Spain has been on a prolonged slide into facist tendecies. From making abortion practically illegal* over giving the Police force almost universal power against the average citizen to making it almost impossible to report on corruption in the government, the signs have been there for a while.
I have family living in spain and my boyfriend is spanish so for me none of this is that surprising. The spanish euducation system is pretty disastreous, especially on the islands and in rural areas.
I once watched 'Die Welle' (the wave) with him, wich is a film based on a book that explores how facism exploits group dynamics, by establishing an 'Us Vs. Them' mentality and plays into personal insecurities by giving people 'a place to belong' as long as they confirm. In the book, a teacher conducts an experiment with his class to show them these things and prove to them that very few of them would actually have stood up to the cruelty of the Nazis, so he recreates the pressures and bravado of facism within the classroom until the experiment gets out of hand and ends in bloodshed.
One of the first scenes shows the class rearranging their tables, that had been set up in little groups (a very typical german classroom layout, were students sit in little groups of six scattered about the classroom) into a more traditional front facing row layout. For someone with my cultural backround it's pretty clear symbolism for the totalian hierarchical struckture of facism.
My boyfriend just started laughing. When I aksed him why, he said: 'I've never sat any diffrent in school.'
As a german (specifically someone from west germany, east germany has it's own unique problems, compared to western germany, becasue of theri radically diffrent history) we covered the first as well as second world war and the seperation of germany, with all their causes and effects, in and out, several times.
The german education system is also very focused on breeding an environment of discussion, questioning and autonomus thinking, so for me it was pretty shocking to hear that my boyfriend hadn't even covered Franco in school. Instead they extensively covered the great achievements of columbus and spanish colonialism, with complete disregard for the spanish genocide of native americans. Safe to say they also never covered the atrocities of the spanish civil war.
They'd also never written a single essay. He had to completely relearn how to write essays for university.
Spain has a major problem with looking critically at their own history and their education system tends to breed ignogance and blind patriotism as opposed to critical thought.
The whole catalonia sytuation is a hot mess since the whole vote is illegal to begin with according to spanish constitution and would not have been legally binding, also the central government did everything in their power to get iin the way of the vote (even before sending the police in) so the vote would not even have been representative, because the catalonian administration did not have the recources to ensure and anonymous vote, or even that people wouldn't double vote.
The central governments retaliation aginst the local catalonian government has been completely out of proportion, possiby in an attempt to prevent a civil war based on an illegal referendum result.
What's happening in spain is scary, but it's not unexpected.
edit: trying to make abortion pratically illegal. I have to keep up better. Thanks Wright fo calling me out on it!
