Forty years after the fall of Spanish General Francisco Franco’s fascist regime, the streets of a major Western European city have once again been turned into a war zone. The world has looked on in shock and horror as riot police beat up peaceful protesters and forcibly repressed a vote on an independence referendum in Catalonia, Spain.

Madrid’s barbaric crackdown was not a legal action, but an act of terror against innocent people aimed at whipping an entire region of Spain into line. The crackdown, coming after weeks of threats and police operations launched by Madrid in Catalonia, is a political indictment not only of the ruling Partido Popular, but of the entire Spanish ruling elite and all of Spain’s main NATO allies.

While the IYSSE condemns the police crackdown in Catalonia, we also oppose the Catalan nationalists parties who seek to build a new capitalist state in Catalonia. The division of the Spanish working class by parties with a long record of supporting war and imposing austerity, offers workers nothing. On the contrary such a move would separate Catalan workers from their greatest ally against Madrid’s onslaught: the entire Spanish and European working class.

In opposition to the 21st century madhouse of the European Union, the working class must advance its own strategy: the development of a working class counter-offensive, mobilizing workers across national borders in a common struggle for socialism.

Join the IYSSE for a critical analysis of the events in Spain, the question of separatism, the global crisis of capitalism, and the way forward for the international working class.