Having lived in Spain in the early post Franco years, and by lived I mean permanent resident status and Tarjeta de Residencia and work permit (Parte de Alta) etc before they joined the EU, and by Spain I mean catalunya / Baleares, I can tell you that a good way to start a fight back then was to say something about Franco, you were just as likely to be talking to someone who loved him as someone who hated him, if the person was the small minority who was ambivalent, they probably weren’t there when Franco was.
Catalunya back then was the richest region in Spain, and Calvia council back then was the richest council region in catalunya.
Yes I remember miki moto on catalan telly..lol
But, back then the EU was a brave new world not yet visited, menu del dia was 450 pesetas, a packet of ducados 55 pesetas, a beer 70 pesetas, and a real posh penthouse flat overlooking the marivent palace was 4 million pesetas, back around then there were around 200-225 pesetas to the old libra esterlina so the posh flat was a shade under 18 grand sterling.
Dayworkers were pulling in 500 pesetas an hour.
So life was good, life was fucking good, and I warned everyone who would listen that joining the EU and getting EU IVA (value added tax) on everything was going to fucking kill spain, not immediately maybe, but sooner or later.
Now, frighteningly, over 30 years have passed since those days, and spain has turned into a turd by and large, and none of the people there are unaware of it.
Spain pretty much wasn’t racist, the true spaniard had blonde or red hair and blue eyes, the swarthy look was a result of the moorish invasions and inbreeding, but add a few hundred years and they were all spanish, and you were more than welcome to come and work and pay taxes and obey the same laws as everyone else and be just another spaniard.
But just because they weren’t racist, doesn’t mean they weren’t aware of race, in catalunya speaking castellano makes you a second class citizen to the catalan speaker, only by a fraction, but the fraction was there.. knew an english girl who grew up there from a toddler, spoke catalan like a native, got to the front of every queue in every business on the industrial estates, but it was done with smiles, as it was when the iberia pilots spoke catalan to the control tower to get bumped ahead in the holding pattern.
But, when you fucked up, it wouldn’t be forgotten or forgiven in a few weeks, or a year, or ten, or thirty, once your card was marked, it was marked for life.
Which brings us to the present day shenanigans.
It is a question that I cannot answer as to whether a referendum in catalunya for independence from spain at large would be a legally binding document, I can’t answer it because I do not know the law intimately, and hey, we voted for brexit, and it is as distant as ever…
It is a question that I can answer, what happens when you start sending in the guardia civil to prevent people from even HOLDING such an election, or having a voting app on google play, or saying anything in support of it in public office, or possessing anything such as pens and paper and boxes, that could be used to hold a ballot.
And the answer is YOU WILL NOT then have what we had in the early 80’s, which went as far as “that franco loving / hating bastard over there” but it was all still pretty cordial and polite.
What you will have is lines drawn in the sand, before they are drawn in blood and fire, you’re pro catalunya or anti catalunya, there is no more “spaniard”, it’s a basque ETA redux, but this time the secessionist group is the wealthiest one, by far, in the room.
When *we* had a world war, spain had a civil war, and coincidentally 99.999% of everyone who even remembers that first hand is now dead, so 99.999% do NOT remember it first hand, so they have no fear of re-creating it.
Now we have raghead immigrant muslims and so on in the mix, a short car drive away from mainland europe, so it won’t just be idealistic white men from europe who go to spain to choose sides in the civil war, it will be every fucker, so the moment it starts those who started it will no longer be the only players on the field.
And if 100,000 militant raghead muslims cross from mainland europe to participate, then it is going to get real bloody real fast, because down at street level the spanish people are very pragmatic.
The other thing people forget is that “the spanish” isn’t just the spanish, back in the 80’s there were a shit load of Argentinians who got out and emigrated to spain, and those folks ain’t dead yet…
The other thing people forget is the spanish foreign legion, everyone has heard of the french foreign legion, but the spanish version was much rawer and more vicious.. in the early 80’s the spanish still had national service, and it applied to everyone, even folks like me who wanted to be resident and work there, two years on fuck all money, and I mean fuck all money, it was harsh and it was rough and it was brutal, and most of those folks ain’t dead yet either.
In another 20 years of peace and indolence and QE maybe Madrid would have got away with a stunt like the one they are pulling now, a stunt largely unreported in the mass media outside spain, but not now, not while there are still plenty of people still alive with first hand memories of Franco and national service and spain before she was in the EU and all fucked up.
Especially as globally there are enough shit stirrers out there to make sure there a few false flag events to stir the pot even more.
I still to this day fold my money longwise before handing it to someone…
My heart goes with catalunya on this one, madrid can go fuck itself…. madrid is no longer spain, it’s brussels on the river manzanares…
