Spain's institutional hatred against all things Catalan

http://www.avui.cat/avui/diari/06/ago/23/245782.htm

The link above is from the Catalan newspaper Avui. I am sorry I don’t have a full translation in English but you can always try a Catalan-English e-translation in Translendium or a Catalan-Spanish e-translation in Softcatalà.

The article explains how the Speaker of the Spanish Parliament and its Registry department systematically refuse to accept any letter or documents written in Catalan or Basque. However, they are happy to accept and translate official documents in other languages like French or English.

Amazingly, the European parliament accepts correspondence written in Catalan. Yet, this is not possible in the so-called “plural” state of Spain.

Once again, irrefutable proof of the institutional hatred the Catalan nation has to suffer at the hands of Spain. How can anyone harbour any hopes of living in a multinational, multilingual Spain (like a Switzerland of the Mediterranean) when Spain's higher institutions of government, regardless of who is in power, have a systematic policy of persecution and obliteration of our language and culture?

Spain will never change. They want to exterminate any traces of national identity left in Catalonia as they have almost done in the rest of the Catalan-speaking areas, likeValencia or the Balearics. They are following the lead of France, whose successive governments have almost succeeded in eliminating the Catalan language in the counties north of the border.
We are next in Spain's policy of cultural genocide.

Will we ever have the guts to stand up and say ‘enough is enough’?

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Post published in the Racó Català: http://www.racocatala.cat/articles/11791

The Bottom Line

Nowadays, with the Middle East conflict in full swing again, one is overwhelmed by the scale of the horror unfolding in the region.

In the past, I had a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian people. Not any more I am afraid.

There is a fundamental difference between the Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims and the Israelis/Jews: the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) does not deliberately target civilians. Hamas and Hezbollah, on the other hand, do target Israeli civilians.

Muslim terrorists (whether Hamas, Hezbollah or Al-Qaida), train children to be suicide bombers, would-be martyrs of their cause. They even have set-up "Martyr schools" for that purpose.
The Israelis/Jews do not send suicide bombers to blow themselves up in a packed restaurant.

The Islamic terrorists are hell bent on destroying the Western world and anyone who is not a Muslim.
The Jews just want to be left alone in peace. They are the only true democracy in the region, and the only nation in the Middle East where women (whether Jew or Muslim) have equal rights.

More importantly, from a self-defence perspective if nothing else, the Jews will never send suicide bombers to the West to kill as many innocent civilians as possible.
The Islamist fanatics send commandos trained to cause as many civilian casualties as possible: New York, Madrid, London, Bali, Egypt, Mumbai, the list is endless.

That’s the bottom line: a group of people will not hesitate to kill me, to kill you, if given the chance. That’s why I could not care less anymore.

Down but not out

Well, there is no doubt about it. The votes have been counted and the ‘Yes’ camp has won. Convincingly. It doesn’t matter that half of the electorate did not bother to turn up and vote. If anything, it shows that only 50% of voters care about the nation/country/region/ they happen to live in.

We can argue endlessly about how the media is controlled by the Spanish Socialists; that the ‘No’ camp has not been given a chance to put their point across; we can argue about the betrayal of CiU and how they sold us to Spain; we can argue about PM Zapatero and how he and his party have lied to us and failed to keep their word… and so on. I could go on forever but it does not matter anymore. The watered-down Estatut has been approved, President Maragall (that egotistical, unreformed drunk) is not up for re-election and that the PSC (Catalan socialists) have been finally taken over, formally, by the PSOE (Spanish socialists). Their candidate at the next Catalan elections will be José Montilla, a Spanish socialist, former mayor of Cornellà, a non-descript suburb south of Barcelona. Many years ago, when I was still living in Catalonia, Cornellà de Llobregat had a thriving town centre, full of shops and life. Now, out-of-town shopping malls are everywhere, the city centre is a wasteland of empty streets and local businesses have all but disappeared. Cornellà could be like any UK High town: multinationals have driven local firms out of business, the High St a ghost of what it was. Sadly, perhaps this is what the Spanish socialists (PSC-PSOE) have now in mind for the rest of the country: squeeze small businesses out of the market, make sure people enjoy the same shopping experience as someone in Madrid or Sevilla, and remove any symbols of a separate local identity, be it in business and commerce, cultural, media or linguistically.

This is a sad state of affairs and no amount of political analysis will help to explain why we have voted for a new Estatut that consolidates our submission, politically, economically and culturally, to Spain.

Spain, slowly but surely, its getting is way after 300 years of oppression. The homeland is divided: País Valencia now a suburb of Madrid, its environment destroyed by overdeveloping, Spain is successfully making sure the local language disappears from even the rural areas, any sign of our shared heritage removed from the history books; then we have the Balearics, Mallorca being a little Britain or Germany colony, again the language being phased out of schools and public life; in Catalunya Nord (Rosselló, the northern counties ruled by France) the language has already all but disappeared, slain by centuries of French Jacobinism. Catalan heritage being now nothing more than a tourist attraction, a curiosity from history.

Is this the future that awaits Catalonia? I am afraid that is what our Spanish masters have in store for us. They will reduce us to a Gaudi-Picasso-Miró-Dalí theme park, a place where, in he past, annoying people insisted in being different, before finally realising their ways and giving up on such a futile battle. We will become, finally, after 300 years, just another province of Spain, just like Andalucia or La Rioja.

It would be too easy to blame Spain for our ills. They have been trying for centuries and they are only doing what is best for them. The problem lies clearly at our door. After centuries of institutionalised Spanish oppression, our ruling classes have become ever more coward and submissive. The migratory waves of the Franco years, and now the immigration from South America, Africa and Europe are taking its toll on the survival of the language and culture, the very thing that glues us together, that keeps the sense of nationhood and identity alive. Being a province of Spain, financially robbed, we do not have the resources to invest in ensuring the survival of our culture. And even when we can, like the recent local TV licensing rights, we choose to reward the powerful Spanish-speaking media groups.

Some people still think that Spain will one day change its ways and become like Canada, where the state looks after both Quebecois/French and English languages. They are deluding themselves, thinking that the enemy that has worked so hard for centuries to ensure that we cease to exist as people, suddenly will see the benefits of multi-lingual education and abandon its pursuit of a Spanish-only speaking Spain, erasing any sense of Basque or Catalan nationhood.

It is a difficult battle; our opponent is powerful and ruthless. They have had the upper hand for the best part of three centuries. We are now weakened, powerless, divided and poor after centuries of robbery.

There will be elections soon, I just hope that the only party that stands for us, the only party that defends our interests has a better polling and becomes crucial, again, to form government. The battle will be formidable: the big media groups will criminalise them, portray them as people unfit for office. The media onslaught will be formidable. But after centuries of persecution, oppression, civil wars, dictatorship, and cultural cleansing, we are still alive and kicking. We are down, badly, but we shall keep on fighting.

Catalonia: the stateless nation of the Mediterranean

I have just come back from a week’s holiday in Poland. What a beautiful country and how friendly its people are! During my holidays I have learnt more about the tragic history of Poland, and I have come to the conclusion that we (Catalonia) share with the Poles one unlucky fact: our neighbours have tried for centuries (and still continue to do so in our case) to wipe us off from the map and the history books.

This surely must the reason why Spaniards refer to Catalans as “polacos” (Polish) in their football stadiums and other public demonstrations? Yes, my dear readers. In case you are not aware, let me inform you about this particular facet of Spanish life.

If you attend a football game in many stadiums in Spain or watch on TV, you may identify the following chant:
“Es polaco el que no bote, eh, eh, eh!” (Jump if you are not a Pole). People jump vivaciously during this chant to prove that they are not ‘polacos’ which, bizarrely, is meant as if it were an insult.

Why they call us ‘polacos’ I never understood. Our language has no Slavic roots, neither there has never been any traceable migration movement between our two nations. (Excluding the fact that many [Sephardite] Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the period known as the Reconquista moved to Central Europe areas, including nowadays Poland and were victims of the Nazi Holocaust).

This week however, while visiting Poland and learning about its history, I understood why: Like Poland, our neighbours have tried to annihilate our culture, language and identity. For what Poland had to endure from Prussia/Germany and Russia during centuries, we have had to suffer from Spain and France. And, in my view, that’s why they call us ‘polacos’.

Let’s hope that when push comes to shove we get the same help from the international community as Poland did after WWII and one day we can be a free nation in Europe.

Estatut, Spain and the ceasefire

Well, surely nobody can complain about Spanish politics being boring?

Against the backdrop of a Catalan Estatut (an updated framework for a devolved Catalan administration) being chopped, curtailed and cut back to ridiculously embarrassing levels, ETA has announced a ceasefire. This has happened the very next day that the scaled-back Catalan Estatut was approved by the Spanish Parliament specially set up committee, prior to being sent to Parliament for a vote and then to be voted in a referendum in Catalonia.

Sadly, I have not had time to write about this humiliating "bending down" of “our” politicians of the PSC-PSOE, CiU and the neo-communists of IC-EV. Only one party has stood firm in defending the draft text approved by the four political parties representing 90% of the electorate. I wish that one day, ERC will become again the majority political party in Catalonia. It will take time, but it is inevitable.

In summary, what happened can be explained thus:

- The four main political parties in Catalonia, representing about 90% of the electorate (as ever, the right-wingers of the PP excluded themselves from this process) approved a draft text on 30 September 2005.

- Whatever the Spanish press says, this draft text is nothing more than an update of the 1979 Estatut (or Chapter of Autonomy). Needless to say, the Basques and the Navarrese have many more devolved powers, including fiscal policy. The draft approved by the Catalan Parliament on 30th September 2005 was nothing more than an overdue update of a text that has always fallen short of our aspirations.

- Because Spain is a pseudo-democracy, unable and unwilling to respect the will of its constituents nations and peoples, this text has to be approved by the Spanish Parliament in Madrid. With all the Spanish press against it, what should have been a mere administrative process (i.e: the Spanish parliament approves what has been approved by the Catalan representatives), turns out to be a trimming exercise. Right or left, the Spanish press has always provided a united front against any advancement, social or economical, of Catalonia. This created the context for the vengeful and antidemocratic amendment of the text approved in Barcelona.

- As ever, the Spaniards get more than a little hand from our worst enemies: ourselves and the cowards and traitors we elect. Once again, the so-called ‘moderate nationalists’ of CiU manoeuvred a secret pact in the back-room instead of presenting a united front with the other 2 parties. And I say 2, because the PSC-PSOE, the local branch of the Spanish Labour party, had already capitulated as soon as they were told off by their Spanish masters. Shame on them both. In Catalonia, over the last couple of centuries we have had our fair share of traitors and collaborationists; we even have our own word for this despicable scum: “botifler”. History is never kind to traitors. When history books are rewritten in a free Catalonia, we will refer to the scum that sold out to Spain as traitors, cowardly scumbags.

- To cut a long story short, the text that will be voted in a referendum is a joke. This is the kind of text that should have been approved in 1979, not in 2006. Yet, this shameful episode has shown up again how weak some of our compatriots are, and also how powerful is our enemy. They have everything going for them: they have the vast resources of the State, the media, the international alliances, the police, the military and the whole civil service. And if that was not enough, they also enjoy the help of some of our coward representatives.


With all this happening, ETA declares a “permanent ceasefire”. Once again, like in the late 1970s, the Basques play their own game and they don’t give two monkeys about us. Good luck to them, they deserve it. At least their politicians are not cowards who would sell their mothers for a handful of spare cash.

What will happen next is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: a prospective peace process will highlight the deficiencies of Spain’s democracy. Once again, the FT editorialist is spot on, if a bit conservative and prudent, as one would expect from such organ:
- It calls for the PP to stop acting like a neo-fascist party.
- It denounces the terrorist activities of the Spanish state in the 1980s and even now with the treatment of ETA prisoners contravening the Declaration of Human Rights.
- It points out to the fact that, unlike the UK, Spain is not prepare yet to concede ground on the issues of self-determination and territoriality.

And this last third point is in my view the biggest obstacle to a peaceful solution: until Spain does not amend its 1978 Constitution to bring it to the 21 Century there will be no solution to this conflict.

An international campaign should start to force the Spanish governement to drop Article 8 of the Constitution, which grants the Armed Forces the right to attach the people of the Basque Country and Catalonia.

I attach below the FT editorial from the 24th March 2006. Will Spain listen? I don’t hold my breadth….

Links:
http://www.gencat.net/nouestatut/cat/links.htm (the draft text approved on 30th September 2005, in Spanish, Catalan, Aranese, French and English, plus other documents in Catalan/Spanish)
http://www.estatuto.info (a pathetic web site set up by the local branch of the Spanish labour party, PSC-PSOE, trying to explain to Spain the Estatut. Funnily enough, the draft text approved on 30th September 2005 cannot be found now...)
http://www.esquerra.org (the only political party that defends our interests, both as a nation and with socially responsible policies)

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FT editorial – 24th March 2006.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/20e347d2-badc-11da-980d-0000779e2340.html

Beginning of the end

Today's permanent ceasefire declared by ETA, the Basque separatist group, is a real chance to take the gun out of Basque and Spanish politics once and for all. Delicate but hard-nosed management will be needed if it is to become the foundation stone of peace.
Radical Basque nationalism emerged as a response to Franco's vengeful dictatorship, which tried to obliterate Basque language and culture. The political challenge now is to understand why a violent independence movement has survived for 30 years under a democracy that has seen the unique Basque identity re-emerge triumphant - and thereby avoid the mistakes that have kept Eta in business.
Both big Spanish parties, the governing Socialists and opposition Popular party, have behaved irresponsibly in the past. During Felipe Gonzalez's premiership, the Socialists licensed death squads against the Eta milieu. Under José María Aznar's government, the right saw electoral profit in deliberately polarising Basque politics in order to boost votes elsewhere in Spain. Such tactics gave a morally bankrupt terrorist rump a new lease of life and a fig-leaf of legitimacy.
Against this background, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's prime minister, courageously offered Eta talks if they laid down their arms. He judged the moment well. After 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings, tolerance for terror as a tactic evaporated. The IRA gave up the armed struggle last summer and Eta was reeling from infiltration that has cost it 400 arrests.
Mr Zapatero has a mandate from parliament to pursue talks. But his anything but loyal opposition - still unreconciled to losing the 2004 elections - is conjuring up the spectre of Spain's disintegration, especially as this government is open to more home rule for both Catalans and Basques.
While Spain's asymmetric federalism does raise legitimate concerns, these are mostly to do with equity between rich and poor regions. The Popular party is playing a dangerous game of reviving the inflammatory political idiom of Francoism, of "the two Spains" and the civil war. If it cannot be bipartisan on a matter of state it should at least be responsible.
Difficult decisions lie ahead. If the ceasefire becomes a formal end to hostilities there will, for example, eventually have to be a phased release of Eta prisoners in Spain and France. That will enrage the opposition and families of Eta victims. Mr Zapatero cannot constitutionally offer a democratic route to Basque secession, moreover, in the way that Tony Blair could hold out to Irish republicans the eventual prospect of an Ireland united by democratic consent.
The most plausible way forward is through expanded powers of self-government that would probably satisfy most Basques. Those who will only be satisfied by independence must have the right to pursue it - but only by peaceful and democratic means.
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Another publication reveals the truth about latent fascism of the Spanish Conservative party

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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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)

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)