Another publication, Eurotribune.net has published an editorial attacking the “revisionism” of the Spanish Partido Popular.
It is good to see that more and more people are finally becoming aware of the fascist threat represented by the Spanish Conservative party. Another respected publication telling it just like it is: the Spanish Conservatives are engaged in a campaign of hate against the people of Catalonia.
Our time will come and we will need all the help we can gather from our European neighbours and our friends around the world.
Links:
http://www.eurotribune.net (Catalan, English, French and Spanish).
The Franco’s language
The leader of the Spanish Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, affirmed yesterday with solemnity in Barcelona that "it is doing with the Castilian what at the time of Franco it was done with the Catalan". The affirmation done by Rajoy has been responded of forceful way by the totality of the Catalan political class: from Catalan prime minister, Josep Bargalló, who affirmed that "it was radically false" until the leader of the opposition, Artur Mas, that described as "disgusting" the attitude of the conservative. All it, a strategy that only goes directed to urge on the hatred of the Spanish State against Catalonia.In Catalonia, the two coofficial languages are the Castilian - being the only official language in all the Estate- and the Catalan of being the own language of the country, along with the aranese variant of the Occitan in the Valley of Aran.
In spite of being an imposed foreign language militarily, legally and politically, the Castilian in Catalonia never has been persecuted, on the contrary: the State has dictated more of a hundred of laws at democratic time where it eliminated and it vetoed the Catalan language in many legal scopes and public. Not for too many days, our readers will remember, we informed the arrest of a man by the Spanish police for the simple fact to speak their Catalan language (something too habitual in the Spanish police bodies). But it is not necessary know a lot of history to see like, indeed, the only language that still is persecuted in Europe continues being the Catalan, is only necessary to verify some aspects of the daily life in Barcelona: 99% of consumption products are labeled only and exclusively in the language of Franco; the immense majority of the press that is published and received in Catalonia is in the language of Franco; almost all the films project in the language of Franco; the justice administration practically only works in the language of Franco; the majority of the media are done in the language of Franco; in the Spanish Parliament just can be spoken the Franco’s language; the administrations of the State respond that "they do not understand" if does not go in the language of Franco and hundreds of legal normative dispositions could be enumerated that leave in clear disadvantage the Catalan language favoring the language of Franc.
To say that the Castilian in Catalonia is like the Catalan at the time of Franco is a revisionist attitude like which somebody try to do before the Nazi holocaust denying the barbarism of Hitler. These declarations leave to Mr. Rajoy in a stumbling block very difficult to leave to international level if it is not with a formal excuse. Europe would have to reprobate attitudes and declarations of these types and not only in these scopes. To force to rectify to Rajoy is not to put itself in favour of the Catalans, but on side to the truth.
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Wednesday 15 February 2006
Monday 13 February 2006
Madrid Against Spain
This is an article extracted from the Raco Català, a Catalan news and participation portal.
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Madrid Against Spain
Madrid has risen up in arms against the Spain of the Autonomies. How matters have changed, not in 25 years but in a century! When Angel Guimera won the elections to the Ateneu Barcelones in 1895, he spoke Catalan in public for the first time, provoking a scandal among the anti-Catalan members of the Ateneu. Anti-Catalanism, so much alive in Madrid and Valencia, has practically disappeared from Catalonia. Only a handful of reconverted Marxists, the most poisonous Jimenez Losantos who foams his daily racism from Cope radio in Madrid. Francesc de Carreras has the freedom of the Anti-Catalan press in Barcelona, but he keeps failing in his repeated attempts to create a pro Madrid party in Catalonia. Joan Maragall, secretary of the winning list, warned: "I will not read any Madrid paper nor any paper inspired in its outlook by Madrid. It is not necessary to read them, so insubstantial and ridiculous are they in their stereotypes the Madrid and pro Madrid press. The day Catalonia frees itself from the Madrid press (and the local press done in the same style) our intellectual independence will be complete and the rest does not matter because we shall be part of Europe."
Now that we are part of Europe, the civilised world looks with growing alarm at Madrid anti-Catalanism with its threats of a new coup d'Etat and the wild racism which is destroying in a few months all the good credit gained since the death of Franco. The PP has fallen to 4% in the Barcelona poll, the only Catalan region where they hold representation and will be eliminated by the 5% barrier. The fall into disrepute of the PP extends to the world at large which sees a neofascist party with a liberalism as fake as the one promoted by the Goebbels of the regime, Fraga Iribarne, founder of the PP. It is not just Jose Maria Aznar's moustache which looks like the Great Dictator, but the racism promoted by the PP, with yellow paint on Catalan stores in Madrid, boycott of Catalan products and support for a coup d'Etat. Lawyer Joan de Gispert says: "Once a week I travel to Valencia where I explain that Catalonia has suffered dozens of dead through huge Eta bombs without ever boycotting the Basques." Whereas the PP chiefs of Madrid and Valencia boycott us not because of terrorism but for the crime of freedom of speech. Freixenet has sold this Christmas 800,000 cava bottles less in the "National Zone", more than compensated by growth in Catalonia and the world. Shameful! Like the PP mayor of Salamanca Julian Lanzarote qualifying the papers stolen at gunpoint and being returned to Catalonia as "a plunder by blood and fire." Plunder of whom? Blood and fire to whom? A townsman from Salamanca murmured: "They are taking them abroad, I cry in shame."
The grandfather of Catalan president Pasqual Maragall couldn't be more outspoken: "The Flamenco Madrid insolence are backward steps of a decrepit race. Spanish thought is dead. Spain has no significance nor efficiency in the general movement of ideas in the civilised world. Madrid has realised that Catalonia has awoken with an European, living, spontaneous and young intellectual movement. Long Live Spain means that Spain should live, that its peoples arise and move forward, speak out and act for themselves, govern themselves and the country. Spain is not a holdall patriotism covering up all sorts of weakness and greed. They are the separatists. How can Spain move forward? Not dragging along through provincial byways with strongmen frozen like until now by the ties of uniformity which is against its nature, nor through the emptiness of aged parties nor in the corrupt air of a closed centralism. Instead it must progress open to the four winds of the seas surrounding Spain, in the freedom of its peoples. What will you do? Raise the army against us, against Spain?" Catalonia is recovering its place in the world, and the Salamanca papers, against the Spain of the PP.
Josep C. Vergés, 12.2.06
Links:
http://www.racocatala.com/articles/9995 (Original article in Catalan and English)
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Madrid Against Spain
Madrid has risen up in arms against the Spain of the Autonomies. How matters have changed, not in 25 years but in a century! When Angel Guimera won the elections to the Ateneu Barcelones in 1895, he spoke Catalan in public for the first time, provoking a scandal among the anti-Catalan members of the Ateneu. Anti-Catalanism, so much alive in Madrid and Valencia, has practically disappeared from Catalonia. Only a handful of reconverted Marxists, the most poisonous Jimenez Losantos who foams his daily racism from Cope radio in Madrid. Francesc de Carreras has the freedom of the Anti-Catalan press in Barcelona, but he keeps failing in his repeated attempts to create a pro Madrid party in Catalonia. Joan Maragall, secretary of the winning list, warned: "I will not read any Madrid paper nor any paper inspired in its outlook by Madrid. It is not necessary to read them, so insubstantial and ridiculous are they in their stereotypes the Madrid and pro Madrid press. The day Catalonia frees itself from the Madrid press (and the local press done in the same style) our intellectual independence will be complete and the rest does not matter because we shall be part of Europe."
Now that we are part of Europe, the civilised world looks with growing alarm at Madrid anti-Catalanism with its threats of a new coup d'Etat and the wild racism which is destroying in a few months all the good credit gained since the death of Franco. The PP has fallen to 4% in the Barcelona poll, the only Catalan region where they hold representation and will be eliminated by the 5% barrier. The fall into disrepute of the PP extends to the world at large which sees a neofascist party with a liberalism as fake as the one promoted by the Goebbels of the regime, Fraga Iribarne, founder of the PP. It is not just Jose Maria Aznar's moustache which looks like the Great Dictator, but the racism promoted by the PP, with yellow paint on Catalan stores in Madrid, boycott of Catalan products and support for a coup d'Etat. Lawyer Joan de Gispert says: "Once a week I travel to Valencia where I explain that Catalonia has suffered dozens of dead through huge Eta bombs without ever boycotting the Basques." Whereas the PP chiefs of Madrid and Valencia boycott us not because of terrorism but for the crime of freedom of speech. Freixenet has sold this Christmas 800,000 cava bottles less in the "National Zone", more than compensated by growth in Catalonia and the world. Shameful! Like the PP mayor of Salamanca Julian Lanzarote qualifying the papers stolen at gunpoint and being returned to Catalonia as "a plunder by blood and fire." Plunder of whom? Blood and fire to whom? A townsman from Salamanca murmured: "They are taking them abroad, I cry in shame."
The grandfather of Catalan president Pasqual Maragall couldn't be more outspoken: "The Flamenco Madrid insolence are backward steps of a decrepit race. Spanish thought is dead. Spain has no significance nor efficiency in the general movement of ideas in the civilised world. Madrid has realised that Catalonia has awoken with an European, living, spontaneous and young intellectual movement. Long Live Spain means that Spain should live, that its peoples arise and move forward, speak out and act for themselves, govern themselves and the country. Spain is not a holdall patriotism covering up all sorts of weakness and greed. They are the separatists. How can Spain move forward? Not dragging along through provincial byways with strongmen frozen like until now by the ties of uniformity which is against its nature, nor through the emptiness of aged parties nor in the corrupt air of a closed centralism. Instead it must progress open to the four winds of the seas surrounding Spain, in the freedom of its peoples. What will you do? Raise the army against us, against Spain?" Catalonia is recovering its place in the world, and the Salamanca papers, against the Spain of the PP.
Josep C. Vergés, 12.2.06
Links:
http://www.racocatala.com/articles/9995 (Original article in Catalan and English)
Saturday 4 February 2006
Freedom of expression: solidarity with Denmark
I am fed up with this story about the cartoons of Mohamed
First it is the cowardice of the British government to stand up for the right to freedom of expression and its pandering to the fanatics who gathered near the Danish embassy in London.
We also have the usual set of apologetics and the odious PC brigade, criticising those papers who published the cartoons. Shame on the BBC for not having the balls to show the cartoons, but give plenty of airtime to the criminals in London calling for jihad against Europe.
We now have seen what the Muslim reaction is: torching the Danish embassy in Damascus and ramsacking EU offices in Palestine. Well, I will never give any aid to any Palestinian or pro-arab organisation or charity in my life.
If we surrender on this issue, what will be next? Equality of men and women? Women’s right to have a job or to vote? Perhaps supermarkets will stop selling pork or alcohol in supermarkets as it offends Muslims?
There is one way to finish this stupid row: all European newspapers should stand up for our right to freedom of expression. They (newspaper editors) should get together and agree to publish the cartoons on the same day.
This would send a powerful message to the fanatics: we are not going to surrender our right to freedom of expression and would express solidarity with our Denmark and Norwegian neighbours.
Links to the cartoons:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698 (in English)
http://www.courrierinternational.com/dessins/galeriedessin.asp?dos_id=2295&provenance=europe (in French)
http://www.welt.de/data/2006/02/01/839671.html (in German)
First it is the cowardice of the British government to stand up for the right to freedom of expression and its pandering to the fanatics who gathered near the Danish embassy in London.
We also have the usual set of apologetics and the odious PC brigade, criticising those papers who published the cartoons. Shame on the BBC for not having the balls to show the cartoons, but give plenty of airtime to the criminals in London calling for jihad against Europe.
We now have seen what the Muslim reaction is: torching the Danish embassy in Damascus and ramsacking EU offices in Palestine. Well, I will never give any aid to any Palestinian or pro-arab organisation or charity in my life.
If we surrender on this issue, what will be next? Equality of men and women? Women’s right to have a job or to vote? Perhaps supermarkets will stop selling pork or alcohol in supermarkets as it offends Muslims?
There is one way to finish this stupid row: all European newspapers should stand up for our right to freedom of expression. They (newspaper editors) should get together and agree to publish the cartoons on the same day.
This would send a powerful message to the fanatics: we are not going to surrender our right to freedom of expression and would express solidarity with our Denmark and Norwegian neighbours.
Links to the cartoons:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698 (in English)
http://www.courrierinternational.com/dessins/galeriedessin.asp?dos_id=2295&provenance=europe (in French)
http://www.welt.de/data/2006/02/01/839671.html (in German)