Fascist impunity (II)
A family misses a flight from Girona airport after the Spanish Guardia Civil detains a woman for daring to speak Catalan. [link]
After over 30 years of so-called democracy the Spanish Policia Nacional and Guardia Civil still behave with total impunity criminalising Catalan-speakers and making their lives a misery. The Spanish State remains silent and continues its policy of complicity with these Fascist scumbags masquerading as police officers. They are never disciplined, let alone sacked as they would be in any advanced democracy in Europe.
If this kind of incidents were happening against any other community in the world, Amnesty International would get involved. Foreign correspondents would write about it.
But discrimination and police repression against Catalans is accepted. It has happened for centuries so what’s new?
Spain in 2010: court trial date set for daring to speak Catalan language with a Spanish police officer. Another example of the wonders of Spanish democracy. And then some wonder what the fuss is about….
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7 comments:
Oh, that's bad and you're right, it wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere. We're both going to be stuffed then, as we only speak english i una mica de catalan.
Well Jan, better be careful: exercising your democratic right of using Catalan language can earn you a detention in police cells and a 200 euros fine.
Link
Where are Amnesty International or SOS Racisme when it comes to criminalisation and persecution of Catalan people by the Spanish police?
This is what Catalan-speaking people have to put up with routinely: persecuted in their own homeland.
I never thought that lying in English would be as easy as lying in spanish and much more believable. Go on with articles like this.
Pepe: no lies here my friend, only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as reported by the few media that dare to highlight linguistic persecution of Catalan speakers.
I'm neither Spanish nor Catalan (American, in fact), but I'm no "impartial" observer either. Anyone who claims to be is either cynical or deluded.
That people can actually have to go to court for speaking their own language is redolent of the worst years of totalitarianism. No serious democracy would ever allow its authorities to get away with such an abuse.
If those who speak Catalan can fall victim to this kind of Fascist mentality, then Catalonia has one option: tell Spain to FOTRE EL CAMP! BON COLP DE FALC!
Michael: thanks for your comment, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Even in 2010, Catalan members of parliament are prohibited from speaking Catalan in the Spanish parliament and the Spanish State keeps blocking the adoption of Catalan as an official EU language despite being more widely spoken than many other languages already official.
It is this background of legalised prohibition that provides ideological cover for the hostility with which Spanish policemen (Polician Nacional and Guardia Civil) and other Spanish civil servants treat Catalan speakers in their own country.
Only by becoming an independent state will Catalan and Spanish language have legal parity.
And then all you lucky people living in Catalonia will start enjoying being able to invest, prioritise and manage your own infrastructure, taxation and expenditure instead of being second class citizens as part of Spain.
Sorry I forgot this link:
another example
I dare say that the vast majority of Spanish policemen and Guardia Civil have not learnt Catalan despite living in the country for decades and have no interest in doing so. I await with interest attendance figures for this courses... if they are ever set up.
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