Thousands Of Retired Workers In Spain Demand ‘Decent Pensions’

Thousands of retired people and supporters took over the streets in several cities in Spain on Saturday to demand “decent” pensions of at least 1,080 Euros a month, and yearly updates according, to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The protests started in Bilbao, capital of the Basque country, in January as a weekly demonstration and spread to over 200 cities and towns across the Spanish State, supporting other movements along the way. They were organized by the State Coordinator for the Defense of the Public Pension System under the slogans “whoever is ruling, pensions must be defended,” and “Our future: there’s no solution without mobilization!”

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Colorful Clash Of Protestors And Police In Barcelona

Protestors opposing a march by police association JUSAPOL in Barcelona, Spain doused police lines with paint and powder before being violently dispersed. Pro-independence protestors and antifa activists clashed with Catalan police at a rally to oppose a manifestation organized by JUSTAPOL (Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil Union) in support of the operation against last year’s referendum on Catalonian independence.

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Extradition Against Catalan Leader Fails, Calls For Resolution, King Offers To Negotiate

On July 19, Spain’s Supreme Court has withdrawn all the European Arrest Warrants against pro-independence leaders abroad, including former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.

Spanish judge Pablo Llarena decided not to pursue the extradition of Puigdemont after the German court of Schleswig-Holstein rejected to surrender him for rebellion. Former president Carles Puigdemont has called on the Spanish head of state Pedro Sánchez to do his “homework” regarding Catalonia. He also warned that “the grace period is over.” Spanish King Felipe VI is willing to negotiate with pro-independence parties in order to “repair” their damaged relationship since the October 1 referendum.

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More Than 100,000 Call For Freedom Of Political Prisoners In Catalonia

Between 110,000 and 200,000 people attended a march held in Barcelona on Saturday to demand freedom for the nine pro-independence leaders jailed. The Catalan capital’s local police estimated that 110,000 attended the protest, while organizers raised this figure to 200,000. The people who took the streets of Barcelona included the country’s two top authorities, president Quim Torra and parliament speaker Roger Torrent. The host organizations were major pro-independence entities ANC and Òmnium, alongside with another one gathering the relatives of the jailed and exiled leaders. ‘Neither prison nor exile, we want you home’ The march started in Barcelona’s city center at 7pm with a clear motto: ‘Neither prison nor exile, we want you home.”

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Change In Spanish And Catalonia Governments Positive Steps Offering Hope

The article below is a combination of three articles from Catalan News. With the ouster of President Mariano Rajoy of Spain and his replacement by socialist, Pedro Sánchez, as well as the lifting of direct rule after seven months, there is hope for progress in Spain and Catalonia. There is work to be done, including the release of political prisoners and return of those in exile who worked for independence and dropping charges against them, but removing Rajoy who fought Catalonian independence with aggression is a positive step.

While there are high expectations among Catalonians, there are challenges ahead. As another article in Catalan News pointed out, “The deposed Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, was among the first ones to react on Twitter. ‘If we wanted vengeance, today we could call ourselves satisfied. But as we want justice, today we still have nothing to celebrate. There is still a long battle and a long road ahead…

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Hundreds of Thousands Protest for Release of Pro-Independence Prisoners

Six months to the day have passed since the imprisonment of the grassroots pro-independence activists Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, the last presidential candidate. They were arrested by the Spanish police for their roles in the independence roadmap of Catalonia. To mark the occasion, a platform made up of various organizations in favor of Catalan state called for a march to take place on April 15, in the heart of Barcelona. Police figures claim that 315,000 were in attendance, while organizers count around 750,000 protesters. 

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Police, Protesters Clash In Barcelona After Separatist Leader’s Arrest

BARCELONA, Spain—Carles Puigdemont, the fugitive ex-leader of Catalonia and an ardent separatist, was arrested Sunday by German police on an international warrant as he tried to enter the country from Denmark. Puigdemont was on his way back to Belgium where he has been staying since fleeing Spain following a failed bid by his regional government in October to declare independence from Spain, said his lawyer, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas. The Spanish government told The Associated Press it had received “official confirmation from German authorities of the arrest” of Puigdemont in response to the warrant issued by Spain’s Supreme Court. Spanish state prosecutor said it was in contact with its German counterparts to carry out its request to extradite Puigdemont to Spain, where he faces charges including rebellion that could put him in prison for up to 30 years.

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Tens Of Thousands Attend Pro-Independence March In Barcelona

Thousands of people have marched in Barcelona to demand the formation of a new government in Spain’s Catalonia region leading to its independence from Madrid despite formidable legal obstacles. Some 45,000 people joined the ‘Republic Now’ march called by the influential pro-independence citizens’ group ANC, city police said. “There are more than two million of us citizens of Catalonia who want to go forward now, clearly, towards the Catalan republic,” ANC vice president Agusti Alcoberro told reporters. Separatist parties won an absolute majority of seats in the 135-seat Catalan parliament in a snap election on 21 December but have so far failed to form a new government. Catalonia’s two main separatist parties last week proposed a new referendum on a constitution of the “Catalan republic”.

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More Than 5 Million Join Spain’s ‘Feminist Strike’

More than 5 million workers have taken part in Spain’s first nationwide “feminist strike”, according to trade unions. The action, held to mark International Women’s Day, is intended to highlight sexual discrimination, domestic violence and the wage gap. On Thursday afternoon, the Workers’ Commissions and the Workers’ General Union said that 5.3 million people had participated in two-hour walkouts, describing the action as “an unprecedented strike in our country’s trade union movement”. The strike, which is being supported by some of Spain’s best-known female politicians – including Madrid’s mayor, Manuela Carmena, and the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau – has drawn huge crowds on to streets and squares across the country to call for change and equality.

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Catalan Independence Protest Delays Swearing In Of Puidgemont As President

The decision to postpone the session to swear in Carles Puigdemont as president did not stop thousands of independence supporters from demonstrating outside the Parliament on Tuesday, with a great many skipping the police cordon set up around the chamber. The civil associations, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and the Committees for the Defense of the Referendum (CDR), had called on their supporters to turn out in force outside the Parliament at 3 pm, when the debate was scheduled to begin. Despite the postponement of the plenary session in the morning, the ANC and the CDR maintained their call to demonstrate and thousands of people responded, with the official protest going on till 4 pm.

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Catalan Integral Cooperative – Simpler Way Revolution Is Well Underway!

It is now abundantly clear that a just and sustainable world cannot be achieved unless consumer-capitalist society is basically scrapped. It involves levels of resource use and environmental impact that are already grossly unsustainable, yet growth is the supreme goal. The basic form the alternative must take is not difficult to imagine. (For the detail see TSW: Summary Case.) The essential concept must be mostly small, highly self-sufficient and self-governing communities in which we can live frugally but well putting local resources directly into producing to meet local needs … without allowing market forces or the profit motive or the global economy to determine what happens. Unfortunately even many green and left people do not grasp the magnitude of the De-growth that is required.

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Former Governor Of Bank Of Spain: Public Entity Should Create Money

By Staff of Public Banking Institute – Positive Money, the monetary reform group based in the UK, posts that Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, former governor of Bank of Spain, is now recommending money creation by public entity instead of by private banks. He references the advances in technology that would allow safe public issuing. He came to the Spanish Lower House on Nov 7, 2017 and said the following: “In the latest years, some analysts have emerged who are evaluating the possibility to change current money creation system by private banks and to substitute it with another one which would let every citizen deposit their money at central banks. These studies have surged, because the technological advances in the computing and data storage, have made it technically possible today for money to be issued by the State, and not by private banks which would be of course doing their businesses in the assets’ side, but without the need that their problems should be resolved by the State, as deposits would be completely safe at the issuing bank. The possibility to issue public and safe money thanks to new technologies, according to these researchers, would have positive consequences, not only for the system’s stability, but also to reduce or even do without the huge prudential regulation which is today damaging financial innovation.

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Whither Catalonia?

By Dan La Botz for The Bullet – The impact of the independence process on Spain as a whole is complex because, in the short term, the Spanish right uses it to cohere its social base and in the last weeks we are experiencing a shift toward the right in the Spanish political and social life. But at the same time, it is the principal threat to the political regime created in 1978.[1] If Catalonia became independent, it is unlikely that the political regime of 1978 could survive. Such a crisis could open the opportunity for change in the Spanish state as well. The strategic, decisive question is how to link the independence movement – without dissolving its demand, with a perspective of breaking with the 1978 regime within the state as a whole. This requires combining unilateral action from Catalonia with the struggle within the Spanish state as a whole in favor of a new majority politics of the left. But this center-periphery dialectic is complex and neither Catalan independence movement, nor the forces of the Spanish left such as Podemos know how to do it. DL: What is the social base of the independence movement? JMA: The independence movement is principally based in the middle class, public employees, and youth.

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‘Freedom For The Political Prisoners’: March In Barcelona

By Staff of Common Dreams – “Wearing yellow ribbons on their lapels to signify support, they filled the length of the Avenue Marina that runs from the beach to Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia church, while the jailed leaders’ families made speeches,” The Independent reports. “Catalonia’s two main grassroots independence groups called the march, under the slogan ‘Freedom for the political prisoners,’ after their leaders were remanded in custody on charges of sedition last month.” The march on Saturday followed a series of related demonstrations in recent weeks. On October 16, “around 200,000 people (according to calculations by the municipal police) came out to protest the jailing of the heads of the pro-independence ANC and Òmnium associations, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart,” the Spanish newspaper El Pais reports. “On October 21, another protest calling for their release saw 450,000 people take to the streets of the Catalan capital.” In early October, the Spanish government mobilized a violent police force in hopes of quashing a regional independence referendum, but the movement for Catalan independence and subsequent actions by the Spanish central government in Madrid have left the wealthy region deeply divided. Those who were able to cast ballots last month overwhelmingly supported independence. Since regional leaders defied Madrid and declared independence in late October, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has imposed direct rule on the region.”Wearing yellow ribbons on their lapels to signify support, they filled the length of the Avenue Marina that runs from the beach to Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia church, while the jailed leaders’ families made speeches,” The Independent reports. “Catalonia’s two main grassroots independence groups called the march, under the slogan ‘Freedom for the political prisoners,’ after their leaders were remanded in custody on charges of sedition last month.” The march on Saturday followed a series of related demonstrations in recent weeks. On October 16, “around 200,000 people (according to calculations by the municipal police) came out to protest the jailing of the heads of the pro-independence ANC and Òmnium associations, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart,” the Spanish newspaper El Pais reports. “On October 21, another protest calling for their release saw 450,000 people take to the streets of the Catalan capital.” In early October, the Spanish government mobilized a violent police force in hopes of quashing a regional independence referendum, but the movement for Catalan independence and subsequent actions by the Spanish central government in Madrid have left the wealthy region deeply divided. Those who were able to cast ballots last month overwhelmingly supported independence. Since regional leaders defied Madrid and declared independence in late October, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has imposed direct rule on the region.

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