Austerity Spain With Little Regard For Democracy

A woman stands alone in the middle of a city avenue, her hands up holding two placards. Thousands like her line the street shouting words of discontent, angry and disturbed by recent events. On the other side is a large police battalion, armed with batons, guns and tear gas shells. 

 

Police officers can be seen walking toward the protesters. The situation quickly goes out of control when police officers apply excessive use of force in an attempt to disperse the crowds, who outstayed and transgressed their midnight deadline for an anti-austerity protest. 

 

One could be forgiven for thinking this a development in Aleppo, Beirut or another violence ridden city in the Middle East during the Arab spring revolutions. It was not. It was right here in ‘our’ backyard, Madrid 2011. Amnesty International wrote about the lone woman, “…her attitude was peaceful and she was holding up her hands, but when the police passed her, one of the officers hit her on the face with her shield, making her fall on the bench, and then hit her on the left knee with her baton, causing a contusion for which she later received medical treatment”. Her name was Angela Jaramillo, aged 58.

 

This was not to be an isolated incident. On the 4th of August 2011, around 800 demonstrators marched towards the Ministry of the Interior, to protest against the closure of the Puerta del Sol square on the 1st of August. They were met by riot police, who charged them repeatedly. Mainstream media reported that the police charged in response to attempts of some demonstrators to attach posters on the fences of the ministry. 

 

Witness reports gathered subsequently paint a different picture. A.I found that police officers charged against peaceful demonstrators. Images available on the internet attest to this, showing riot police hitting demonstrators with their batons even when demonstrators were simply holding their hands up. 20 people were injured in the process. 

 

Other witness reports told A.I that despite peacefully protesting, many demonstrators, including children, elderly and disabled, were hit with batons consecutively. It also found that riot police were not wearing the proper identification on helmets and uniforms, in breach of Secretary of State for Security’s instruction N° 13/2007. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There have been demontrations all over Spain, demanding change to the political system and pressuring the Spanish executive to focus on employment, housing, education and healthcare policies. Indeed, protests have taken place elsewhere in Europe too, from Portugal to Greece and even the UK. These are not random outbursts of anger by frustrated mobs, these are successive demonstrations against failed governmental policy, in what classifies as a reversal of freedoms and rights, and crackdown on popular democratic participation widely celebrated after the fall of Franco. 

 

Article 3 of the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979 stipulates that “…law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty”. Furthermore, article 5 of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, states that law enforcement agents must “exercise restrain in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and legitimate objective to be achieved” while aiming to “minimise damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life”.

 

In addition, Spanish law enforcement agents must comply with the principles of “coherence”, “opportunity” and “proportionality” during the exercise of their functions, under the 1986 Ley Orgánica (Ley Orgánica 2/1986 de los Cuerpos y Fuerzas de Seguridad del Estado, Article 5.2.c).

 

Despite this, international law is continuously ignored by national governments. Signatories to international treaties and human rights conventions must comply with international human rights law obligations and with international standards on policing at all times. The problem is that these standards are hardly ever respected. Everything is allowed when the law is on the side of the authority. Imagine an individual beating a police officer. Such person would be indicted and found guilty, ultimately imprisoned. When police officers act in such a way, they’re protecting the State from ‘security concerns’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nonetheless, public protest and resistance has been mild despite the social consequences of the austerity measures. The ‘there is no alternative’ perspective was instrumental in imposing a one dimensional attitude toward the crisis, generating an ultimatum – austerity or chaos. On other hand, there is a sense of a ‘society of the spectacle’, whereby citizens are disengaged from the political reality and unable to hold the government to account to the degree that it should be held (Debord, 1964). When these institutional channels fail, civil disobedience becomes the only alternative. In the age of conformity, civil disobedience is treated as a crime.

 

If regions within Europe become divided and binaries are thus generated, (ie. rich and poor) then nationalist opposition is likely to emerge, posing a threat not only domestically but also regionally with implications for the entire Euro area. Continued austerity will contribute to an authoritarian political turn, as yet unobserved in contemporary European history. This is becoming increasingly clear.

 

Police officers arrested three people last Friday, 20th of December, in a demonstration against reforms to abortion legislation. The demonstration was held in Madrid and most of the protesters were women. The protest was staged outside of the Ministry of Justice, with protesters calling for the resignation of minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, whose government is quickly moving to revert the present abortion law.

 

The changes would restrict women’s right to abort, only permitting the procedure when there is a serious threat to health or if a woman is a victim of rape. This backlash represents a turn to an illiberalism, or authoritarianism, never seen before in contemporary Western Europe. The political class wishes to restrain the individual rights of women to abort. It follows the strategy proposed by the catholic Church.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the formal separation between state and church, the Church has always had a major role to play in Spanish politics, influencing not only public opinion but inevitably contributing to patriarchy in Spanish society, something which had seemingly become a thing of the past since La Movida. Current Spanish law allows women to abort without any restrictions up to 14 weeks into pregnancy.

 

The government claimed that the current law is ‘too liberal’ and that the new bill would provide “defense both for the protection of the life of the unborn child and women’s rights”. The existing law reduced the number of abortions by 5 percent in 2012, according to statistics released by the Health Ministry.

 

Scenes like these are easy to imagine outside of Europe, as reports in mainstream media show, either in support of regime change or with a view to undermine ‘unwanted’ demonstrations. When it happens right here, in the heart of Europe, not only does it not get reported adequately, it also goes uninvestigated despite numerous reports by human rights organisations condemning police actions.

 

The institutional claim tends to be that the police have a duty to protect the institutional framework and thus must defend it at all costs, even when such costs are hundreds of people injured, dozens dead and many others arrested. The worst part is that there are no independent investigations into these abuses. We rely on human rights organisations and video footage taken by demonstrators or courageous young reporters, in order to assess the truthfulness of events.

 

While the direction of the wind can be estimated, it nonetheless changes randomly without much of a warning. Government policy is not quite so random or incident isolated, quite the opposite, it is usually premeditated and planned. In response, the rhetoric turns to facile encouragements to understand these abuses of power as isolated cases, laying the culpability on particular police officers rather than on inhumane institutional decisions promoted by authoritarian ideology.

 

I very much agree that society, here and everywhere, is predicated on desire for cohesion. Nonetheless, I claim that ‘the age of conformity’ is more and more the age of here and now. Armed with greater education and awareness of global events, we no longer act in a space of total ignorance where we do not know what is happening and thus act as if we don’t know. On the contrary, we now are very aware of what goes on and yet continue to act as if we don’t. This, for me, is the real age of conformity. 

 

If people continue to side with regressive forces, soon we will be back in the Middle Ages where public executions are the norm.