The use of dirty war is common in complicated democracies, and is a
sign of internal organizational failures and frailties that become
more pronounced at times of social turmoil. For the past 35 years the
Spanish state has been successfully waging its own presumed dirty war,
to the point that by now it has almost become a tradition.
To give you an idea, last November, in the middle of the political
campaign for the Catalan elections, the UDEF (Unidad de Delincuencia
Económica y Fiscal), an elite Spanish police unit against fraud,
offered the media a tempting story. And it wasn't long before the
Spanish daily El Mundo took the bait and ran an article on the
existence of a draft police report implicating President Mas in an
alleged kickbacks for a public contracts case in Catalonia and for
hiding secret banking accounts in Switzerland.
Now this past Tuesday, after almost four months of internal police
investigation and just as when the story was first published, neither
the judge nor the prosecutor in the case were aware of the existence
of such a report, not even the Interior Ministry. When Jorge Fernández
Díaz read out his statement it left a dejà vu sensation among the
members of the Interior Commission at the Congreso de los Diputados.
He implied the non-existence of the Swiss secret banking accounts and
pointed out that he had not a clue about the authors of the draft
police report. "The draft report does not correspond literally to any
official document elaborated as part of the Palau case by the UDEF,"
he concluded.
But the Catalan elections had already passed and the damage done by
the false report is now impossible to mend. Nevertheless, four months
ago when President Mas was right when he said: "If nobody takes
responsibility for anything and there are calumnies and slurs, perhaps
what we have here is that they are making up theoretical evidence to
see if they can alter the result of the elections." This is what he
outlined in a statement after the El Mundo articles had been published
last November. This was the beginning of a phase of the dirty war that
is being waged against Catalonia's right to decide its future.
President Mas defined the whole situation as "a set-up by the sewers
of the State", the Spanish State. In other words, he was denouncing
that Rajoy's Government was trying to sabotage the Catalans' attempts
to seek out democratic means to express their discontent. The
"demolition machinery" of the Spanish Government struck hard, all the
while denying any involvement whatsoever. Four months ago Rajoy was in
a political mouse trap. Not much could be to deny the evidence that
support for the independence of Catalonia was growing. On November 8th
2012, two weeks before Election Day, Spain –as a united entity— was in
a critical situation. Polls showed that at least 57% of the Catalan
population would vote yes to sever ties from the Spanish state if a
referendum were to be held. And this was one of the factors
President's Mas campaign was based on.
Rajoy had to play the field, and he did this quite well. The UDEF
anonymous draft report blew up the whole Catalan political campaign.
We all know what happened next.
Legal action was taken immediately and President Mas brought a
criminal lawsuit against the newspaper El Mundo. At the same time, CDC
lodged an accusation of electoral offenses against the unidentified
officials in the UDEF, which El Mundo claimed to be the authors of the
draft report. But today the authors of this false report are still
unknown. This will probably remain one of the most important secrets
of the Spanish dirty war against Catalonia as it moves towards
independence. Notwithstanding, one thing is clear: as long as the
situation lasts, the names will remain hidden because of the Ministry
of the Interior's own incompetence. Or it might end up being a
casualty of its own dirty war. Who knows? The political malice
presumably used by Fernández Díaz to create this confusion might have
consequences or not. Time will tell.
http://www.catdem.org/en/notices/2013/03/dirty-war-against-catalonia-7134.php
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