Catalonia: Roadblocks and a Mossos Union Accuses Torra

Catalonia: Roads Blocked, Judges Attacked and a Disavowed Government

A truck crawls through the blockade on the AP-7 at La Jonquera, cargo on board and the day lost. It is the scene repeated every time a group of protesters decides to block the main goods corridor between Spain and the rest of Europe. Since the 1-O verdict in October 2019, Catalonia has accumulated a sequence of mobilizations that are no longer read as a one-off outburst: road blockades, rallies outside courthouses and boycotts of political events that occur almost daily. The novelty is not the protest. The novelty is its conversion into routine.

The Trigger: The 1-O Verdict and an Autumn on the Streets

The Professional Association of the Magistracy denounced that the courts in Girona were attacked with bags of rubbish and paint thrown at the entrance. Hours earlier, groups of protesters had tried to boycott PSC events in Terrassa and Esparreguera, and, according to messages circulated, a shoe businessman was assaulted at the entrance to an event of the Princess of Girona Foundation. Meanwhile, the action called by Tsunami Democràtic at the Irun toll on the A-8 motorway generated queues of up to 11 kilometres, according to the Basque Government's Traffic Directorate.

The repertoire was repeated with few variations: burning of institutional photographs —with the pose included for social media—, road blockades and a staging that mixed political slogans and social media content. The bill for those days was not paid by the organizers. It was paid by those who had to get to work, those waiting for goods or those who simply wanted to get away for the long weekend.

In that climate, the attribution also circulated, never confirmed in the material handled, that certain individuals were behind the platform that coordinated those actions. The suspicion spread faster than any judicial resolution.

Why Does a Mossos Union Accuse Torra of Using the Force as a Political Weapon?

An independent union of the Mossos d'Esquadra sent a letter to the president of the Generalitat in which it reproached his lack of trust in the force and accused him of using it as a political weapon. The text asked that every injured officer be defended "with all available means" and warned that until then, no conversation would be possible. The letter came after days of riots in Barcelona with injured officers.

The discontent was not only rhetorical. In the AP-7 blockades in Girona, according to messages that circulated, reinforcement groups waited for the order to clear the road while political instructions did not arrive, and that delay became the focus of the reproach. The most repeated reading: if the investiture depended on the pro-independence parties, no one was going to authorize a charge under those conditions. The criticism was aimed at the Ministry of the Interior, accused of holding back riot police so as not to upset parliamentary partners.

The same day, in Barcelona, a circulated message claimed that a unit of the Guardia Urbana expressed internal rejection of intervening in the blockade on the Meridiana due to the risk of an open civil confrontation. The argument was uncomfortable: if the municipal police charged, the conflict would cease to be a public order problem and become a political dispute with neighbours facing off on the same pavement.

Below the surface, messages circulated that would later become known. In a chat of local police officers in Cancelar, comments appeared calling for forceful means and wishing for an unqualified response against the protests; those who spread them presented them as a sample of a climate of extreme tension within the forces. Some also claimed that internal disciplinary proceedings were peine against officers, something they read as a witch hunt against non-pro-independence profiles.

Who Pays for the Blockade of Catalan Roads?

The blockade does not only cut streets: it cuts corridors. And there, numbers weigh more than slogans. The AP-7 is the main exit towards central Europe and France, but not the only one; the N-II, with single-lane sections in each direction, and the passes of Puigcerdà-Bourg-Madame, Andorra-Pas de la Casa and the Vall d'Aran-Melles have sections that do not admit heavy transport until they link up with the French motorway. Translated: when the blockade is installed, there is no real plan B for thousands of trucks.

The blockades multiplied. The Meridiana was interrupted and complicated the commute for thousands of people, while Societat Civil Catalana announced blockades in the Vallvidrera tunnels in response. In the centre of Barcelona, Passeig de Gràcia was closed to traffic and could only be crossed perpendicularly, with a Guardia Urbana vehicle at each crossing. The account of those who saw it live described a city split in two by controls on every corner.

The economic consequence is not a headline, it is a sum of daily costs: delayed deliveries, lost driver hours, perishable goods and a logistics fruta that deteriorates every time a corridor becomes a protest scene. In the case of vehicles towed across the border, a calculation that circulated among those who trinc those days put the cost of recovering the car at 700 euros.

The International Narrative and the Video That Was from South Korea

The strategy of taking the conflict to international media has its own bill. A news agency published the headline of an imprisoned leader warning that the sentence could incivil dissent, a framing that annoyed in Spain and fuelled in Catalonia the idea that the world is watching. The problem is that the world watches with less attention than assumed.

The circulation of misattributed videos was the other side. A clip presented as German police intervention at a demonstration turned out, according to those who debunked it, to be a South Korean police training exercise dating back several years. The detail explains why propaganda from both sides collapses easily when someone does a reverse search.

The most shared analysis pointed to a fundamental misdiagnosis: for years it was assumed that international pressure would force mediation and that showing injuries and arrests would be enough for third countries to intervene. When that did not happen, internationalization ceased to be a lever and remained a communication line. The black swan theory —an unforeseen event capable of reopening the process— replaced any roadmap.

From 10-N to Lockdown: The Standoff Ran Out of Fuel

The November 2019 election reshuffled the board. Some read the result as a punishment for pro-independence movement; others, as proof that the bloc had not moved. The truth is that parliamentary arithmetic left governability in the hands of Catalan parties, with the paradox that the street was pressuring the same government on which the investiture depended.

Then came something no one had foreseen: the first wave of elbichito-19. The lockdown emptied the streets and left the issue without activity for months. When the pulse was recovered, the agenda had changed. There was talk of the release from prison of the jailed leaders —four months after the sentence, according to one of the most repeated readings— and of the Generalitat's decision that made it possible. The accusation of turning Justice into a farce circulated without anyone refuting it with data.

With the pandemic as a backdrop, the protest lost its function of immediate pressure. There was no longer an investiture to condition in the same way nor elections in sight. The repertoire continued to exist, but the sense of urgency faded.

Is the Protest Fading or Just Changing Shape?

It depends on who you ask. Some argue that the pro-independence mobilization has become a very active minority —a handful of people making a lot of noise, in the most repeated formulation— and that cold or rain is enough to reduce it. Others respond that measuring the conflict by attendance at an event is a methodological error, because the ability to block a road does not depend on numbers, but on the willingness to do so.

Internal frictions gave ammunition to the first thesis. The leader of ERC would have asked the organizers not to interrupt his party's central event, according to information disseminated, with the warning that his children would attend. The request, in the form of a plea, was read as a confession of impotence: someone who for years legitimized street pressure ended up asking his own for a truce.

At the other extreme, statewide parties made their own reading of police inaction and the blockades, convinced that each blockade brought them votes. And new fronts appeared: the legal debate on how to charge those who did not materially carry out the acts, and the forecast that the next mass rallies will not be pro-independence, but of other discontented groups.

The uncomfortable data remains, that of the counter. The large constitutionalist demonstration of that November was estimated at 80,000 attendees and, according to the arithmetic that circulated, that figure becomes 160,000 or halves depending on who holds the counter and which way the wind blows. With that method of measurement, any balance fits and no standoff is ever closed. It is, probably, the best description of the matter: a conflict that no one wins, that no one fully convenes and that no one ever calls off.