Million-strong March in Spain

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arrested and in a number of cases, tortured and Killed.

Under the emergency powers the standard approach to any strike threat in recent months has been for the army to occupy the plant, as has been done recentv in oil installations and cement factories.

In the universities, especially in Bogota, these occupations have taken the form of full-scale army invasions. For most of the last two years the University of Bogota has been closed and many of its militant student leaders imprisoned.

This is Colombia's vaunted 'democratic system' . The mass of the working class and peasantry showed their contempt for it last year when in the municipal elections only 25% of those eligible bothered even to put their name on the voters' roll.

BOURGEOIS PARTIES Electoral politics in Colombia has for long been the almost exclusive preserve of two bourgeois parties-the Liberal and Conservative parties.

Aside from the traditional repression of political opposition, the parties have also tried to mainThe Diada, the traditional national day of Catalonia on September 11 was celebrated by huge demonstrations throughout the Catalan region culminating in a march of well over one million through Barcelona-one of the biggest demonstrations ever seen in Europe.

The demonstration leaves no doubt about the massive popular support in Catalonia for an end to che systematic repression of national rights which has been associated with the Francoist dictatorship.

Catalonia gained its limited statute of autonomy in 1932 after an overwhelming popular vote for autonomy in a referendum. The Stalinist and bourgeois alliance in the Generalitat (the name of the autonomous executive) played an important role in the political and ary workers and the left wing parties in Catalonia from 1937 to 1939.

The second most important bourgeois politician (after Luis Companys) in this counter-revolutionary alliance was called Josep Tarradellas. Since Companys' death in 1940 Taradellas has been the leader of the self-styled Generalitat in exile.

This old and discredited man is now once again being used by the forces of counter-revolution In Spain.

He has done a deal with the Francoist regime of Adolfo Suarez which would permit a re-establishment of the Generalitat of which Tarradellas would be president at the head of a list of bourgeois ministers (already leaked in the press).

Suarez' plan to implement this deal before September 11 proved impossible because of the opposition of the Socialist Party and Namarmint Dontri mamhare. of 'AUTONOMY' parliament elected on June 15.

Their opposition to the deal was not based on any shred of principle but simply on the fact that they opportunistically wanted their share of any power which Suarez was willing to devolve.

These manoeuvres between the Francoists in Madrid, the Catalan bourgeoisie and the reformists and Stalinists are all designed to prevent the exercise by the masses of Catalonia of any right to self-determination.

FRAUD Even more than in 1932, Catalan "autonomy' when it comes (as it probably will within a very short time) will be a fraud.

It will answer none of the problems of the Catalan working class; it will be an instrument designed to combat its demands more efficiently.

Revolutionaries in this situation must nut forward the democratic demand for self-determination but must reject all compromise with nationalism by fighting at the same time for democratic and transitional demands for the whole Spanish state.

Among these the demand for the dissolution of the repressive Francoist apparatus and the creation of workers self-defence organisations is of extreme importance, as September I1 also showed.

While the organisers of the march were congratulating themselves on its total success and peaceful nature, the armed police occupied large sectors of the centre of Barcelona.

While they did not attack the main body of the demonstration, on its edges they fired at demonstrators, injuring about 300 and killing at least one who had his brains blown out by a rubber bullet.