Pepe Escobar — The Spanish Civil War, revisited

The intractability of the political problem is that Catalonia – the most European of all Spanish regions and historically in favor of republicanism and federalism – contests the very essence of the Spanish system. To scrap this outdated constitution – written immediately after Franco’s demise and drenched in amnesty for Franco-ists – is as important as self-determination. To say that the Bourbons face a legitimacy crisis is a major understatement.

Madrid’s actions on Referendum Repression Day – led by a Franco-ist partisan of torture, infamous General Bum-Bum – could not but revive the memory of Catalonia as the key anarchist/republican hub during the Spanish Civil War; the Civil Guard in itself represents the memory of Francoism. It’s understandable how separatists prefer to discard the historic/ financial heavy load when they see the impossibility of a true modernization of Spain.