Catalan independence and the ghost of Franco

You can no more imprison and idea than you can nail raindrops to the wall.

If only someone had told the judges on the Spanish Supreme Court that, because in taking the unconscionable decision to sentence nine Catalan pro-independence politicians and leaders to a combined 100 years in prison for their role in organising the 2017 independence referendum in defiance of Madrid, they are now among the best friends the cause of Catalan independence could have.

More broadly, the draconian sentences they passed down have dredged up the malign legacy of Franco, which 44 years after the fascist dictator’s death in 1975 continues to weigh heavily over the country’s political culture. This is down to the fact that Francoism has never been placed on trial in democratic Spain. Instead the country’s political establishment, aware of embers of Francoism that still burn within Spain’s military and security apparatus, opted for a pacto del ovido (pact of forgetting) when it came to this dark period in the country’s history.

But in recent years people across Spain, especially in Catalonia, have had more reason to remember than to forget. The scenes of Spanish riot police brutally attacking civilians with batons and rubber bullets outside polling stations across Catalonia for the ‘crime’ of attempting to cast a vote in a 2017…