Catalonia Reborn by Chris Bambery and George Kerevan sampler

irth of a republic
Parlament once again became the citadel of Catalan democracy and hopes
for self-determination.
Those hopes were soon dashed. For post-Franco Spain turned out to
be a pseudo democracy. The transition from Francoism to parliamentary
democracy involved no purge of the state apparatus nor any attempt to
come to terms with the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the repression
which followed. Instead, the ruling Francoist elite created only a semblance
of democratic institutions following the dictator’s death, in order to to gain
access to the European Union. The result was the unique 1978 Spanish constitutional
settlement: a political compromise that granted a degree of popular
democratic representation and a degree of autonomy for Spain’s constituent
regions and nations, while preserving as much of the old, authoritarian
order as possible.
As a result, the bulk of the nation’s wealth and banking system remained
in the hands of a narrow oligarchy centred on Mariano Rajoy’s Popular
Party (PP), the direct political heirs of the old Falangists and Francoists.
This web of corruption between bankers and politicians reached its zenith
during the great financial bubble of the early 21st century. Billions were borrowed
and spent by giant Spanish construction companies to build a new
generation of toll highways around Madrid. These were funded by cheap
bank loans underwritten by the Spanish state (PP politicians in Madrid). At
the same time, illegal cash donations flowed into the coffers of the dominant,
right-wing Popular Party. With the Bank Crash of 2008, many of these
vanity construction projects went bankrupt, leaving the Spanish taxpayer
(including the Catalan taxpayer) to foot the bill. The declaration of the Catalan
Republic was a repudiation of this corrupt system.
As we will see in later chapters, Spain is structured very differently from
the more mature European capitalist economies to its north. The Franco
regime had fostered state capitalism in its drive to catch up with the rest
of Europe. With the end of the dictatorship, a corrupt, conservative Popular
Party elite deliberately engineered the transfer of these public industries
and banks into the private ownership of a clique of its friends and allies, in
return for illegal funding of the party’s operations. Spanish capitalism (much
like post-Soviet Russia) became dominated by a narrow circle of oligarchs,
operating through private conglomerates funded by bank debt. Once Spain
entered the Eurozone, and with global interest rates at rock bottom, the
door was open to a gigantic property and speculation bubble. When the
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