I also want a state for Catalonia – Jo també vull un estat propi per a Catalunya

Today, thousands of Catalan bloggers across the world will unite under a common message: “Jo també vull un estat propi”, I also want a state for Catalonia.

For almost two centuries, Catalonia has tried to establish a fair settlement with Spain. There have been numerous parties that believed that Spain could accommodate us. They tried to negotiate, to dialog, to compromise, to pact. They all have failed.

Spain will never accept our culture, language and sense of identity. We, if we want to survive as a nation, have to pursue the independence option: we need to have our own state and be a free nation in the European Union.

The campaign was started by Xavier Mir and there have been numerous adhesions of support. Tonight sees the start of the campaign.
We are just a week away of commemorating our National Day. 11 of September 1714 is the day when the city of Barcelona fell to the Spanish troops supporting the Borbons. They proceeded to suppress our national institutions of self-government and implementing their policy of cultural genocide and extermination of the Catalan nation. If you want to read more about Catalan history, I recommend you read Free Catalonia, select language (English, Spanish or Catalan) and go to the ‘Our history as a nation’ section.

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Catalan language and blogs

By the way, it is worth mentioning that according to this organisation, there are about 123,000 bloggers publishing in Catalan in the internet. That puts our language second in the blogosphere, behind English.

Some voices have questioned whether these numbers are accurate and if the algorithm used by this organisation is correct. Jokingly, some have gone as far as suggesting that the algorithm counts as Catalan all blogs published by our Spanish neighbours full of hatred and racism against us.

I have had a look at the methodology used and I have to say that the 3-word (trigram) algorithm used looks a bit dubious. Looking at the TextCat meta-file used, there seems to be many inaccuracies in the Catalan language text used to identify a published text as being written in Catalan.

I will keep an eye on this matter and advise of any developments.

In any case, blogging is a very popular activity and the internet is the only place where we can be a free nation, without being constantly attacked by Spain. Perhaps that’s why so many Catalans have taken to blogging in great numbers.