Katalonien soll zur feministischen Republik werden – News vom 9. Oktober 2017

1. USA Today, eine der meistgelesenen Tageszeitungen der USA, berichtet über aktuelle Entwicklungen in Spanien:

"This referendum, and the possible independence of Catalonia, is a chance to break away from the status quo," said Marta, an engineering student. "In that sense, it’s a chance to break away from the patriarchal repression we’ve always known."

"If women are part of this reconstruction of a state, we can achieve more egalitarian change," added Laura, an organizer at her neighborhood’s feminist collective. "We’re not saying Catalonia is better than Spain. This is an opportunity to change things. And what happens here will reverberate throughout Spain."

Spain’s crackdown on the northeastern region's Oct. 1 referendum — in which at least 844 people were injured by baton-wielding and rubber bullet-firing Spanish police, as well as reports of sexual assault by these same security forces — has only confirmed what Marta, Laura and the throngs of young Catalans clamoring for independence already believed: that the current ruling order from Madrid is steeped in patriarchal violence.

That’s why they want to build a feminist republic.

Spearheading this drive for a free and feminist Catalan state is the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (Popular Unity Candidacy), or CUP — an extreme left, separatist party reviled by Spanish unionists and often viewed wearily by more moderate Catalans.

The CUP has seen a meteoric rise to power over the last decade, from grass-roots activism to securing 10 Catalan Parliament seats in 2015. It vows to build a "socialist, feminist and ecologically sustainable Catalan republic."

(...) "The Spanish state and all of its institutions are patriarchal, and they’re founded on the basis that men are positioned above women. And clearly, their security forces adopt that patriarchal mentality," said the CUP’s Clara Sanchez. "In a situation like (the referendum), where the Spanish state isn’t upholding human rights and its security forces are infringing on those rights, women are most vulnerable to aggression."

Patriarchy-fueled language far predates the referendum, however. In August, the CUP unveiled its final separatist campaign posters featuring an ostensibly working-class Catalan woman sweeping away overwhelmingly male representatives of Spanish power — church, crown and capitalist pursuit — with a broom, accompanied by the text, "Let’s sweep them away."

Last week, CUP lawmaker in Catalan Parliament Mireia Boya called Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy an "abuser" (the term inescapably carrying domestic violence connotations) who "wants to give us a beating."

(...) Independence, then, is a chance to start anew, free of an abusive relationship. "We’re not going to magically have a feminist republic by leaving Spain," said Laia Estrada, a CUP city councilmember in Tarragona, about 50 miles down the coast from Barcelona. "But here in Catalonia, we can work toward feminism; we can fight for it."

She defines a feminist republic as one "in which we put all of our efforts into ending the socialization of gender, where we share the workload, both productive and reproductive and redistribute wealth."

The sexual division of labor, where women are relegated to home and child care without any kind of remuneration, is one of the central issues facing Catalonia and Spain, she said.

The CUP’s feminism is intrinsically tied to its socialism. "We live in a patriarchal, capitalist system in which the accumulation of capital is at the heart of everything," said Sanchez. "The goal of feminism is to make life and people’s well-being the center of all policy."

In den deutschsprachigen Leitmedien konnte ich nichts über diese Bestrebungen finden. Man braucht inzwischen die amerikanische Presse, um darüber informiert zu sein.



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