{"id":328687,"date":"2017-10-02T20:44:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T19:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/order-prevails-in-barcelona-as-democracy-dies-in-madrid\/"},"modified":"2017-10-02T20:44:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T19:44:43","slug":"order-prevails-in-barcelona-as-democracy-dies-in-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/order-prevails-in-barcelona-as-democracy-dies-in-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Order Prevails in Barcelona as Democracy Dies in Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_96135\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-96135\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/09\/Screen-Shot-2017-09-25-at-7.52.55-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/09\/Screen-Shot-2017-09-25-at-7.52.55-AM.png 510w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/09\/Screen-Shot-2017-09-25-at-7.52.55-AM-300x224.png 300w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/09\/Screen-Shot-2017-09-25-at-7.52.55-AM-768x574.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Lolo Manolo | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Arriving in Barcelona in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, Ernst Toller was moved to write, \u201c\u2019The most striking experience a foreigner has in Barcelona is\u00a0that of the functioning of democracy.\u201d\u00a0In 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2013 all at the behest of the government of an EU member state \u2013 you might think are incongruous and incompatible with the EU\u2019s self-declared status as a pillar of democratic values in the 21<sup>st<\/sup>\u00a0century, a status\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lisbon-treaty.org\/wcm\/the-lisbon-treaty\/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments\/title-1-common-provisions\/2-article-2.html\">enshrined in Article 2 of its very own constitution<\/a>, the Lisbon Treaty, which reads:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>However Brussels\u2019 position of pristine indifference in the face of the grotesque and&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/10\/02\/order-prevails-in-barcelona-as-democracy-dies-in-madrid\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Lolo Manolo | CC BY 2.0 Arriving in Barcelona in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, Ernst Toller was moved to write, \u201c\u2019The most striking experience a foreigner has in Barcelona is\u00a0that of the functioning of democracy.\u201d\u00a0In 2017 something akin to history repeating is unfolding in the Catalonian capital, where democracy has again [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-328687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}