The courage of ordinary, honest people in the face of a serious attack on democracy in Spain

When studying the history of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, it is natural that a question arises that does not have an easy answer.

A call to action and hope at a very critical moment for Spain
Amnesty, the greatest act of corruption in the entire history of democracy in Spain

That question is: How could millions of good people consent to something like this, why didn't they rebel? It's not hard to come up with an answer when we think of the groups of criminals who used violence to seize power in countries like Russia in 1917 or Germany in 1933. The tyrants and their henchmen knew that fear would first and foremost grip those who had a family to protect, those who were afraid of what might happen to their loved ones if the barbaric Nazis or the barbaric Communists decided to retaliate against any attempt at resistance.

That's why all aspiring tyrants use fear as their first weapon. They know they don't need to resort to physical violence: the mere threat of it keeps many people who love freedom silent and offer no resistance. And that's why the courage of those who risked their lives to confront these criminals, sometimes knowing they had little or no chance of success, is especially admirable.

If we should learn anything from history, it's that those of us who love freedom must resist attempts to impose tyranny while they are still in their infancy, when those who aspire to demolish democracy and trample on freedoms have not yet displayed their full strength, which is when most ordinary people have the best chance of stopping totalitarians.

Currently, Spain is suffering a serious attack on democracy by the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez, a government besieged by corruption scandals and which is undermining the rule of law with attacks on judicial independence and an amnesty that grants criminal privileges to criminals in exchange for their political support: a clear abuse of power that constitutes one of the biggest cases of corruption in the entire democratic history of Spain. Now is the time to resist with all our might, without waiting until it's too late.

Yesterday, despite the intense heat in Madrid, a crowd of judges and prosecutors demonstrated in front of the Supreme Court in defense of judicial independence against the attack by Pedro Sánchez's government, an attack that seeks to prevent further investigations into corruption cases affecting the Socialists. Many citizens supported judges and prosecutors in that protest, whose motto was: "Without the rule of law there is no democracy."

The judges, prosecutors, and other citizens who demonstrated yesterday are a magnificent example of the courage of ordinary, honest people when they decide to raise their voices and resist an attack on democracy. As has happened before, the government and its propagandists have not skimped on hoaxes, pressure, and threats against these honest people, in an attempt to intimidate and silence them, so that they stop resisting this latest attempt by the socialists to undermine one of the pillars of our democracy: the separation of powers.

Whatever your ideology, your religious beliefs or your opinions, those brave people who demonstrated yesterday deserve the full support of the ordinary, honest people of Spain, because with the protests they are holding and the judicial strike they are preparing for July 1, 2 and 3, they are not looking out for personal interests: they are defending the dam that protects us all from abuses of power, a dam that is the line that separates freedom from tyranny.

As the famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke, which appears on the front page of this blog, states, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." That is what socialists expect us to do: nothing. They want us to keep quiet, to bow our heads, and to look the other way while they dismantle our democracy. Let us not allow it. There are more of us than they are, and our motivation is more powerful: we are defending our freedom.

---

Main photo: Europa Press.