I was poking around looking for a better account of the class forces at work - without much success I'm afraid. Suggestions welcome.
Can't disagree with the quote at the end of it.
Looking at Amor y Rabia's blog I found
this longer article posted on Sunday (so written before the Police violence) which takes a very sceptical view of the 'Process of Independence', of the real goals and motives of the neoliberal Catalan government that is leading it, and a critical view of groups which have expressed support for elements of it. Here's a very (very) rough translation I made for myself. Since my knowledge of the situation in Catalonia isn't much greater than my (hopeless) Spanish language skills I can't speak to its factual accuracy although the political conclusions chime with my own view that picking sides in a process dominated by two equally obnoxious capitalist factions is to say the very least a mugs game. Anyhow I think it's an interesting point of view and raises some useful questions.
Too long to post in a spoiler - here's a link to a PDF which can be downloaded, or if your browser permits, read online.
https://my.mixtape.moe/fxnzai.pdf
Short thing recently appeared on DD - more at link:
Whatever happens in the future in Catalonia, it is clear that this will contribute to strong polarizations around the concept of the Catalan nation, and that this vision risks spreading in a non-negligible way to the rest of Europe. Especially since Kurdistan (amongst other places) has already achieved quasi-unanimity amongst “radicals”.
In the present decomposition, everything that can constitute a unit, however fictitious, circumstantial or reactionary it may be, is quickly validated by the various anti-authoritarian currents in search of a revolutionary subject or practice.
In the case of Spain, there are several factors to be taken into account in order to understand what is happening at present, in particular:
– the importance of regional pseudo-identities, more generally, localism (whether cultural or political);
– the disintegration of the revolutionary movements and the evolution towards the ideology of citizenship (already observable with the 15-M), which led to the triumph of Podemos almost everywhere, but also to that of the Catalan right;
-the fact that Catalonia is the richest region in Spain, an essential stake in the struggle between bourgeois factions for ages; the current situation is nothing new, the Catalanists have always played on the pressure on the national state to ensure local control. It has never worked so well.
In the case of the Spanish Revolution, the Catalanists who did not support Franco very quickly opposed armed proletarians and were directly involved in their repression (notably through the “escamots”, an action group of the Estat Catala party) . The old CNTists (no matter what one thinks of their limitations) would surely have been horrified to see that in 2017 the CNT publicly pronounced itself (on its website) in favour of the “self-determination of the Catalan people”, its “right” to choose , etc.
