Photo by Lolo Manolo | CC BY 2.0
Arriving in Barcelona in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, Ernst Toller was moved to write, “’The most striking experience a foreigner has in Barcelona is that of the functioning of democracy.” In 2017 something akin to history repeating is unfolding in the Catalonian capital, where democracy has again been raised aloft as a cause worth fighting for.
The scenes of Spanish riot police marching through the streets of Barcelona and other Catalonian towns and cities, attacking civilians with batons and rubber bullets outside polling stations for the crime of attempting to cast a democratic vote on their future, of ballot boxes being seized and elected politicians being arrested – all at the behest of the government of an EU member state – you might think are incongruous and incompatible with the EU’s self-declared status as a pillar of democratic values in the 21st century, a status enshrined in Article 2 of its very own constitution, the Lisbon Treaty, which reads:
“The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.”
However Brussels’ position of pristine indifference in the face of the grotesque and…