Translated by Red Phoenix staff.

The unelected King, the son of the designee named by the criminal Franco, Juan Carlos I, who in 1975 confirmed his commitment to the dictatorship with these words: “I swear by God and the Holy Gospels, to fulfill and enforce the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom and maintain loyalty to the principles that inform the National Movement (Franco’s coalition of ultra-right and fascist forces),“ has just made, after weeks of silence, a public statement that is in itself a perfect summary of the political moment in which we live: The Head of State, not elected but designated, in just two weeks after an agreement between the bourgeois forces, and therefore without any democratic legitimacy, has used just seven minutes to make a vritable declaration of war to the Catalan people.

With tens of thousands of people on the streets, quite rightly expressing their indignation at the brutal repressions of last Sunday, while the government and its allies exalted and retrenched in the most primal instincts of the reactionary Spanish racists, the “king of all Spaniards “carries all the responsibility of the situation in the institutions of Catalonia. The duel between the Catalan and Spanish bourgeoisies is solved in this way by the openly fascist sector of the monarchist state apparatus.

In these circumstances, what can be expected from the regime? The application of article 155 of the Constitution in front of a people mobilized in defense of their legitimate right to decide?  The repetition of the spectacle of October 1 of police and civil guards acting under the orders of a reactionary and corrupt government, as authentic forces of occupation? The intervention of the army? In any case it is clear that the Spanish oligarchy and the darkest forces of reaction are ready to reach the end in this struggle amongst the bourgeoisie that has ended up being an open fight against the democrats and against democratic rights and freedoms.

Of what democracy do they speak, when they have imposed laws, covered up corruption and manipulated consciences whenever they have wanted? What legitimacy does one have when one represents an institution that inherits a brutal dictatorship? What responsibility do they speak, who declare war when they feel like against a people who want to express their opinion at the polls?

Two things are perfectly clear: The first is the true nature of a regime, that of ‘78, which is the result of a real and effective rupture with Francoism, is incapable of responding to political challenges, or respecting at the very least the most elemental aspirations of the popular classes. The second is the failure of the “left” forces, incapable of firmly and clearly defending a state proposal that would restore the sovereignty of the working classes and the peoples of Spain, something that is unthinkable without breaking with the structure of a regime created to impose the designs of a minority of oligarchs.

Perhaps the brutal intervention of Philip VI serves the power bloc by ensuring the docility of those who, until now, have maintained their dominion or have looked the other way when reality broke the idyllic and false democratic image of the monarchist regime; but the workers and the popular classes begin to understand that, as the contradictions become more acute, without a radical solution that necessarily involves directly confronting the legal, political and institutional framework that guarantees the tyranny of the corrupt, and that end of the crossroads will lead to a fascism, which has never really been truly expelled from the Spanish state.

At times like these, there is no equidistance, there is no justification for passivity in the inopportuneness of the answer. If reaction finally imposes its “solution” to the problem, we can expect even more harsh power response to popular demands, the best that could be hoped for would be a stronger hand, applied with democratic phraseology.

The PCE (ML) calls on all left and progressive forces to denounce the illegitimate king, the reactionary PP government and their accomplices in the streets; and calls on all the forces of progress to join in a Popular Front that towards the construction of a People’s and Federative Republic, which fully guarantees the rights and freedoms of the workers and peoples of Spain.

Executive Committee, PCE (ml)

Categories: International, Spain