Catalonia situation

Let's go back to important things.
Catalonia now lives in a state of exception underground, since it is acting without activating a protocol that activates that state of emergency, ie if, in itself, this means that a series of basic freedoms can be skipped by the State without consequences , is currently acting as a totalitarian state.

http://cosaspracticas.lasprovincias.es/legislacion/supone-estado-excepci...

What it entails: effects

The declaration of a state of emergency can generate important effects on diverse fundamental rights, within the terms set by art. 55.1 EC and the own LO 4/1981. In this state may suspend all or some of the following fundamental rights recognized by the Spanish Constitution:

Art. 17.2 Preventive Detention.

Any person may be detained for a maximum of 10 days, if there are reasonable suspicions that he may cause alterations of the order, if he deems it necessary for the conservation of the same. Detention must be reported to the competent court within 24 hours. (LO 4/1981 Art. 16)

Art. 18.2 Inviolability of the domicile.

Inspections or home records may be available if deemed necessary for the clarification of alleged criminal acts or for the maintenance of public order. (LO 4/1981 Art. 17)

Art. 18.3 Secrecy of communications.

All types of communications, including postal, telegraphic and telephone communications, may be used; provided that the authorization of the Congress includes the suspension of article 18.3 of the Constitution. Such intervention may only be carried out if this is necessary for the clarification of alleged criminal acts or the maintenance of public order. (LO 4/1981 Art. 18)

Article 19 Freedom of choice of residence and free movement throughout the national territory.

The movement of people and vehicles may be prohibited at the times and places determined, and require those who move from one place to another to prove their identity, pointing out the itinerary to follow. (LO 4/1981 Art. 20)

Art. 20.1.a) Freedom to express thought.

Art. 20.1.d) Right to communicate or receive truthful information by any means of dissemination.

Art. 20.5 Prohibition of abducting publications and other means of information without judicial resolution.

The Governmental Authority may suspend all types of publications, radio and television broadcasts, projections, films and theatrical performances, provided that the authorization of the Congress includes the suspension of article twenty (a) and (d) and five of the Constitution . You may also order the abduction of publications.

Art. 21.2 Right of meeting in places of public transit and demonstrations.

The Government Authority may submit to prior authorization or prohibit the holding of meetings and demonstrations. It may also dissolve the meetings and events referred to in the preceding paragraph. (LO 4/1981 Art. 22)

Art. 28.2 Right to strike.

Art. 37.2 Right to adopt measures of collective dispute

The Governmental Authority may prohibit strikes and the adoption of measures of collective conflict, when the authorization of the Congress includes the suspension of articles 28.2 and 37.2 of the Constitution.

Plus:

- It will be possible to intervene and to control all types of transport, and the load of the same. (LO 4/1981 Art. 19)

- It is possible to order the intervention of industries or businesses that may motivate the alteration of public order or contribute to it, and the temporary suspension of the activities of the same, reporting to the Ministries concerned. It will also be possible to order the provisional closure of showrooms, beverage establishments and premises of similar characteristics. (LO 4/1981 Art. 26)

- If a civil servant or personnel in the service of a public administration or a public or official entity or institute favors the conduct of the disturbing elements of the order, the government authority may suspend it in the exercise of its office, blame the competent Judge and notify the superior to the effects of the appropriate disciplinary file. (LO 4/1981 Art. 29)

- If, during the state of emergency, the judge considers the existence of acts contrary to public order or citizen security that may constitute a crime, he may order the provisional custody of the alleged perpetrator, which he will maintain, at his discretion, during said state. Those convicted in these proceedings are exempted from the benefits of conditional referral during the period of the state of emergency. (LO 4/1981 Art. 31)

On 1 October, demonstrations are held in various parts of Catalonia for the defense of rights, freedoms and self-determination. in the same way in the rest of Spain there are several calls for support, against repression and some for the III republic also between 30 and October 1.

The counter is that as I mentioned earlier sectors of the extreme right Spanish, Falange, DN or España2000 are convening demostrations in several important capitals. Already there were clashes in Barcelona, ​​Valencia and Zaragoza.
For example:
http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2017/09/24/59c7869722601d1b148b467f.html

There is also an element that is not usually considered and is the community of order, the FCSE (State Security Forces and Bodies), ie the police and the civil guard with their relatives, friends and acquaintances who these days are showing demostrations of support to the FCSE that leave from different parts of Spain towards Catalonia. A Spanish nationalism latent and pro totalitarian in favor of the power of the law and its repressive arm.

For example:
http://sevilla.abc.es/andalucia/huelva/sevi-huelva-despide-entre-vitores...

The general strike in Catalonia of 3-Oct is also being prepared with all that entails. Also the radical unions will going to call protests in the rest of Spain for that day.

One article/opinion about this kind of things:

The powder keg Catalán: "Rajoy or Republic"

We entered a decisive week for the future development of the so-called "Catalan conflict". This Sunday will be the referendum called by the Generalitat, with a more or less plausible and guarantor result depending on the repression that the Spanish government decides against. We have been through weeks of tension, in which the massiveness and social rooting of Catalan protest, as well as the overtly authoritarian and repressive drift of the Spanish State, have become evident.

THE POWDER KEG CATALÁN: "RAJOY OR REPÚBLICA"

We entered a decisive week for the future development of the so-called "Catalan conflict". This Sunday will be held the referendum called by the Generalitat, with a more or less plausible and guarantor result in view of the repression that the Spanish government decides against. We have been through weeks of tension, in which the massiveness and social rooting of Catalan protest, as well as the overtly authoritarian and repressive drift of the Spanish State, have become evident.

In order to understand this intricate moment of peninsular politics, it is necessary to have clear certain previous concepts, relative to the very structure of the Spanish State, as well as to the genesis of the Catalan independence project.

In the first place we should mention the evolution of the so-called "Regime of the 78" in Spain towards an involutive and authoritarian way more and more evident. We need concepts: the "Regime of 78", so named for being born with the current Constitution of 1978, has been the historical product of the so-called "Spanish transition from Franco to democracy." This Transition, despite the mythical narrative that accompanied it in the international scene and in the media of the establishment, was nothing more than a reform of Franco's own dictatorial regime, which established, in fact, a regime that secured a shift peaceful exercise of power between two parties that eventually became almost indistinguishable in their political practice. This almost perfect "bipartisanship", because it only sometimes required recourse to the pact with Catalan or Basque nationalist forces to generate stable majorities, was justified by the generation of a social culture (the so-called "Culture of Transition" based on the idea of ​​consensus and reconciliation, obviating any possibility of resuming the previous republican experience or claiming the historic memory of the genocide carried out by the Franco regime after the Spanish Civil War.

In addition, the Transition, which incorporated as head of state for life and hereditary the king who had appointed Franco for that position, renounced the possibility of demanding any responsibility for the serious crimes or for the robberies carried out during the dictatorship. In short, the "Regime of 78" left untouched the oligarchy that has always led the Spanish economic and political life, which would then continue to lead the nation, although already with the mark of membership of the European Union.

A Spanish oligarchy that has kept the country, over the last forty years, based on a productive model based increasingly on precarious and cheap work, which underpins a monoculture of mass tourism, as well as the expansion of financed real estate bubbles for debt from Europe. Any coherent industrial policy is abandoned in the process of entry into the EU. This economic model, in turn, is seriously decomposed when, in the context of the global crisis of 2007, the real estate market collapses, in the context of a particularly tough legal order with mortgage debtors, catching hundreds of thousands of proletarian families who will be condemned to eviction and debt bondage in the face of a "systemic" financial institution sustained by a European-financed bailout, which entailed a strong process of neoliberal reforms and cuts in public services as conditionalities. such as hugely harsh labor reforms.

In addition, we must bear in mind that both bipartisanship and the real estate bubble have been generating a strong incidence of the phenomenon of political corruption in the Spanish state. In order to feed the real estate industry and the big tourist businesses, a "friendly" policy was necessary for public officials, who belonged mainly to the big parties. These, in turn, demanded, both to finance their organizations and to carry a luxury life train, the corresponding illegal commissions or favors of all types of real estate, financial entities and other economic actors. All this has caused that the representative function of the State was seen by the political class as a profession that gave right to squeeze the budgets of municipalities and state for personal enrichment itself, with almost no limits. So it is that the president of the government (of the Popular Party, conservative) has had to testify before the courts as a witness to these ubiquitous plots of corruption that would have affected the financing of his own organization.

Following the eruption of a strong cycle of popular struggles initiated on May 15, 2011 (the so-called 15-M), which indicated strong resistance to the social cuts imposed by Europe, and expressed for the first time coherent criticisms of the political architecture of the "regime of 78", the government was implemented increasingly repressive measures, such as the approval of the so-called "Gag Law", against more frequent activities in popular protests, reform of the Penal Code, or imprisonment and prosecution hundreds of trade union activists and social movements. Finally, this cycle of struggles, already in full reflux phase, was channeled into the electoral leadership, both by sectors of the previous left and by activists of the movements, through the creation of the Partido Podemos political party, as well as other related, regional spaces or municipal elections, which achieved some limited electoral success, while emptying the streets. We can, in turn, and until the last weeks, has been having an increasingly normalizing evolution within the political class of the regime, within which would accept a subordinate role, abandoning the criticism to the Transition (to put a and many demands that were fundamental keys of the 15m Movement, as well as tending to an increasingly hierarchical and monolithic internal organization.

It is here that we find the genesis of the enormous expansion of independence, or of the defense of the right to decide (not exactly the same, the first openly defend independence, the second only the need for a referendum on the subject) in Catalonia. Within the framework of the authoritarian drift of the last decade in the Spanish State, two powerful events took place in Catalonia: the rejection by the Spanish Constitutional Court, at the request of the Popular Party, of a draft Regional Statute approved by the Catalan courts, and by a referendum on citizenship; and the enormous power of the 15M movement, which came to besiege the Catalan Parliament, creating an enormous sense of danger in the local political class.

From there, two parallel processes that lead to the current situation unfold: the independentista movement, until then quite frankly minority, is becoming massive, and expanding between the popular classes and the social movements, before the failure to bring about effective changes of the 15m cycle; and a very important part of the political class (including the bourgeois regionalist forces that had historically underpinned the regime of 78, through its pacts with central governments) bet on the sovereignty process, given the impossibility of interlocution with the central government and the strong pressure that suffers from its bases.

Hence the strong ambiguity and ambivalence of the so-called "process" of independence: together with the power of the popular network formed by organizations for the right to decide or for independence, which embraces people from all social sectors, and in which it has a strong presence a parliamentary party, but declared anti-capitalist, such as CUP (Popular Unity Candidatures); we find that the direction of the process (still under enormous pressure from below) is in the hands of elements of the political class linked to the traditional Catalan bourgeoisie, who have repeatedly shown their neoliberal soul and their will to reach a negotiated agreement with the State Spanish (which essentially remains totally deaf to its offers). This ambivalence is expressed, for example, in the Law of Transiency approved by the Parliament of Catalonia next to the call of the referendum, which would accompany an eventual declaration of independence, which establishes a regime strongly presidentialist, and with no appreciable social content, for the interregnum of the Transition to the new Catalan State.

Faced with this growing powder, after the call for referendum by the Catalan regional government unilaterally, the Spanish government has responded with a huge wave of repression: arrests of political leaders, searches and seizures to get the material that could be used to celebrate the referendum (such as ballot papers or ballot boxes), the transfer of thousands of police and civil guards to Catalonia, the opening of criminal proceedings against more than 700 mayors for crimes they have not yet committed (to help with the referendum) and, above all, the application, in possible fraud of the law, of a policy designed to maintain budgetary stability to meet the requirements of the EU, to take economic control of the Generalitat of Catalonia. That is to say, application of the measures that allow the constitutional state of exception (including the placement of the Catalan autonomous police under the orders of a single command appointed by Madrid), without declaring legally such a state of emergency.

The response of the Catalan population to this merciless repressive wave has been to leave massively to the streets. Universities and schools have stopped classes, demonstrations have taken place, combative unions point to the possibility of calling a general strike after the referendum, dockers at the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona refuse to operate in support of ships in which come thousands of police every day. The conflict, in all its extension, is served.

Before him, social and popular movements could pose a number of key issues:

In the first place, it is illusory to think that the authoritarian and repressive drift of the Spanish State will only be maintained within the borders of Catalonia or will be linked only to the repression of independence. We are facing a strong "erdoganización" of the government Rajoy. The "Regime of 78", harassed, takes up in depth its strong Francoist heritage. It is clear that the entire ruling class (from the economic oligarchy, the political class and the judiciary, or even its cultural "mariachis") see the repressive escalation as legitimate, and the appeals to democracy of the Catalan population as an extremist slogan. The drive to a dictatorship not declared as such, with a strong component of exception and loss of civil rights, is increasingly accused throughout the State.

Secondly, much of the power of Catalan independence comes from its discursive capacity to generate the greater process of delegitimization of the "Regime of 78" in the last 40 years. Moreover, criticism of this regime has even become a reiterated mantra of the Catalan political class. Like We can abandon the anti-regime discourse to dedicate itself to other things, Catalanism does not stop to recover it. To recover it, in addition, affirming against him another motto endowed with a strong emotionality: the Republic. It matters little whether Catalan or Spanish, the fact is that the slogan of the Republic has specific components in the Iberian peninsula, which go beyond the institution of the Head of State. The Spanish republican regimes that have been in history gave rise to profound revolutionary processes and were drowned in blood by the oligarchy. It is a myth of difficult translation abroad, but with a clear power. "Rajoy or Republic", the last slogan of the Catalan independence, expresses definitively that what is at stake is the democracy before the dictatorship, the popular cravings of participation, against the traditional guardianship of the oligarchic sectors on the Spanish society.

This has implications for a consequent anti-capitalism: obviously a republic (whether Spanish or Catalan) is not necessarily an anti-capitalist regime or even advanced from the social point of view. But it is also true that in the power vacuum and the instability of the consolidation of the new regime, the popular movements could have possibilities of intervention and progress, if they are organized and are able to converge around common demands.

In third place. The popular movements have to have a territorial proposal for the Iberian peninsula. Territorial tensions are enormous in the Spanish state and not having a discourse on them, or resorting to the simplistic and primary visions, leaves the movements out of the political game.

This territorial proposal must combine two parallel concepts: respect for the right to decide of the people and the widest democracy, and the defense of a federal or confederal Iberian perspective that emphasizes the ties of solidarity and common work among the popular classes, in the search for a proper and autonomous discursive framework for them. The dialectic of free association must replace the dialectic of states and that of centralist imposition. The recovery of the federalist, municipalist and socialist discourse of republicanism and the libertarian movement prior to the Civil War is a necessity of the day.

In the fourth and last place: in the absence of a regionalist solution negotiated between the Catalan and Spanish political classes (an eventuality that can not be totally discarded for the post-referendum situation), the alternative that is currently being raised in the Spanish State is the following: authoritarian derivation of the "Regime of 78" or democratic deepening. The Social Revolution, at the moment, is out of the discussion and popular demands. However, the beginning of a new cycle of popular struggles through a process of democratic openness may favor the reinforcement and organization of working class organizations if it is used by it to establish its own claims and make them appear in the light of the day.

In the alternative "Regime of the 78th Republic", or "Authoritarianism or Democracy", which expresses much of the current struggles (including Catalan), the defense of civil rights, solidarity against repression, and "Right to decide" all aspects of social life (also the labor and economic) can open roads for popular empowerment.

José Luis Carretero Miramar.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30530

The PDdeCat (bourgeois nationalists & leading party of the Generalitat coalition) have just announced that there will be no unilateral declaration of independence, regardless of the result of the referendum... thus leaving their leftist allies of the CUP in the lurch... what was bound to happen sooner or later has happened sooner.

On a side note, it's quite surprising (though unfortunately not altogether unexpected) to see some of the anarchist (?) posters here resorting uncritically to the current neo-populist jargon, Gramscian "cultural hegemony" included. Call me old-fashioned, but in this phenomenon I see ample confirmation of the Marxian statement "dominant ideas are the ideas of the dominant class" (especially where the form of these ideas is concerned... since the content is subordinated to the latter)

Apparently residents bang their pots and pans every night at 10pm. Not sure Madrid will hear it lol.

From the Spanish wikipedia:

So, 'anarchosyndicalism' supports the struggle of "people's" and provides 'libertarian' cannon-fodder until the nationalist gangs at the forefront of the struggle for liberation give them the boot. Then it struggles against the new State... Great... Carry on liberating...

If you don't fight your neighbours struggles don't expect they'll ever consider yours. This time is a big thing, Spanish govt has made a situation not easy to turn it back. Catalonia is broken. Do you ask us not to participate in that according to some fucked-up internationalist principles? If we are federalists it is because we believe in the right for the 'free association', which means that a part of the whole may decide to break up with the rest.

All this situation may lead to a new state? Well, its doubtable Catalonia would proclaim the independence on Monday. However we enter in a situation of ingobernability in which two elites are fighting each other and two legalities compete to impose. We, as a part of the 'social front' (with other communists, autonomous, trots, catalan leftists, social movements) must be there to impose a social agenda and to contribute to spread this ingobernability. By the way, we have a general strike on the 3rd Oct. Unis are on strike, port-workers tomorrow, firemen will protect voting, peasants will block roads, even catalan police is doubting what to do...

I'm waiting to hear you get a revolutionary situation in your own country to give us some lessons about how to do stuff.

Instead of yet more speculation about el sexo de los angeles, just one tweet from the Barcelona CNT port workers:

« Que nadie confunda nuestra motivación: nosotros somos trabajadores. Esa es nuestra única bandera, nuestro único orgullo. »

“May no-one confound our motivation – we are workers. This is our only flag, our only pride.”

So Spain is now claimed to be in "a revolutionary situation"??

The spirit of working class internationalism used to know no borders nor hierarchy - but now, apparently, it does. And we, in "our own" non-'revolutionary' countries are way down the pecking order and therefore have no "freedom of expression" to qualify us to comment.

yeah, the spirit of working class movement is internationalism but you already live in one country with borders, and this is true in the same way that red wine is red.
Spain not claim a revolutionary situation, so we wait for the revolution to appear at the door of the house? or rather are we the ones who have to push and create a revolutionary situation?

How do you create a 'revolutionary situation' without attacking the local bourgeosie (in fact supporting it and 'your' police)? This is the very blueprint of what some used to call, back in the Dark Ages, a 'political revolution' as opposed to a 'social revolution' (which is an attack on existing social relations, not just political ones.

The biggest idelogical swindle of all surrounding this movement is that, once independence is achieved, the waters of the Red Sea will magically open, and we will all be led to the Promised Land (as if, in the event, NATO and the EU would just idly stand by...)

I think we have to bear in mind that Scottish independence went from being a non-issue to a near-reality as a result of the referendum campaign. The pro-independence side in Catalonia would stand a good chance of boosting their vote were a legal referendum called. As you say in another post, the centrality of Catalonia to Spain's economic well-being is such that the stakes are considerably higher. So it's understandable why the Spanish govt won't countenance it. Added to this the fact that the PP presides over a vulnerable, unpopular govt that is rotten to the core. Although the hugely disproportionate repressive measures and mobilisation of Spanish nationalism look to be, on the face of it, designed to increase support for independence in Catalonia, it's also hard to imagine the Spanish right responding differently. Making the 'unity of Spain' the key political issue in the territory could play well for a party that offers fuck all else, particularly if, as seems likely, the crisis forces another general election soon.

Like others, I'm disappointed by the statement of the regional CNT and its defenders on this forum. It's not a question of recommending passivity, but of hoping to see a clear and unambiguous voiced raised in defence of working-class internationalism that denounces the machinations and repressive machinery of both the Catalan and Spanish ruling class.

These are the same dockworkers who used their power as workers to prevent police from docking in the port of Barcelona, despite heavy threats and intimidations from the police,

In other words, sellouts. They should probably be reading Libcom so they can learn what to do.

Anyone one here criticised the dockers? Must have missed that

http://lasoli.cnt.cat/22/09/2017/comunicat-cnt-catalana-favor-dret-dauto... /
As anarcho-syndicalists, we don’t think that political reforms within a capitalist framework can reflect our desire for social transformation,a change that would place production and consumption means in workers’ hands. Because of this, our daily struggles do not focus on creating new states or backing parliamentary initiatives.
However, we can’t look the other way when regular people are being attacked and repressed by any state. A state that has, in this case, removed its mask and revealed itself as an authoritarian rule, the true heir of the Franco regime. This is something that could be glimpsed before through many instances, such as labour law reforms, bank bail-outs, cuts on health and education, mass evictions of out-of-work families…many of which were implemented by the Catalan government itself.
CNT Catalonia and the Balearic greet this spirit of disobedience against a dictatorial state, a discriminatory and fascist state, and want to assert our strongest denunciation of repression against workers and of those who carry it out.
The men and women in CNT will stand as one to defend their neighbours and townsfolks, as couldn´t be otherwise with an anarcho-syndicalist, and henceforth revolutionary, organisation.
------------------------------------

Damn anarcho-syndicalist who want to make the social revolution

I don't think anyone here has a problem with class struggle against state repression, but voicing support for self-determination, which is a bourgeois political cause, strikes me as opportunism.

The blooming of class consciousness is hampered by nationalism. Why can't the CNT direct its resources to warn proletarians about the dead-end of nationalism? Why not distribute pamphlets articulating an anti-nationalist/internationalist perspective?

"CNT Catalonia and the Balearic greet this spirit of disobedience against a dictatorial state, a discriminatory and fascist state, and want to assert our strongest denunciation of repression against workers and of those who carry it out."

If the "spirit of disobedience" is a nationalist spirit, then it's not worth "greeting". It will deflect the class anger, generated by years of austerity and falling living standards, away from the class terrain, and towards the terrain of bourgeois politics, constitutional matters, nationalism, etc.

Ragnar, the problem relates to the opening sentence, the one you have cut from your citation:
Els Sindicats de la CNT de Catalunya i Balears volem fer públic el nostre posicionament a favor de l’autodeterminació del poble català.
The unions of the CNT in Catalonia and the Balearic isles wish to make public our position in favour of the self-determination of the Catalan people.

What are people's views on the call for a general strike? After all it's a more important issue than the wording of a statement.

Craftwork:

Most better, they call to General Strike! against repression, fundamental civil rights, against anti-worker policies.

The CGT, CNT, IAC, CSC and COS have formed a single and common strike committee
In an interview with a media outlet the CGT justified the strike in this regard:
https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/politica/cgt-huelga-general-independ...

Not only is no one criticising the dockworkers, but there is no reason to do so (unless we were to scold them for not calling for a social revolution which is clearly not on the cards - more's the pity). That is a million miles away from the phony militant propaganda which pretends that a social revolution would be just round the corner as soon as independence is achieved. The dockworkers made it crystal clear that they considered their decision to wihthold any servicing from the docked riot police a matter of civil rights, which are indeed being trampled on by the Spanish government. That is roughly where several local and nationwide "reformist" (maintain or remove quotation marks at will) forces of the Left (though not the Socialist Party) stand on the entire issue (not to mention a sizeable chunk of the Catalan and Spanish public), and, of course, they get a great deal of flak for it from both sides (slightly more from the pro-government forces right now, though).

It's one thing to understand the anger and indignation of people who rightfully consider that their rights are being trodden down (though they forget that the nationalists have stepped all over their own legislation in order to "organise" the referendum) as well as their desire to take to the streets against oppression, and quite another to validate the ideological garbage being spread around to make those actions seem like what they are very far from being, namely, some sort of warm-up for a coming social revolution, which unfortunately, we are still far from in this Peninsula.

Danny I cut that precisely because it seems that the grain does not let you see the straw. do you know wanna mean?

A report on the formation of neighbourhood defence committees:

Los “comités de defensa” por barrios para boicotear a la Policía se extienden por Cataluña

The passage above describes two defence committees being formed independently and without initially being aware of each other's existence in the Barcelona district of Gracia, the first only rejecting the actions of the state to stop the referendum and the second calling directly for a yes vote.

Asamblea del “Comitè de Defensa del Referèndum de Gràcia”

The criticism is directed towards the entire CNT, even though eg the decision to participate in the general strike on October 3 was made by agreement of all the CNT branches in Catalonia. Nobody is giving them orders, and nobody is checking their work to see if it matches up.

Instead of "distributing leaflets warning workers about the dangers of nationalism", they are organizing for a general strike. The gulf in imagination between internet overseers and those who are actually organizing is amazing.

Are they? I didn't know the Coordinadora de Estibadores Portuarios de Barcelona (Barcelona Dockworkers Organisation) -and other towns, by the way- and the "Barcelona CNT port workers" were the same thing. Let me guess: the CNT sorely wishes they were, whilst the CEPB people couldn't care less about the CNT, its statements or any of its squabbles, be they internal or external...

Just to clarify about the dockworkers as there seems to be some confusion about who is who, on Spanish social media as well as on here. Different groups of workers in the port of Barcelona have different employers and are in different unions. Coordinadora represents the 'estibadores', the workers who load and unload ships. In some ports other unions have more of a presence but in Barcelona they're overwhelmingly Coordinadora. It was Coordinadora who voted to refuse to supply the cruise ships providing accommodation for police. This was a mainly symbolic gesture, though one worth making. It just means that the police have to make trips to the supermarket for supplies like anyone else. The vote to boycott the police ships was unanimous but as far as I know Coordinadora haven't taken a position on the referendum itself.

The CNT represents a majority of the linesmen ('amarradores') in the port. These are a small group of workers responsible for mooring and casting off ships. Their wages and conditions are different to the 'estibadores' and they earn a lot less. Relations between the CNT and Coordinadora in the port seem pretty good. It probably helps that they represent different groups of workers and aren't really competing directly for members. I think the CGT has a majority of the people working on boats in the port - so the protests with tugs sounding their horns would probably be from CGT members. Again relations with the CNT and Coordinadora seem friendly enough.

https://mobile.twitter.com/CoordinadoraBCN/status/910814954814627841

https://mobile.twitter.com/CoordinadoraBCN/status/909744088051851270

https://mobile.twitter.com/PortuariosCNT

https://mobile.twitter.com/CgtMar

http://www.cgtcatalunya.cat/spip.php?article12615#.Wcvs9dHTWhA

Is a (call for, at this point) "general strike" in itself a good thing?