up like” Companys, an open threat of torture and murder (Telepolis, 10 October 2017).

The capitalist governments across Europe have a common purpose in beheading and smashing the Catalan independence movement, with the aim of preserving the Spanish prison house of peoples and maintaining the repressive EU intact. Fighting against the EU is in the fundamental interest of the workers movement across Europe. Throughout Europe and internationally, we seek to build Leninist-Trotskyist parties, sections of a reforged Fourth International, that champion the just struggles of oppressed nations against their oppressors as crucial levers to advance the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist rulers.