tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63381446927258044362024-03-06T02:29:11.672+01:00We want a Catalan StateThe Catalan People Call at Europe’s Door
On March 7th thousands of Catalans are to demonstrate in Brussels for their self-determination
From this blog we are working for the full consolidation and success in reaching our objective: travelling on March 7th to Brussels under the uniting cry of “We Want a Catalan State” to claim independence for our country.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-14743844715799570462009-03-06T03:44:00.005+01:002009-03-06T05:40:17.548+01:00Ireland, Cymru, Scotland, Canada and USA - Press Release<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUiOG_AYWAjXPLjd81Io2jbWYUAMzznLwJliRzB0-JlxrhW1ZUYrNLYhTZZUUN1EFye5Rq4sjgSjubNwT12R9L_xsPv7Mqgok6Z80uutI9pwsAuQejGBafAYGaynY48IEnfjcXgBl4DQ/s1600-h/deumil.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUiOG_AYWAjXPLjd81Io2jbWYUAMzznLwJliRzB0-JlxrhW1ZUYrNLYhTZZUUN1EFye5Rq4sjgSjubNwT12R9L_xsPv7Mqgok6Z80uutI9pwsAuQejGBafAYGaynY48IEnfjcXgBl4DQ/s320/deumil.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309901455584235106" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size:180%;">SINN FÉIN SUPPORTS THE 10MIL INITIATIVE</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">The Irish republican party has issued a statement of adherence to the Catalan cause which will bring 10.000 Catalans to Brussels on a mass demonstration for self-determination<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />5th March, 2009. Brussels<br />“On the occasion of the ‘10,000 Catalans in Brussels’ march, Sinn Féin once more sends its solidarity to the Catalan people.”<br /><br />Yesterday, members of various political European parties welcomed a delegation of the 10Mil to the European Parliament. Among others, Brian Carty, member of the Sinn Féin’s European Delegation attended the meeting and has confirmed he will join the demonstration on Saturday 7th March.<br /><br />“The EU must respect the right to self-determination everywhere, especially at home - and this includes the right of the Catalan people to exercise their right to self-determination,” declared a spokesman of Sinn Féin’s European department. He added: “The right of nations to decide their own future is a democratic imperative and this principle should equally apply to the nation of Catalonia.”<br /><br />10Mil is born out of Catalan civil society. Using Facebook as its platform, the initiative seeks to put the Catalan’s long-standing demand of self-determination on the international agenda. Comments on Professor Enric Canela’s blog, responding to one of his articles, led a social mass to join a group on Facebook.<br /><br />10Mil is not affiliated to any political party, and is a demonstration of the determination and desire of the Catalan people to pursue their right to have their nation officially recognised as an independent European state. Next Saturday, “10 thousand Catalans” from all walks of life will be marching on Brussels with one united voice and common call: "We want our own State. We want the Independence of Catalonia".<br /></div><br />**************************************************************************************<br /><br />1. The initiative originated from the citizens' replies that were sent in to an article written in Professor Enric I. Canela’s blog, (Head of Bio-Chemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona).<br /><br />2. An English dubbed interview with Enric I. Canela is available at: http://212.241.214.167/preview.php?userid=dX9nagRlYQ%3D%3D&iwid=cH5iYQFlbXU%3D<br /><br />3. The Official Facebook Group for the 10Mil can be found at: http://facebook.10mil.com<br /><br />4. Further info can be found at: http://catalanstate.blogspot.com/search/label/PRESS%20DOSSIER<br /><br />**************************************************************************************<br />Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require further information or would like to request an interview.<br /><br /><br />Kind Regards,<br /><br />Jordi Miquel<br />Press Relations<br />Jordi.Miquel@10mil.cat<br />www.deumil.catCritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05517573203208631816noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-69098542173595356942009-03-06T03:11:00.003+01:002009-03-06T03:17:54.720+01:00Press Release Uk<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVG7KxIW7TuxvX_mp7KTqWvf4jmo6p9s_2hY0KheXIwnPTck_CWBK5dQrdFC2o2DFtQMJ7pcuhuYmzE5ONnExdwdbMwJFSYJay55hlE9oOCI-eo9CB_RayVt-HLDuxh9aTTeAZgF_LIA/s1600-h/deumil.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVG7KxIW7TuxvX_mp7KTqWvf4jmo6p9s_2hY0KheXIwnPTck_CWBK5dQrdFC2o2DFtQMJ7pcuhuYmzE5ONnExdwdbMwJFSYJay55hlE9oOCI-eo9CB_RayVt-HLDuxh9aTTeAZgF_LIA/s320/deumil.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309892116893569218" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">FACEBOOK MOBILISES 10.000 CATALANS TO DEMONSTRATE IN BRUSSELS</span>
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<br /><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Arial;" lang="EN-GB">
<br />Comments on a blog and a later Facebook group propel initiative to march for Catalan self-determination.</span></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -18pt; margin-left: -18pt; text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center">
<br /><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" lang="EN-GB"><b style=""><o:p></o:p></b></span></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -18pt; margin-left: -18pt; text-align: center; line-height: 150%;" align="center"><u><span style="line-height: 150%;font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></o:p></span></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">5<sup>th</sup> <span style=""> </span>March, 2009. <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>.</span></u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">10Mil is an initiative created from the very social fabric of <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> using Facebook as its platform which seeks to put the Catalan’s long-standing demand for self-determination on the international agenda.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Comments on Professor Enric Canela’s blog, responding to one of his articles, led a social mass to join a group on Facebook<b>. </b>The movement has grown over the past 6 months, culminating in a demonstration which will take place in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Brussels</st1:place></st1:city> on the 7<sup>th</sup> of March. Organisers calculate that in excess of 4000 Catalans from all over Europe will join the march in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Brussels</st1:city></st1:place>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">10Mil is not affiliated to any political party, and is a demonstration of the determination and desire of the Catalan people to pursue their right to have their nation officially recognised as an independent European state. Next Saturday “10 thousand Catalans” from all walks of life will be marching on <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Brussels</st1:city></st1:place> with one united voice and common call: <i style="">"We want our own State. We want the <st1:city st="on">Independence</st1:city> of <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state></st1:place>".</i><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" lang="EN-GB">************************************************************************************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size:85%;"><u><span style=";font-family:Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Notes to Editors</span></u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">1. The initiative originated from the citizens' replies that were sent in to an article written in professor Enric I. Canela’s blog, (Head of Bio-Chemistry and Molecular Biology at the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename st="on">Barcelona</st1:placename></st1:place>).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">2. An English dubbed interview with Enric I. Canela is available at: <a href="http://212.241.214.167/preview.php?userid=dX9nagRlYQ%3D%3D&iwid=cH5iYQFlbXU%3D">http://212.241.214.167/preview.php?userid=dX9nagRlYQ%3D%3D&iwid=cH5iYQFlbXU%3D</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="">
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">3. The Official Facebook Group for the 10Mil can be found at: <b><a href="http://facebook.10mil.com/">http://facebook.10mil.com</a></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b><span style=";font-family:Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">4. Further info can be found at: <a href="http://catalanstate.blogspot.com/search/label/PRESS%20DOSSIER">http://catalanstate.blogspot.com/search/label/PRESS%20DOSSIER</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">***********************************************************************************************************************<span style=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require further information or would like to request an interview. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Thank you very much.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Kind Regards</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="mailto:anna.arque@yahoo.co.uk?subject=10Mil%20International%20Press">Jordi</a> Miquel<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">
<br /></st1:city></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Jordi.Miquel@10mil.cat</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:9;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.deumil.cat/">www.deumil.cat</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:9;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> Critichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05517573203208631816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-8777472679462573542009-03-04T11:02:00.003+01:002009-03-04T11:08:37.304+01:00Matthew Tree: a Londoner writing in Catalan speak about 10.000 to Brussels and Catalunya<span style="font-size:130%;">Matthew Tree: a Londoner writing in Catalan speak about 10.000 to Brussels and Catalunya</span><br /><br /><div align="justify"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHtFPSK0gHUzP05MAUnRqni4mZboOFKVq6gNtA1l3GvHdRTTeeMkQKsXjOs0tGwQmt3YOZuflJbmy5tUK4EFmdxedbBxhTAoXu1DFa2nNWQ0Rd1Uo06kcebbf_nXDM4GRts4GK4CQPCk8/s1600-h/WebCats-Matte.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309271855019985586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 106px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHtFPSK0gHUzP05MAUnRqni4mZboOFKVq6gNtA1l3GvHdRTTeeMkQKsXjOs0tGwQmt3YOZuflJbmy5tUK4EFmdxedbBxhTAoXu1DFa2nNWQ0Rd1Uo06kcebbf_nXDM4GRts4GK4CQPCk8/s400/WebCats-Matte.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><p></p><br /><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">Today we have invited Matthew Tree, a Londoner and author, to talk with us about Catalunya. Matthew writes in Catalan, and besides being very well known as a writer, he is as well, one of the very few opinionated people who speaks openly about the constant conflict that Catalans endure while under Spanish rule. He is well recognised by Catalan society as an individual who supports all cultural and social activities that aim to defend ,and enrich, the Catalan identity.</span></p></div><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span> </p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Select this </span><a href="http://212.241.214.167/preview.php?userid=dX9nagRlYQ%253D%253D&iwid=cQ%253D%253D"><span style="font-family:georgia;">link</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> to hear the interview</span></p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-29066254635310873562009-03-02T13:33:00.004+01:002009-03-02T13:50:34.685+01:00France Inter Interview: Denis McShane and the self-determination into of the European Union<a href="http://212.241.214.167/preview.php?userid=dX9nagRlYQ%253D%253D&iwid=cQ%253D%253D"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308570700720087778" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 256px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8fj5bXpFu49rZgRGqothhc-67iVcCL7l0LJiC62bDdApJumCcpfWRQH7IfWFD9YuZAkWT0IWleleta4_jVJpv0euquHJVoPv6SAo2M5lYV__vBZeLex7IEGnTF6ZAbCJrrZOv7S9CM5p7/s320/dENIS.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Denis McShane and the self-determination into of the European Union</span></strong></div><br /><div><br />The former secretary of European Affairs state of the government of the United Kingdom, the Labor Party member Denis McShane, has appraised the right of self-determination of Catalans and Basques in an interview [video, in French] to the chain France Inter, where this member of the government Blair defends the right to the self-determination into of the European Union.<br /><br />L'exsecretari d'estat d'Afers Europeus del govern del Regne Unit, el laborista Denis McShane, ha valorat el dret d'autodeterminació de catalans i bascos en una entrevista [vídeo, en francès] a la cadena France Inter, on aquest membre del govern Blair defensa el dret a l'autodeterminació al sí de la Unió Europea.<br /><br />L'ex-secrétaire d'état d'Affaires Européennes du gouvernement du Royaume-Uni, Denis McShane, a évalué le droit d'autodétermination de Catalans et Basques en un interview [video, en français] à la chaîne France Inter, où ce membre du gouvernement Blair défend le droit à l'autodétermination à celui oui de l'Union européenne.<br /><br /><br />To see only the part of the video when Denis McShane speak about the self-determination please visit <a href="http://212.241.214.167/preview.php?userid=dX9nagRlYQ%253D%253D&iwid=cQ%253D%253D">our webcast web </a>site or select <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6kbmx_denis-mc-shane-france-inter_news">this link</a> to see all the video interview. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-21091164519198885792009-02-28T19:34:00.004+01:002009-02-28T19:50:27.031+01:00Life on the Receiving End: a Subjective Look at Anti-Catalan Prejudice in Spain Today, for Matthew Tree<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnimR1fSyN80cBA3BrQwargZ2lZBMppKmFKvAb9zp0J1kc6VaVPHddHATa7WT23Wn_OorUXgGntCC4E_tXK8DsnY829-DWR0_EXOP-Yye2vqXQnI1jL64P73rkUoxSFHqeDE8nuWnZSo3/s1600-h/img_2380_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnimR1fSyN80cBA3BrQwargZ2lZBMppKmFKvAb9zp0J1kc6VaVPHddHATa7WT23Wn_OorUXgGntCC4E_tXK8DsnY829-DWR0_EXOP-Yye2vqXQnI1jL64P73rkUoxSFHqeDE8nuWnZSo3/s320/img_2380_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307921872158198386" border="0" /></a><b><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size:180%;">LIFE ON THE RECEIVING END</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size:130%;">By: Matthew Tree</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><span class="extracteLlibrePortada"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-style: italic;">This 31 page essay was read at the Cañada Blanch Centre for Spanish Studies at the London School of Economics, on Wednesday, November the 5th, 2008</span><br /><br /></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Back in the Sixties</span> – Franco's time, when use of the Catalan language was still largely illegal outside the privacy of home - there was an incident on the Spanish Cadena SER radio station that's still remembered in Catalonia today. The best-known voice of the period, a presenter called Bobby Deglané – who usually came on to his guests, according to author Quim Monzó, like a 'knight in shining syrup' - invited a Catalan comedienne, Mary Santpere, also well-known throughout Spain, onto his weekend show. Straight out, he came out with: 'Mary, is it true that you Catalans, rather than talk, simply bark, just like dogs?'. To which Santpere, after a moment of being taken aback, replied, 'I wouldn't say that, but in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>, as it happens, Bobby is a very typical dog's name'. Those of us who came to live in post-Franco <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> found and still find it inexplicable that in the rest of <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region></st1:place> anti-Catalan jibes of the bobbydeglanesque type, or worse, are a lot more common than anyone might reasonably expect after 30 years of democracy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><br /><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">The stories come trickling in year after democratic year from over the Catalan border, stories of Catalans going out into monolingual Spain, being identified as such, and then being looked at askance, or short-changed, or insulted on the street, and so on and so forth. For example, one television cameraman I knew told me how in 2004 he and his crew had sat down in a restaurant in Burgos only to be told by the manager, and I quote: ''Si quereis hablar en catalán, mejor que lo haceis en otro sitio'. My favourite story of this type, however, is the one told on public radio a couple of years ago, by the Catalan-language writer Empar Moliner. No sooner was she speeding out of <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state> airport in a taxi to the city centre, than her mobile rang. A friend from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city>. She answered. Started chatting. In Catalan. Within seconds, the driver had turned to remonstrate: 'Here in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, we speak Spanish!'. Moliner leaned forward and lied: 'Hey, I'm speaking Italian, eh?, not Catalan'. The reply: 'Oh, that's OK then. No pasa nada.'</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><br /><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Personally, I find it incomprehensible that the Catalans who've had such experiences never seem to be especially affected by them. If someone were to tell me to stop speaking English to another English speaker, in any context whatsoever, I would get very cross. It's true that all these anecdotes, plentiful though they may be, are just that: anecdotes, mere episodes, isolated cases of regional sparring of a kind in many places around the world. Perhaps, it did on occasion occur to me, the Catalans were right, even, to treat such incidents as teacup-sized storms.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Then, in the year 2006 – when the Catalan parliament was putting together the third Statute of Catalan Autonomy - I came across two incidents which seemed to me to be indicative of a great deal more than mere interregional bitching. On both occasions I was on the breakfast show of the private Catalan-language radio station RAC 1; musician Miqui Puig and I had what must have been one of the easiest paid jobs in the western hemisphere: for half an hour all we had to do was talk about things we'd liked and disliked over the past week.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Occasionally, if the pressure of this got too much for us, the presenter would open the lines and let the hoi-polloi mention a few likes and dislikes of their own. One Friday, we got a call from a Barcelona taxi driver; the previous weekend he had upgraded his taxi to a Mercedes, and decided to celebrate by going for a long spin to the capital of Aragon, Saragossa, where he could show off this brand new tool of his trade – freshly painted, of course, in the instantly recognisable black and yellow of all Barcelonan cabs - to some Aragonese friends of his. No sooner had he stopped at the first set of<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Saragossan traffic lights than the drivers to right and left of him began to wind down their windows and treat him to a mixture of forthright verbal abuse and earnest recommendations to leave town which were clearly provoked by the Catalan nature of his car. He made it to his friends' place, only for them to ask him please not to leave his taxi parked in the street, where they could not guarantee it remaining in one piece for long. So he drove it to a car park, on entering which he was accosted by a group of angry young men who threatened to do his windows in, no matter where he parked. At this point he gave up, and, abandoning <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Saragossa</st1:place></st1:city>, headed post-haste for the safety of the Catalan border.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">The following Friday, in the same radio studio, we got another similar call, this time from a town near Barcelona – Mataró, if I remember rightly - from the mother of a sixteen year old girl who had just been on a school trip to Madrid to see the Prado gallery. When this girl had been chatting to her school friends in Catalan on the <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state> metro, an elderly man sitting opposite had told her to speak in Spanish. She refused, saying she would speak Spanish to him but not to her friends. The old gent's reply was to the effect that if he were a younger man he would and I quote 'Smash her face in'. Upon which a younger man who happened to have followed all this stood up and offered to do just that. The mother of this girl went on to tell us how she and the mothers of all the other girls going on the trip had given their daughters highly specific instructions before leaving for Madrid: they were not to wear any Catalan or Barcelona Football Club insignia, and if asked about what they thought about any political issue related to Catalonia, were to keep mum or change the subject or make themselves scarce. All these mothers considered these precautions absolutely necessary.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Now, it might look as if, once again, we're simply piling isolated anecdote upon isolated anecdote and trying to draw some overall conclusion from them. But in these cases, I think it's the small print that counts, so to speak, in the sense that what makes these two stories significant is that both the Aragonese friends of the Barcelona taxi driver and the mothers of the teenagers off to their school trip </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">took for granted </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">that there was – in Saragossa and Madrid respectively – a </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">general </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">(not an anecdotal or residual) antipathy towards Catalan people that might turn ugly, possibly with violent consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">That struck me as being indicative of a more widespread phenomenon that was both unpleasant and – given certain circumstances – potentially explosive.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">As it happened, when reading about anti-Catalan prejudice in Spain later on, I came across this observation by the Spanish historian José Antonio Maravall: 'to speak of something Catalan or to speak in Catalan, in a café in Madrid or any other major Spanish city, exposes one automatically to a hostile reaction'. He was writing not about <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> in 2006, but about <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1931. What was happening in 1931? The Catalans were negotiating their first Statute of Autonomy with central government. What were they doing in 2006, when the taxi-driver and the teenage girl's mother phone in their stories of Catalanbaiting? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">As mentioned, they were negotiating their third Statute of Autonomy. So, I thought, is this the key to it all? Is it just the Catalan Statues of Autonomy that foment anti-Catalan prejudice in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region> at given moments in time? <o:p></o:p> Or did it exist before? Is it manifested even when there is no Statute of Autonomy on the horizon?<o:p> </o:p>In <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>, any controversy of any type involving <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> – or the Basque Country, for that matter – is an open invitation to all kinds of media and political manipulation of the key terminology. You can barely touch the subject without setting off carefully placed semantic booby traps. So before moving on, we'd like to clarify the three key terms.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Firstly, </span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Catalonia</span></b></st1:place></st1:state><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">'Catalonia', in this talk, refers only to the Principality of Catalonia, capital Barcelona, and doesn't include the other Catalan-speaking areas with which it still maintains cultural connections, namely Valencia, the Balearic Islands, part of southern Aragon, French Catalonia, the town of Alguer or Alguero in Sardinia, the state of Andorra and a toenail sized sliver of northern Murcia. We're not going to talk about any of these areas.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Secondly, </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">the Catalans. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">'The Catalans' refers here to all registered residents of Catalonia, irrespective of where they come from, where they parents come from, what colour their skin is and what language they prefer to speak.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Finally, </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">monolingual <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">'Monolingual Spain' is used here to indicate those areas of Spanish territory in which Castilian aka Spanish is the </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">only </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">official language, and which are home to about 25 million people, out of a total Spanish population of just over 40 million. The remaining 15 million live in areas where Basque, Galician and Catalan are co-official languages together with Spanish..<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Ok, now we've got all that cleared up, we can go on.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Anyone living in <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> today can hardly fail to notice after a while either long or short, that the Catalans' worldview – that is to say, their perception of where they stand and how they came to stand there - is remarkably different from that of the inhabitants of monolingual <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Whereas the latter's history books, for example, put Castile and Castilian hegemony at the centre of their story, those of the Catalans relate Catalonia's slow but consistent fall from historical grace. Because this Catalan worldview tends to be littleknown and because it's impossible to even begin to understand the existence of anti-Catalan prejudice in Spain without it, there follows a description, as brief as I can make it, of how most reasonably well-informed Catalans view their historical record.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">For them, the famous reconquest of the peninsula from the Moors starting around the 10th century, was achieved not only by the Galaico-Portuguese fighting their way down the western edge and the Castilians doing the same down the centre swathe; but also by the Catalan counts and later the Catalan count-kings who gradually removed the north-eastern strip of the peninsula from Arab and Berber control until by 1245 they had claimed not only Tarragona and Lleida but also Valencia and the Balearic Islands for Christendom and themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Successive Catalan count-kings used this mainly coastal territory as a springboard to create a fourteenth century commercial empire, with direct military control over Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, a chunk of Anatolia, much of Greece, including Athens: the Catalan Count-King Peter III, thrilled to have the Parthenon in his power, ordered a dozen crossbowmen to protect it from thieves in 1380. All this swashbuckling went hand in hand with the emergence of some of the most precocious protodemocratic legislation in <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place>, always according to the Catalan view of things. The body of civil law known as the Usatges, which began to emerge in the 12th century, paved the way for the Corts Catalanes, a kind of precocious parliament in which nobles, clergy and even the artisan class, the proto-bourgeoisie, so to speak, were included. (Its historical successor, the English Magna Carta, did not appear on the European scene until a century later). This Catalan protodemocracy eventually led to one of the main points of discord between the Castilians and the Catalans: the king of the latter had to be approved by parliament before he could take the throne. The king of the Castilians, their royal tradition being absolutist, did not.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">If our imaginary Catalan is a little better-informed than usual, he would at this point delight in quoting us the French historian Pierre Vilar's famous analysis of Catalonia at this point in her history: 'perhaps, between 1250 and 1350, the Catalan Principality is the one country in Europe about which it would less inaccurate, less risky, to describe in apparently anachronistic terms as a nationstate.'. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">If, to drive the point home, the Catalans wanted to be a bit bolshie, they would casually point out now that at the time referred to by Pierre Vilar, the flag that represented Catalonia is the very same one that represents it still. Whereas the Spanish flag, they would enjoy adding, was invented by decree on May the 28th of 1785. After this, even our cocky Catalans would have to admit, it's downhill all the way. To begin with, a dynastic alliance in 1469 between Isabel, Queen of Castile, and Ferdinand II of Aragon, Valencia and Barcelona did </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">not </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">unite Spain – as the old Spanish nationalistic myth has it – given that the Catalan-Aragonese Kingdom retained its legal system, tax system, parliamentary structure, currency, customs tariffs on the Castilian border, and so on. But there is no doubt that from this moment on, power begins slowly to shift from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> to the centre of the peninsula. In 1518, Catalan merchants were forbidden to trade with the recently-discovered <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Americas</st1:place></st1:country-region>. In 1652, after a decade-long popular uprising against Castilian interference in its affairs – similar to parliamentarian/absolutist conflicts happening all over Europe, not least in England - Catalonia still managed to conserve most of its legal independence, but lost an important chunk of territory – Perpignan included – to their erstwhile allies, the French.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">This is as nothing, however, to what happened in 1714, the key date in modern Catalan history, when the country lost its war against the Bourbon dynasty and was incorporated by force of arms into a still fledgling Spanish state (remember, which didn't yet have its own flag). What it did have was one irritated absolutist monarch, Phillip V, who used his Right of Conquest to justify his subsequent elimination of Catalan financial independence, of most Catalan law – but NOT Catalan civil law, something worth bearing in mind for later - of Catalan currency, all Catalan institutions, its eight universities included, the long-cherished right of the Catalan parliament to approve its King, and the use of the Catalan language in certain contexts.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Not only this, but an entire neighbourhood of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> was razed to the ground to make room for a huge barracks to be installed in what is now the Parc de la <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Ciutadella, partly to house some of the 30,000 Castilian troops billeted in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> to keep the place in its place. Even the English – at that time, on paper at least, military allies of the Catalans – were aware that an independent country was being juggernauted. In 1714, precisely, a little book appeared in London called 'The Case Of The Catalans Considered', whose author stated : 'It should be pointed out that the Principality of Catalonia, before being yoked to the Spanish crown,...has always been governed by its own laws, independent from any other kingdom. Until now, those laws have remained intact and the slightest attempt to tamper with them has resulted in the people rising up in arms'.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Later, in the 19th century there was a resurgence of Catalan culture which in its turn, together with other circumstances, led to the appearance of political Catalanism which eventually led to the recovery – after its suppression 218 years earlier, of the main Catalan institution of government, the Generalitat – together with a Statute of Autonomy (1932) which restored a small amount of the home rule lost in 1714. Both Generalitat and Statute were suppressed yet again seven years later by the well-known fascist dictator, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, who ruled from 1939 to 1975.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Four years after Franco's demise, in <st1:metricconverter productid="1979, a" st="on">1979, a</st1:metricconverter> new Statute of Autonomy was negotiated under the watchful eyes of the military and then a third one, designed to improve on the circumstantial shortcomings of the second, was approved almost unanimously by the Catalan Parliament in 2006 but was impugned by the conservative Partido Popular and Spain's (socialist) ombudsman and so is currently being held on ice in the Spanish Constitutional Court.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">There, in an outsize nutshell, we have the Catalan version of history. Whether people find it to their taste or not, is not really here nor there. The fact is, as we said, that is how most reasonably well-informed Catalans see their collective past.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">From the Castilian point of view, the military seizure of the Principality of Catalonia in 1714, and the dozens of measures that were later taken to bring <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> into line with the laws and language of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Castile</st1:place></st1:country-region>, simply form part of what was then thought of as a typical nation-building process. It was and is, always from a Castilian point of view, absolutely normal, absolutely taken for granted. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">What the Catalans of the time, 1714, regretted most was the loss of their legal system and institutions, now<span style=""> </span>abolished at one stroke. From their point of view, this constituted a complete loss of political independence ,was not legitimate and never would be legitimate. Graffiti that appeared on the streets of <st1:city st="on">Barcelona</st1:city> soon after the 1714 defeat read: 'All <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> is now nothing but a jailhouse'. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">For many Catalans today, what they regard as their forced membership of the Castilian-Spanish national project is still not legitimate.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">It is during this post-1714 period, and especially over the 19th century that modern anti-Catalan prejudice as we live it today begins to emerge.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Take the language, for example. Although a preliminary report by a Castilian functionary called Patiño affirmed soon after 1714 that the Catalans, and I quote: 'spoke and wrote only in Catalan, without making much use of Spanish', the new laws imposed by the Castilian regime insisted that Spanish or Latin were to be used in the courts, instead of Catalan, as had been the custom up until<span style=""> </span>then. At the same tie guidelines were laid out for the prohibition of Catalan in school teaching, book-publishing and preaching, the latter being an extremely widespread activity back then, when most people believed in God. It should be said that these decrees proved extremely difficult to implement at first.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Which is probably why in the 1800s, measures designed to limit the use of Catalan multiplied, reaching a fever pitch towards the end of that century. In 1881, any legal or commercial document written in Catalan – from a testament to a tram ticket - was decreed null and void.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">The ban on Catalan in the courts was made stricter, often with disastrous consequences for monolingual plaintiffs: in the Spanish parliament in 1905, the MP for Tarragona Julià Nougués brought up the case of a Catalan who had been wrongfully jailed for 14 years for answering 'yes' instead of 'no' to a Castilian judge's question that he hadn't understood correctly. In 1896, it was forbidden to speak in Catalan at any forms of public meeting, indoors or outdoors. In the same year, the use of Catalan was banned on the telephone and in telegrams. In 1900, it was banned in theatres. Later, under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, which lasted seven years starting in 1923, inspectors were sent into <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> to sack any schoolteacher on the spot who was found speaking to his pupils in Catalan. All posters and signs in public buildings of any kind had to be in Spanish only. The night watchmen were obliged to call out the time in Spanish instead of Catalan. By this time, 1929, there were already some 150 laws designed to increase or enforce the use of Castilian in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>. And we haven't even got within spitting distance of General Franco yet. The Catalans' insistence on using their own language despite all of this – in 1924, the architect Antoni Gaudí once famously said to a policeman who, infuriated by being addressed in Catalan by this venerable old gentleman, asked him if could speak Spanish: 'Of course I can! I just don't feel like it!' he replied, before being taken in for questioning) – this insistence, as I say, gave rise in monolingual Spain to the idea – still widely prevalent - that the Catalans not only use their language as a sign of disrespect to Spanish-speakers and by extension to the Spanish nation as a whole, but also to eliminate the use of Castilian inside Catalonia itself. As early as <st1:metricconverter productid="1916, a" st="on">1916, a</st1:metricconverter> Castilian deputy in the Spanish parliament, Eduardo Ortega y Gasset – brother of the better-known José - declared: 'It is not a question of persecuting Catalan in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>, but of avoiding the persecution of Spanish there.' At the time, the immense majority of the Catalan population were either monolingual Catalan speakers or had a highly imperfect knowledge of Spanish.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Today, curiously enough, although now all Catalans can speak Spanish, from time to time, grouplets of Spanish politicians and intellectuals still insist on insisting that the Spanish language is being persecuted in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>. A 'Manifiesto por la lengua común' drawn up as recently as June of this year, repeated the accusation. Although it claimed an almost sexually intimate knowledge of the linguistic status quo in Catalonia, only three of the seventeen signatories actually live there, the majority being based in monolingual Spain, with one other living in the Basque Country and yet another, in London. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">So, here we have one root cause of anti-Catalan prejudice: not the language in itself, but the insistence of large numbers of Catalans on using it as the default language in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>. Despite having been told for such a long time that they really should not do this.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">In the London School of Economics the last thing I wanted to talk about was economics – a subject I understand even less than, say, bosonic string theory – but in order to understand the crucial second source of antipathy towards Catalonia in Spain, the delicate subject of money has to be broached. After all, the stereotypical Catalan – as seen by prejudiced monolingual Spaniards, not all, of course - not only barks like a dog, but is mean, tight-fisted, selfish, miserly, money-grabbing and even - and this accusation dates from a 1907 article in El Mundo newspaper by the novelist Pío Baroja – a Jew. ('Everything in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>' – he wrote – 'has a markedly Semitic character'). This last summer, a hundred and one years later, a Catalan friend of mine resident in London overheard some Spanish people in the audience at a lecture in the local Cervantes Institute describing the Catalans as 'a bunch of Jews'. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">The supposed stinginess of the Catalans has been reflected in a host of popular jokes, the more elaborate of which – as is also the case with Jewish humour – are told by the butts of the jokes themselves. The ones of monolingual Spanish origin tend to be both shorter and blunter. The shortest one I know, overheard personally, goes: [joke about the dead Catalan, shown with thumb and finger].<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">As mentioned, Catalan civil law was allowed to remain in force for several decades after the military defeat of 1714. Catalan civil law both favoured and fomented the existing tendency in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> towards smallholdings, commerce and the beginnings of capitalist investment. When, in 1778, the Catalans were finally allowed to trade with the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Americas</st1:place></st1:country-region>, they did so with a vengeance, dealing primarily in hard liquor – Catalan 'aiguardent' was a major local product – sugar, coffee and, last but by no means least, slaves. The wealth that returning Catalans injected into their economy paved the way for the first full-scale industrial revolution on the Mediterranean coastline. By the early 19th century, this was already causing friction between <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state>, with its capitalist economy based mainly on textile products, and central and southern <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>, with a mainly agrarian economy, the profits of which accrued to a small number of landowners with considerable influence in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state>, in both court and parliament. The Catalan business lobbies pressured the central government for protectionist laws on the British model, designed to create an internal Spanish market. The landowners, whose agricultural products already had what amounted to a protected market, were opposed to this protectionism, even though it would have favoured manufacturers anywhere in <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>, not just in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">This economic conflict – between the propertyowning classes of <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> and monolingual <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> respectively – gave rise to a surprising twist of fact: the Catalans started to be blamed for living off the fat of <st1:country-region st="on">Castile</st1:country-region> and <st1:place st="on">Andalusia</st1:place>. Even though economic surveys made in the early 20th century showed clearly that <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>, with some 10% of the population, was contributing 25% of the overall Spanish budget while getting just 6% back in public investment. Even now – with an average yearly deficit of 9% - <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> is one of the most highly taxed and underfunded regions in <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Despite all this, the suspicion that the Catalans are not only rolling in it, but also withholding financial support from other regions started to become more and more widespread. In 1915, when the Catalans asked for money for local infrastructures, the then much-read Madrid newspaper, El Imparcial, described the Catalan authorities as 'financial parasites who feed themselves a the expenses of the state'. 86 years later, in 2001, when the Catalan government was pushing for a transfer of 15% of income tax to Catalan public funds, the then president of Extremadura, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, made headlines with his comment: 'Just because the Catalans speak two tongues, doesn't mean they need to eat twice as much as everyone else'. To this day, the myth persists that <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> is getting more money than it should from <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state> and that any attempt to actually get more money than it does is a sign of greed.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">So: sooner or later, this combination of legalised attacks against the Catalan language together with such heavy taxation, was going to get the Catalans' goat. Their first political reactions, however, were nothing if not moderate.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Anyone today who ploughs his way through the foundational texts of Catalanism, most of which date from the late 19th century, might be surprised to find that none of them show any interest in independence. The republican theorist Valentí Almirall, for example, writing in 1886, opted for a federal status within a liberal <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The bishop Torras i Bages, in his monumentally mindnumbing and highly selective compendium of Catalan history and culture, 'La tradició catalana' – inflicted on readers in 1892 – defends a mustily conservative Catalan Region smelling of old cassocks. On the other hand, Enric Prat de <st1:personname productid="la Riba's" st="on">la Riba's</st1:personname> more popular treatise 'La nacionalitat catalana' (1906) defended what <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> currently has: a partially autonomous government overseen by the Spanish state.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">And yet right from the word go, Spanish media and politicians treated all Catalanists as separatists. In 1901, the liberal deputy Luis de Armiñan bought up the question in parliament: 'Could <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Poland</st1:place></st1:country-region> possibly be the Catalanists' role model?', the Poles being famous at the time for their struggle for independence. To this day, the main insult word for a Catalan is 'polaco' – Pole – and should anyone be in doubt, they can consult the first or second edition of the Collins Master Spanish-English dictionary, where the second definition of 'polaco' is given as 'Catalan' brackets 'perjorative'.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Nowhere in monolingual Spain did this perceived separatism ring alarm bells more violently than in the Spanish military whose paranoia about Catalonia meant that, as historian Jaume Vicens i Vives pointed out, 'martial law was imposed in Catalonia for 60 of the 86 years running from 1814 to 1900'. Far worse was yet to come. In <st1:metricconverter productid="1909, a" st="on">1909, a</st1:metricconverter> gang of rogue army officers launched arson attacks on the offices of two Catalan language publications in Barcelona, not long after an article in an army newspaper declared: 'Catalonia must be Castilianised...people there must talk Spanish, think in Spanish and behave like Spaniards, whether they wish to or not.'<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Talk of the military brings us to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s two 20<sup>th</sup> century fascist dictatorships. We have already mentioned the linguistic bullying of Primo de Rivera's seven year regime, in which he also banned the Catalan flag and the sardana national dance. Franco, however – whose troops entered <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> in 1939 - turned out to be the absolute limit. Even the Catalans who went over to his side while the war was on had a rough time of it: a Catalan fascist was fined in 1938, for speaking in Catalan on a hotel phone in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Seville</st1:place></st1:city>. Once Franco and his comrades had hacked their way into <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> they installed what might be called a regime of linguistic and cultural terror – as well as terror of the more usual kind – designed to eliminate every last trace of the Catalan cultural universe. All Catalan institutions were abolished – again - along the Bourbon dynasty's 1714 pattern. The democratically elected Catalan president, Lluís Companys, exiled in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city>, was handed over by the Nazi occupation forces to Franco in 1940, and shot. The home of the most famous Catalan philologist, Pompeu Fabra, was ransacked and his library bonfired in the street. Every single one of the thousands of civil organisations of all kinds that had flourished under the Republic, from neighbourhood basketball teams to the Catalan Blind People's Association, was obliged to Castilianise its name, its statutes, its membership cards and its meetings. Catalan was forbidden in all publishing, all media and all public places. In 1955, the Spanish embassy in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> even managed to convince the BBC, with strong support from the prestigious anti-Franco republican exile Salvador de Madariaga, to suppress its fortnightly short wave broadcasts in Catalan. This was not, as has sometimes been claimed, a situation that lasted merely during the first, most violent half-decade of Franco's regime, but went on right up until he was gasping his last. In 1960, when a group of moderate Catholic Catalanists interrupted a concert by singing a patriotic song in Barcelona's Palau de <st1:personname productid="la Msica" st="on">la Música</st1:personname>, the following documented comments were made to them by the police when they were beating them up in the station cells: 'what Hitler did to the Jews was nothing compared to what we'll do with the Catalans'; 'within a year you'll be our slaves, you'll be licking our boots'; 'you Catalans are lower than shit'. Hey, and these were moderate, Christian Catalanists they were slagging off.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Detainees who insisted on speaking in Catalan before the judges, such as the philologist Jordi Carbonell, were placed in psychiatric institutions. Women belonging to the clandestine Catalan Republican Left party, whose members denied they were Spanish, were frequently raped in custody, as two of the victims once explained to a mutual friend.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">From that whole period, however, nothing drove home to me personally just how savage the anti-Catalan climate under Franco was until I heard a true story told me by a man I was buying a table from, some ten years ago, in the Sant Antoni neighbourhood of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city>. In 1966, when he was eight years old and still living in his village, his parents sent him to the local Council offices to pick up a form they needed. When he stepped into the lobby he said, without thinking, 'bon dia' in Catalan instead of 'buenos días' in Spanish. The man behind the desk stood up, came out, and without a word of warning slapped this child so hard he fell on his arse. Anyone English who can imagine being slapped about by a public functionary for saying 'good morning' in, say, Bootle or Beccles, will have an idea of what it was like to be aCatalan speaker in Catalonia for a fair chunk of the late twentieth century.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">With the advent of democracy, far from winning widespread sympathy from Spanish public opinion for having nearly had their culture surgically removed, a survey commissioned by the then Spanish president Adolfo Suárez in 1977, showed that Catalonia was the least liked region of Spain in Madrid, the two Castiles, Andalusia, Galicia, Extremadura, Asturias, Murcia, Aragon and the Canary Islands. Only in <st1:country-region st="on">Valencia</st1:country-region>, the Balearic Islands, <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Navarre</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the Basque Country were the Catalans not pushed to the bottom of the list. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Since then, antipathy towards Catalonia has proven so deep-rooted in monolingual Spain that Catalan historian Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté was moved to say in a recent interview, and I quote his exact words: 'In the same way that in Austria, before the Second World War, you could not be fully Austrian without being a little bit anti-Semitic, so in Spain today, you cannot be one hundred Spanish unless you are at least a little bit anti-Catalan'. We have seen at the beginning how anti-Catalan prejudice, fomented openly in certain Spanish media and by certain Spanish politicians, has resulted in harassment, verbal abuse, and so forth. On occasion, it takes a far more serious for,, no better example of which can be given than extraordinary and mind-boggling case of Èric Bertran. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">In 2004, Èric Bertran was a 14 year old schoolboy who lived in the Costa Brava resort town of Lloret de Mar. Èric, a Harry Potter fan, had a web page called 'L'Exèrcit del Fènix', - the 'Army of the Phoenix' - named after the J.K. Rowlings's Order of the Phoenix. On the 24<sup>th</sup> September, Èric sent an email to two supermarket chains and a dairy products manufacturer, requesting them to include Catalan on the labels of their products and suggesting that his <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Phoenix</st1:place></st1:city> organisation would make things difficult for them in the future if they didn't. What he meant by this, as he explained in a later email to an enquirer, was that he and the three other teenagers who made up the Exèrcit del Fènix would bombard the Customer Service addresses of these companies with repeated emails.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">On September 30th, just before 11pm, twenty Civil Guards in full combat uniform, automatic weapons at the ready, broke into Èric's home, searched his room and removed his and his brother's computers. They identified themselves as members of the anti-terrorist unit who had been sent from <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state> that same day. It turned out that one of the supermarket chains Èric had emailed, had reported him to the police in the belief that the Army of the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Phoenix</st1:place></st1:city> was an organisation of urban guerrillas, a suspicion apparently shared by the Civil Guard's intelligence division. A fortnight later, during which time Èric went through several panic attacks and had to be put on medication, he was summoned to <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state> to declare before a public prosecutor. On December 15th, in an almost incredible scene, the public prosecutor – who let slip during the hearing that she hadn't read the original email that had caused all the trouble – declared Èric mentally unstable for having photographs of burning Spanish flags on his website (the next day he was obliged to see a court psychologist) and then, after arguing with him about his national identity for some time, screamed at him: 'Say that you're Spanish or I'll lock you up!'.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">One year later, in March of 2005, the supermarket chain dropped its accusations against Èric Bertran, after having had its server blocked for months by furious Catalan e-protestors.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">The point of all this is that such an episode would have been inconceivable in any other part of <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> except <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>, with the very possible exception of the Basque Country. A 14 year old boy from Cantabria or the Canaries, for example, who sent a grousy email to a company to persuade it to label its products in Castilian would not, in all probability, have received a visit from an antiterrorist unit based in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Madrid</st1:place></st1:state>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">So where do we stand now, we residents of <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> today? Well, a boycott on all Catalan products which began in 2006 - around the time of the Statute of Autonomy negotiations - is still being adhered to by an important minority in monolingual Spain (in Madrid, 21% of citizens recently confirmed they were still not buying Catalan). The public deficit of 20,000 million Euros a year, combined with the influx of one million two hundred thousand new citizens in the last ten years, on top of an original population of 6 million, has put an increasingly noticeable pressure on hospitals and schools. Media campaigns generated from outside Catalonia calling the Catalans linguistic bullies and destroyers of the Spanish language in Catalonia continue to be shouted into our tired old ears, despite an official European Union investigation in September of this year, which ruled that not only was Castilian not persecuted in Catalonia, but recommended that the Catalan language immersion system used in its public – meaning state - schools be adopted by other bilingual communities in Europe. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Put bluntly, the Catalans are tiring of a tiring situation that has gone on for far, far too long. Of the six million odd citizens who have the vote, over two million now want outright independence, with a further two million remaining undecided. Even us foreigners, voteless though we are, have been canvassed. A majority of Latin Americans, it turns out, would prefer to stay in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, whereas the Eastern Europeans, for example, are largely in favour of secession. As is at least one long-term English resident. Especially since less than 40% of the Spanish population would favour an armed intervention should <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state> and the Basque Country raise their hands to wave goodbye.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Before anyone can say, hey, what's it to you, with your British passport and your universal English language, why you should you care about this kerfuffle in a little coastal corner of the continent?, I would like to finish by saying that my own interest in the issue is more personal than political, given that one of the areas in which anti-Catalan prejudice is most virulent is in the world of writing. Take this book, for example. 'L'últim patriarca' by Najat El Hachmi. Najat El Hachmi came to live in <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> from her native <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Morocco</st1:place></st1:country-region> at the age of eight. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Twenty years later, with this novel, she won the most prestigious and also best-remunerated Catalan-language literary award, the Ramon Llull, in January of this year. Despite this unique achievement, when the Spanish translation was being prepared, Najat received tremendous pressure, even from her own agent, to eliminate the words 'traducido <st1:state st="on">del</st1:state> catalán' from the title page, as this would seriously prejudice sales in monolingual <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">It is, indeed, an open secret in the literary world, that monolingual Spanish readers tend to shun the products of Catalan language writers. One of the most commercially successful of these, Ferran Torrent, from <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Valencia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, was once offered a juicy contract for the Castilian version of one of his books, but the publisher put just one condition, just one. That Ferran Torrent's forename should be changed to Fernando so that people would assume that he was a monolingual Spaniard.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">I never realised just how much this was the case, until something similar happened to me. Here we have the Catalan original of a novel published in 2001, 'Privilegiat'. The biographical blurb is standard: Taught himself Catalan in 1979, published this, that and the other (Catalan titles given), contributed stories to these anthologies, bla bla bla, contributes to this and that newspaper and this and that radio station (their names given, identifying them as Catalan language media). OK.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">This is the Castilian version: born in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>, writer, contributor to newspapers and radios. He has lived in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> since 1984. Not a single mention of the fact that<o:p></o:p> I had at the time published three books in Catalan, contributed stories to five others, and worked for the Catalan media. Nothing. No mention of the dreaded Cword. And that is precisely where the problem lies at heart. Just to live in and form no matter how modest a part of the Catalan cultural universe, is in itself seen as indifferent or undesirable or politically incorrect or downright distasteful or even bloody horrible in monolingual <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Yet at the same time, in <st1:state st="on">Catalonia</st1:state> we are bombarded with reminders, some of them laced with slights, that we form part of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region> and should therefore behave in a more Spanish way than we do. I put it to you that this is an untenable situation, which sooner or later will have the kind of consequences that will make headlines around the world – at least for a day – given that they will involve a new place being laid at the table of the United Nations.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">What I'm sure everybody wants – and I include the vast majority of the inhabitants of monolingual <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> – is that in the photographs accompanying the banner print, there will be no violent scenes, no rumbling tanks, no cadavers on the streets of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><br /><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10;">Your turn.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-61655303712412491482009-02-28T18:52:00.004+01:002009-02-28T19:02:34.867+01:00Movimento indipendentista VENETI<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNYGKkTM1hN4Ws7TWQDDdVOXRKmyyAG4L3TEcNz-dKX74HCwFAej2dc_cGrb6QjfQ9mjV0QJ0LOqwuLPPTVLIkz1r2anYWxicEX3ucBWFOPV0ub7bb_X1OSxRg_KKP2UhylToZo5mu5F9/s1600-h/catalan_strison.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 96px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNYGKkTM1hN4Ws7TWQDDdVOXRKmyyAG4L3TEcNz-dKX74HCwFAej2dc_cGrb6QjfQ9mjV0QJ0LOqwuLPPTVLIkz1r2anYWxicEX3ucBWFOPV0ub7bb_X1OSxRg_KKP2UhylToZo5mu5F9/s400/catalan_strison.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307910198894867954" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:12;" >El Moviment </span><b><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:16;color:red;" >independentista VENETI</span></b><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:16;" > </span><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:12;" >lluita pacíficament i democràtica per a l'autodeterminació del Poble Vènet junt amb la nació catalana i tots els pobles qui comparteixen el mateix itinerari de llibertat per a la seva nació.<br />El Moviment VENETI està en contra del Tractat de Lisbona i d'una Europa centralista i esclava dels poders financiaris. Denuncia Berlusconi i el seu govern Italià per la política antivèneta che continua operant. Estem aquí per donar suport al Poble Català reconeixent els seus drets i per expressar la nostra amistat i solidaritat.<br />Independència per a Catalunya, independència per a Vèneto.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div> <div> <div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:12;" >El poble vènet té més de 3000 anys de història. Les nostres gents es van estyablir a la laguna adriàtica entre el 1400 i el 1300 a.C. i amb el seu coratge i el seu enginy van donar lloc a una civiltat coneguda i respectada per tots: la Serenìsima Repùblica<o:p></o:p></span></p></div> <div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:12;" >En aquest segle ens han ensenyat a oblidar qui som, obstaculitzant el desenvolupament i l'ús de la nostra lengua i fent callar la nostra història. Avui, conscients de les nostres arrels culturals, I V estan junts amb tots els pobles d'Europa i del món per a recobrar el nostre passat, decidir el noste futur i defensar la llibertat.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div> <div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:'Times New Roman','serif';font-size:12;" >Independència per a Catalunya! Independència per a Vèneto!<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-84927744242840414952009-02-27T13:01:00.002+01:002009-02-27T13:08:43.257+01:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk62es8CakJVgschZJARmlbMzd8R0gBH5_JF_E4bp9azDPxmtQVwcElTb7J3mtsn6UQcXXkB-JJVZNVNTowRUj1MmUjDDhO6vfjhFOzxpWXicuk1NB2Ioi8XY7KNPZa_wYXQPF7x9p0y0Y/s1600-h/Tamazgha.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307446603965546690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 71px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk62es8CakJVgschZJARmlbMzd8R0gBH5_JF_E4bp9azDPxmtQVwcElTb7J3mtsn6UQcXXkB-JJVZNVNTowRUj1MmUjDDhO6vfjhFOzxpWXicuk1NB2Ioi8XY7KNPZa_wYXQPF7x9p0y0Y/s400/Tamazgha.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div align="center"><strong>Aux organisateurs de la manifestation</strong></div><div align="center"><em> "10 Mil a Brussel les per l'Autodeterminació"</em> </div><p align="justify"><br /><br />Cher(e)s ami(e)s,<br /><br />Par le présent message, je viens, au nom de l'association Tamazgha, vous exprimer notre soutien, celui de Tamazgha et du peuple amazigh de manière générale, à votre action "10 Mil a Brussel les per l'Autodeterminació".<br /><br />Tamazgha s'inscrivant dans le combat des Imazighen pour la reconquête de leur souveraineté perdue il y a des siècles, c'est tout naturellement que nous vous apportons notre solidarité et notre soutien à votre lutte en faveur de l'autodétermination du peuple catalan. De plus, l'amitié qui nous lie au peuple catalan et aux organisations qui œuvrent pour l'indépendance de la Catalogne ne fait que renforcer en nous ce sentiment de solidarité.<br /><br />L'Histoire commune de nos deux nations, leurs proximité géographique, leur appartenance à l'espace méditerranéen occidental, sont autant d'éléments qui rendent la solidarité amazigho-catalane nécessaire : nos combats se rejoignent.<br /><br />Nous serons donc à vos côtés samedi 7 mars 2009 à Bruxelles, et nous avons dores et déjà appelé Imazighen de Bruxelles et des régions et pays voisins à se joindre à la manifestation "10 Mil a Brussel les per l'Autodeterminació".<br /><br />Notre présence parmi vous le samedi 7 mars sera également l'occasion pour nous d’exprimer notre attachement à l’autodétermination des peuples et dire au monde notre volonté de nous inscrire dans un combat de libération nationale du peuple amazigh dont le territoire est sous domination arabo-musulmane, une idéologie qui a programmé l'éradication de l'amazighité de l'Afrique du Nord par l'assimilation forcée des Imazighen. Cette idéologie que nous combattons au quotidien pour qu'un jour Tamazgha se libère et accède à sa souveraineté.<br /><br />Salutations amicales et militantes. </p><div align="center"><br /><br /><strong>Tudert i Ka‚alunya<br />Tudert i Tmazγa<br /><br />Vive la Catalogne<br />Vive Tamazgha.<br /></strong></div><div align="right"><br /><br />Masin Ferkal,<br />Président de Tamazgha.<br /><br />Paris, le 26 février 2009.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-91270304923689544062009-02-27T12:36:00.004+01:002009-02-27T12:54:48.233+01:00Interview Press Professeur Enric L. Canela:Le prochain gouvernement de la Generalitat doit travailler pour exercer le droit de décider<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivxikUBJ567KaxWce8R3-rnwD7Y5CzsrszqmRf6Nbd-tINnCSbsqYz4JvLwQ6s439bYZGFaOBt73ldSspPYbyl1AWuMj6dbyvTmx3X6oGWwO6a1UV8HcqUi041m_ANpT0gVSuPHvY3fJ1J/s1600-h/Canela.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307443272516366402" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 301px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivxikUBJ567KaxWce8R3-rnwD7Y5CzsrszqmRf6Nbd-tINnCSbsqYz4JvLwQ6s439bYZGFaOBt73ldSspPYbyl1AWuMj6dbyvTmx3X6oGWwO6a1UV8HcqUi041m_ANpT0gVSuPHvY3fJ1J/s320/Canela.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;"><strong>“Le prochain gouvernement de la Generalitat doit travailler pour exercer le droit de décider »</strong><br /></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Enric Canela (Barcelona, 1949) est un des promoteurs de la campagne « Dix mille à Bruxelles pour l’autodétermination », qui vise à convoquer le 7 mars prochain 10.000 personnes à la capitale européenne, avec le but de faire connaître l’affaire de la souveraineté au cœur de l’Union Européenne.</span> </span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#000099;"></span></div><br /><div>Il est professeur à l’Université de Barcelona, appartenant au département de biochimie et biologie moléculaire. Portant, il a participé toujours, en tant que militant actif, en des affaires politiques, à CDC et aussi à d’autres organisations. Il a dit : « J’aime la politique, pour aider à changer des choses, mais pas d’une façon professionnelle. C’est plus amusant pour moi, par exemple, expliquer la raison pour laquelle l’existence des acides oméga-3 dans la mère fait que les enfants soient plus intelligents, et cette sorte de choses. »<br /><br />Il y a quelque temps, avec un group de gens appartenant à des différentes sensibilités politiques, mais avec lesquelles il partage l’horizon d’un état propre pour les Pays Catalans, il a été le promoteur du blog Grand du Souveraineté. Un article signé par lui et publié sur le blog mentionné a été l’origine de la mobilisation pour pousser 10.000 catalans à Bruxelles pour y réclamer le droit à l’autodétermination.<br /><br />-<span style="color:#000099;"><strong>Comment avez-vous eu l’idée?</strong></span><br /><br />-Vers la fin du mois d’août, je crois, on a publié un document de l’Institut des Études Catalans dans lequel on disait que nous, les catalans, étions « perplexes ». Alors j’ai écrit une entrée dans le blog avec le titre « Perplexe, moi? J’y disais que je ne me sentais pas perplexe, que bien sur j’avais des autres sentiments, mais pas de perplexité. Et j’y ai aussi parlé du besoin d’une réaction. J’ai cité comme exemple ce qu’est arrivé aux États-Unis avec Martin Luther King et le mouvement de revendication des droits civils de la minorité –c’était une façon de l’appeler- Noire, avec la célèbre marche à Washington. Et j’ai ajouté que nous pourrions aller tous à Madrid. Mais un des participants habituels de notre blog disait que « nous n’avons pas rien à faire à Madrid, c’est à Bruxelles qu’il faut aller ! ». Oui, d’accord. Et après, l’un de nos lecteurs habituels à proposé la création d’un group dans le Facebook. Et maintenant, 6.500 personnes y sont adhérées.<br /><br />-<strong><span style="color:#000099;">Comptez-vous sur le soutien des partis politiques, malgré qu’il s’agisse d’une initiative très transversale qui a été poussé moyennant le Facebook ?<br /></span></strong><br />-C’est indispensable ce soutien, malgré que cette initiative n’est pas partisane. Je n’en ai pas parlé avec les hauts dirigeants des groupes politiques, mais elle a été très bien accueillie par des gents appartenant a la direction d’ERC et de CDC avec lesquelles j’ai parlé. Pere Aragonès, qui appartient à la direction d’Esquerra, a poussé, dans la page Web de son parti, la participation du militantisme. À Convergència, il y a eu des communications internes moins officielles, mais le soutien est aussi octroyé. Et en ce qui concerne les jeunesses des deux partis, il y a un soutien complet.<br /><br />Cette aide est très bonne pour nous, et aussi l’aide des autres organisations et entités participantes. Parce que nous avons toujours eu la volonté d’éviter des discordes partisanes en ce qui concerne des buts que, pour nous, appartiennent au pays.<br /><br />L’initiative est ouverte à toute la société et à tous qui partagent la défense du droit à l’autodétermination,<br /><br />-<strong><span style="color:#000099;">Quels sont vos objectifs, en ce qui concerne cette initiative à Bruxelles ?</span></strong><br /><br />-Il n’y a deux, et très clairs. Nous voulons l’internalisation de notre affaire, nous voulons qu’en Europe, dans tout le monde, on sache qu’en Catalogne il y a un conflit pacifique, qu’il y a une communauté qui croit avoir le droit à l’autodétermination, et ceci a été affirmé au sein du Parlement plusieurs fois. Nous désirons que ce conflit avec l’état apparaisse aux yeux du monde.<br /><br />-<strong><span style="color:#000099;">Afin de réussir à cette internalisation, il faudra compter sur la complicité de la presse internationale, et étant donnés quelques exemples apparus récemment, - tels que le cas de The Economist- il y aura des difficultés pour obtenir cette complicité.</span></strong><br /><br />-Oui, bien sûr que cette affaire demande de la complicité de la presse internationale. Et nous sommes en train d’y travailler, moyennant le contact avec des correspondants et de personnes qui travaillent partout. Naturellement, je préfère un bon article dans Le Monde, par exemple, ou dans n’importe quel média européen, où on explique nos revendications, que mille personnes en plus ou en moins à la mobilisation.<br /><br />-<strong><span style="color:#000099;">Vous avez parlé d’un deuxième objectif essentiel de cette initiative à Bruxelles.</span></strong><br /><br />-Il s’agit d’un but plus interne, nous désirons pousser l’unité de ceux qui réclament le droit a l’autodétermination, des partis, des plates-formes, des entités. Et nous travaillons pour réussir à faire que les partis défendant ce droit, les soi-disants souverainistes, intègrent clairement dans ses programmes, que le prochain gouvernement de la Generalitat dont ils feront partie, aura le but de travailler pour reconnaitre ce droit. Ça veut dire, moyennant la promotion d’une déclaration dans le Parlement, au cours de laquelle il y existe une majorité soi-disante souverainiste, tout en réclamant le droit de la Catalogne à avoir une structure propre d’un état et que demande à Madrid l’organisation d’un referendum acheminé à initier les processus politiques correspondants.<br /><br />Tous ceux qu’en sommes les promoteurs, voulons la fin de cette tendance à établir des différences en ce qui concerne des affaires secondaires, étant donné que ce fait empêche l’unité en des affaires de fond. Pour nous, l’statut politique de Catalogne c’est une question essentielle sur laquelle il faut agir de façon conjointe.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000099;">-Si tout ça arriverait (l’existence des majorités nécessaires dans le Parlement et la convocation d’un referendum), qu’est ce qui arrivera le moment que le gouvernement de l’état s’y opposera?<br /></span></strong><br />-Il faut établir des objectifs clairs, et des tactiques qu’il faut planifier tout le temps. Vraiment, tout ça est très loin encore. Et à ce moment, je ne peux pas dire ce qu’il faudrait faire. Le cas échéant, il faudra réfléchir et développer les débats politiques. Mais de toute façon, nous pourrons visualiser le problème. Bien sûr qu’à Madrid on dira « non ». Mais il faudra aussi qu’ils justifient sa décision, et les gens verront tout ce qui arrive.<br /><br />Je suis indépendantiste, mais la situation du Québec serait assez satisfaisante pour moi. Là-bas, il y a de la liberté pour choisir ce qu’on veut être. Si nous pourrions faire ça, malgré l’inexistence d’une majorité indépendantiste, nous pourrions être ce que nous aurions décidé démocratiquement, et non ce que nous a été imposé de l’extérieur.<br /><br />De toute façon, c’est vrai que le peuple de la Catalogne est favorable, de façon majoritaire, au droit à l’autodétermination. La composition du Parlement est la confirmation de ce fait. Et il faut que le prochain gouvernement de la Generalitat travaille en cette direction, afin de pouvoir exercer ce droit; vraiment, aucun gouvernement de la Generalitat n’a pas fait jamais une chose pareille.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000099;">-Vous avez dit que vous réclamez le besoin du travail conjoint des partis souverainistes. Mais maintenant, n’est pas possible c’est unité, en ce qui concerne les élections européennes ?<br /></span></strong><br />J’ai affirmé publiquement que je suis en faveur de cette unité. Mais je comprends aussi que chaque parti a ses stratégies liées à ses propres besoins. Mais, en général, j’insiste sur le point en rapport avec les aspectes essentiaux du pays –et le plus essential c’est l’statu politique, il faut travailler pour atteindre la plus grande unité.<br /><br />On peut perdre le temps en débâtant encore 25 ans sur la situation des écoles, s’il faut un catalanisme d’une façon ou d’une autre, plus social, plus ce que vous voulez… Vraiment c’est important la situation des écoles, et aussi les valeurs sociales. Tout est important. Mai, enfin, dans une société du XXIème siècle, mis à part le débat national, les différences sont très petites, sauf pour les extrémistes de chaque côté. Mise a part la question nationale, il y a très peu différences entre les politiques du PSC, de Convergència – et Unió en beaucoup d’aspects. Nous pouvons débattre par où passera une route, et aussi sa largeur. Mais nous arriverons à un accord. Pour cette raison, il faut s’occuper de l’aspect différentiel, il faut que tous ceux qui croient que la Catalogne doit être en état, y soient d’accord. Après, en ce qui concerne les autres choses, on arrivera à un accord. Si non, ça sera un échec. On va se diluer et a parvenir comme une Rioja, une Murcia o une Andalusia, avec tout mon respect pour elles. Mais je crois que ce n’est pas l’statu politique que je veux pour Catalogne.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><strong>-Après le 7 mars, le collectif promoteur de cette mobilisation va continuer ses activités?</strong></span><br /><br />On n’a pas parlé formellement, mais je crois que si on réussite à la mobilisation, nous devons travailler pour atteindre cette unité politique, entre des parties, des plates-formes, et que ne cherche pas être partisane, ni appartenir à un groupe, etc. De toute façon, il faudra un débat, étant donné qu’il demande un engagement et un effort personnel qu’il faut mettre en valeur. Au moins, si on le fait, qu’il soit utile.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Enric Rimbau</div><br /><div>10.02.2009 EL TEMPS</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-57443974457291554762009-02-26T09:58:00.015+01:002009-02-26T10:26:01.936+01:0010.000 CATALANEN NAAR BRUSSEL VOOR EEN EIGEN STAAT<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5OxFjDWVjvxgzM-xV6VT_TitLWdyXHkiuDNvOSMSq2PyQoE2BFsztjxlYwrNYWeepbGdLzewS-efWaadnY5uggu51mNNIzsOk5kryS2LgSCLFxDygW5nZlDlvFsjlsgT1cHqjVT05Lt7K/s1600-h/Catalanen_Part1.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307032075017580658" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5OxFjDWVjvxgzM-xV6VT_TitLWdyXHkiuDNvOSMSq2PyQoE2BFsztjxlYwrNYWeepbGdLzewS-efWaadnY5uggu51mNNIzsOk5kryS2LgSCLFxDygW5nZlDlvFsjlsgT1cHqjVT05Lt7K/s400/Catalanen_Part1.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVaRPSV522ZutFpwtwIbryQalt62ZrMeL8Yw_m6oZERkFf67pwigJc_AtbTgRY0pMkf8EtdypXgk2BHTgv1Lzc_HgrIS3_jXg5MRhaFKVUybOJ0uNeM5vFc-BedYUtZFoJ2aZyoMGaGnt/s1600-h/Catalanen_Part1.JPG"></a><br /><br /><div><span style="font-size:+0;"></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-837299307747559422009-02-26T09:20:00.005+01:002009-02-26T09:32:43.184+01:00PERSVERKLARING:BETOGING BRUSSEL 7 MAART 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtZWFk8-G_c66-VxmUSx6zVOC2G9MBYIc97ugEppPrKegPReXfkAEiXzaQZku2lFZQJ8RWTgJG0oZb1wAjwpaEqt2bo5E_Oz7G93e9luVBbxVwgXM4Gf1zQQS5XdaSIu5xudkTAUNnNS-/s320/Logo+10mil+(2).JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 262px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 172px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtZWFk8-G_c66-VxmUSx6zVOC2G9MBYIc97ugEppPrKegPReXfkAEiXzaQZku2lFZQJ8RWTgJG0oZb1wAjwpaEqt2bo5E_Oz7G93e9luVBbxVwgXM4Gf1zQQS5XdaSIu5xudkTAUNnNS-/s320/Logo+10mil+(2).JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">BETOGING BRUSSEL 7 MAART 2009 Met 10.000 naar Brussel voor Catalaans Zelfbestuur!</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></strong><br />Het initiatief "10 Mil a Brussel•les per l’Autodeterminació" (Met 10.000 naar Brussel voor Zelfbestuur) is ontstaan uit het brede maatschappelijke middenveld in Catalonië en snel gegroeid dankzij de actieve medewerking van vele wakkere Catalaanse burgers op regionaal en lokaal niveau. De bal sloeg aan het rollen na de publicatie van een artikel van de hand van professor Enric Canela op een blog dat publiceert over Catalaans zelfbestuur. De vele reacties van lezers op het internet zorgde al snel voor een sneeuwbaleffect van enthousiaste initiatieven via Facebook, blogs en websites. Via het aldus ontstane digitale platform werken we samen om op 7 Maart in Brussel, zetel van het Europees Parlement, met 10.000 Catalaanse burgers te gaan betogen voor het recht om een eigen onafhankelijke staat te kunnen zijn zoals andere volkeren in Europa. We willen ervoor zorgen dat het zelfbeschikkingsrecht van Catalonië op de Europese agenda wordt geplaatst. We willen dat de Catalaanse politieke partijen, gedreven door ons initiatief, zich officieel voorstander verklaren van een onafhankelijk Catalonië in een verenigd Europa. Ons platform is niet onderworpen aan een bepaalde politieke ideologie maar staat integendeel volledig open voor alle organisaties en burgers die tesamen met ons willen ijveren voor de onafhankelijkheid van de Catalaanse natie.<br /><br />De betoging heeft plaats in Brussel op Zaterdag 7 Maart 2009 en start om 10u aan het Noordstation.<br /><br /><strong>Meer info over ons initiatief vindt u hier :<br /></strong>* De officiële website :<br /><a href="http://10mil.cat/">http://10mil.cat/</a><br />* Uitgebreid persdossier in het Nederlands :<br /><a href="http://10mil.wordpress.com/pers/">http://10mil.wordpress.com/pers/</a><br />* Het speciaal voor de betoging gemaakte lied "Som 10 000 a Brussel•les" van de Catalaanse<br />zanger Gerard Sesé :<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiPfi9wPDU">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiPfi9wPDU</a><br />* Promoclip voor de betoging :<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYj6NY-a8U">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYj6NY-a8U</a><br />* Foto’s :<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35254226@N04/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/35254226@N04/</a><br /><br />Aarzel niet ons te contacteren voor meer achtergrondinformatie, interviews, fotografisch<br />materiaal,...<br />Vriendelijke groeten,<br /><br />Voor de persdienst van het organiserend comité 10MIL.CAT,<br />Manel Bargalló,<br />Josep Poveda.<br /><br /><strong>Contactinfo ( in het Engels of Catalaans ) :<br /></strong># In Brussel : Estela Rodríguez <a href="mailto:estelrodri@gmail.com">estelrodri@gmail.com</a><br /># In Catalonië : Elisenda Paluzie <a href="mailto:epaluzie@ub.edu">epaluzie@ub.edu</a><br />+34 93 403 44 09 (bureau) +34 626 79 02 30 (mobiel)<br /># Internationaal bureau : <a href="mailto:casalscatalans@deumil.cat">casalscatalans@deumil.cat</a><br /># Pers : <a href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat">premsa@deumil.cat</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-52070062495090204782009-02-25T20:01:00.002+01:002009-02-25T20:14:04.063+01:00COMMUNIQUÉ DE PRESSE<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtZWFk8-G_c66-VxmUSx6zVOC2G9MBYIc97ugEppPrKegPReXfkAEiXzaQZku2lFZQJ8RWTgJG0oZb1wAjwpaEqt2bo5E_Oz7G93e9luVBbxVwgXM4Gf1zQQS5XdaSIu5xudkTAUNnNS-/s320/Logo+10mil+(2).JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 262px; height: 172px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtZWFk8-G_c66-VxmUSx6zVOC2G9MBYIc97ugEppPrKegPReXfkAEiXzaQZku2lFZQJ8RWTgJG0oZb1wAjwpaEqt2bo5E_Oz7G93e9luVBbxVwgXM4Gf1zQQS5XdaSIu5xudkTAUNnNS-/s320/Logo+10mil+(2).JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><h1 align="center">COMMUNIQUÉ DE PRESSE</h1><h1 align="center" style="text-align: left;"></h1><br /><h1 align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal;font-family:arial;font-size:16px;"><br /></span></h1><h3 align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal;font-size:16px;">Des milliers de catalans manifesteront pour l’autodétermination de la Catalogne, le 7 mars prochain à Bruxelles.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span></h3><br /><h3 align="center" style="font-size: x-large;">L’INTERNATIONALISATION DU CAS CATALAN MET EN RELIEF LES DIFFICULTES DE L’ETAT ESPAGNOL POUR RESOUDRE DES PROBLEMES IMPORTANTS</h3> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-left:21.6pt;text-align:center; text-indent:-21.6pt"><span lang="FR" style="font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:FRfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">CONFLICTS NATIONALS</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR"><o:p><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language:FR;font-family:Arial;">L</span><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">a nation catalane est une nation sans état avec plus de mille ans d’histoire. Actuellement, la plus grande partie de son territoire fait partie de l’Etat espagnol. Elle a 13 millions d’habitants officiels, et une langue parlée par le 80% de la population. Elle compte aussi une importante littérature reconnue mondialement et une économie basée sur les secteurs services et industrie qui génèrent un PIB de 482 milliards de dollars (ce qui représente 30,5% du PIB espagnol et un PIB per capita de plus de 37 000 dollars).</span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Depuis la perte de son indépendance lors de la Guerre de Succession de 1704 à 1715, voilà 300 ans, les catalans ont toujours essayé de reconquérir leur liberté. Malgré les guerres, les persécutions politiques et les 40 ans de dictature fasciste auxquels sa langue et sa culture ont été soumises, l’identité catalane continue à être solide et pleine de force pour demander d’être reconnue comme état dans Europe.</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">La société civile catalane, depuis toutes ses institutions culturelles, sportives et civiques, lance beaucoup d’initiatives pour revendiquer son droit à l’autodétermination comme peuple. L’initiative « </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Deu Mil a Brussel.les pour l’autodeterminació</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> » (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dix milles à Bruxelles pour l’autodétermination</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">) est de caractère transversal et elle est née et fondée avec la participation active de la société civile. Notre objectif : manifester à Bruxelles le</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">7 mars prochain sous le slogan « </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">We want a Catalan State</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> », tout en revendiquant l’indépendance de notre pays. Nous voulons que l’autodétermination de </span><st1:personname productid="la Catalogne" st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">la Catalogne</span></st1:personname><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> figure dans l’agenda international et que les partis politiques catalans se positionnent en faveur de notre souveraineté et l’introduisent dans ses programmes.</span></span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">L’Espagne a toujours été réticente quant à la pleine reconnaissance de sa diversité plurinationale. </span></span></b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dernièrement</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">la Catalogne a vu comme les gouvernements centraux espagnols ont décidé de fermer le système politique autonomiste pour le laisser comme de simples régions décentralisées administrativement sans aucune souveraineté et reconnaissance fédérale de la nation catalane. Avec la future sentence -adverse selon tous les analystes- du </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Tribunal Constitutionnel espagnol sur les compétences du nouveau Statut d’autonomie approuvé par référendum en 2006, l’Espagne prétend laisser sans effets tous les signes de souveraineté des institutions démocratiques catalanes. L’Espagne n’accepte aucun type d’avancement fédéral ou confédéral vers les nations historiques comme la Catalogne. Le plus grave : le système constitutionnel espagnol nie le droit à l’autodétermination car il interdit explicitement à une région ou nation historique le droit à convoquer et organiser des référendums où les citoyens puissent démocratiquement décider de leur futur. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Pour cela nous voulons aller à Bruxelles, pour revendiquer le droit international et démocratique à l’autodétermination que l’Etat espagnol nous nie systématiquement.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-weight: normal; "><b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"></span></span></b></span></span></b></span></span></span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span lang="FR" style=""><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-weight: normal; "><b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Nous vivons la mondialisation </span></span></b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">avec des</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">importants changements migratoires. Dans ce contexte, les catalans voient leur modèle productif et économique en danger, mais aussi leur modèle de société ouverte, d’intégration et de bien-être pour tous ses citoyens sans distinction de sexes, races ou origine. Avec un déficit fiscal incomparable avec aucune région ou état européen, </span><b><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">et que les experts définissent comme </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">spoliation fiscale</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> continue, les catalans sont chaque fois plus conscients du besoin de se doter des mêmes outils que les états souverains, pour pouvoir ainsi faire face avec des garanties aux réformes structurelles nécessaires. Sans disposer de souveraineté et des ressources nécessaires (aujourd’hui administrés par l’État central), la survivance de la Catalogne comme nation différenciée est menacée. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Nous allons à Bruxelles pour revendiquer notre droit à être un État et disposer des mêmes mécanismes d’indépendance politique pour administrer ses propres ressources comme le reste des pays européens.</span></b></span></span></span></b></span></span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Le Parlement européen nous nie constamment la pleine reconnaissance de notre langue, </span></span></b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">qui est notre identité comme peuple.</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Avec plus de 10 millions de « parlants », et malgré une langue millénaire avec une littérature importante au niveau mondial, elle n’est pas reconnue au même niveau que d’autres langues européennes qui n’ont pas autant de « parlants » ni une littérature aussi importante, pour le simple fait de ne pas être un État. Pour cela, nous voulons aller a Bruxelles, le siège du Parlement et la Commission de l’UE, pour réclamer, en suivant ses recommandations, un État souverain dans l’Union.</span></span></span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Pour la première fois, </span></span></b><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">une initiative sortie de la société 2.0 (web 2.0), à travers des nouvelles technologies comme les réseaux sociaux virtuels (en ce cas Facebook) est en train de se faire réalité. Cette initiative sortie d’internet n’est liée à aucun sigle ou parti politique spécifique, même si nous avons obtenu des soutiens de politiciens, de la plupart des plateformes citoyennes, entités culturelles, écrivains et collectifs sociaux de tout genre. Entre autre, l’ancien porte parole du Conseil général du Pouvoir Judiciaire espagnol, le notaire catalan Alfons López Tena, auteur du récent livre « Catalunya sota Espanya. L’opressió nacional en democràcia » (Dèria editos- La Magrana 2007), un livre polémique et un succès de ventes en Catalogne.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Les catalans, comme toujours au long de leur histoire, seront innovateurs. Et la manifestation à Bruxelles sera un exemple.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Manel Bargalló</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Josep Poveda</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Barcelona,</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">19 février de 2009</span></span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><a href="http://deumil.cat/"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Web:</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count:1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">deumil.cat</span></span></a></span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Presse: </span></span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language:FR"><a href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">premsa@deumil.cat</span></span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">jp.premsa@deumil.cat</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Autres liens d’intérêt. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><a href="http://himne.10mil.cat/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">http://himne.10mil.cat</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><o:p><span style="text-decoration:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><a href="http://facebook.10mil.cat/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">http://facebook.10mil.cat</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><o:p><span style="text-decoration:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><a href="http://myspace.10mil.cat/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">http://myspace.10mil.cat</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><o:p><span style="text-decoration:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><a href="http://youtube.10mil.cat/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">http://youtube.10mil.cat</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><o:p><span style="text-decoration:none"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="FR" style=" ;font-size:11pt;"><a href="http://twitter.10mil.cat/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">http://twitter.10mil.cat</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-37752616731495320062009-02-25T19:51:00.008+01:002009-02-27T13:08:16.098+01:00Tamazgha.fr: Dix mille manifestants à Bruxelles pour l’autodétermination du peuple catalan<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Publié le mercredi, 25 février 2009 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:24;"> </span><br /><h2>Dix mille manifestants à Bruxelles pour l’autodétermination du peuple catalan<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></h2><h4>Manifestation à Bruxelles le samedi 7 février 2009 à 11h.<o:p></o:p></h4><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306810298358713794" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTdkw11lOB5z2_w1mPuE8gfBdYCCnGVGeY5p7a5v9Utg2HgrKNjs_ce5GoerB2cBwH3Bo8ulWIl6Y27eZXLqe3KLaHjqW7TjUgcDHcdieZ_7VSUjROQH_RxGbDVqhylDN6Gu2YIBkC0ruJ/s320/Dibuix1.JPG" border="0" /> <div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Des associations catalanes appellent à une grande manifestation à Bruxelles le samedi 7 mars 2009 à partir de 11h pour s’exprimer en faveur de l’autodétermination du peuple catalan.</span> <h4><p class="spip"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">C’est avec le slogan de "Dix mille à Bruxelles pour l’autodétermination" que les Catalans défilerons à Bruxelles le samedi 7 mars 2009 à partir de 11H.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p></h4><h3>Solidarité Tamazgha-Catalogne<o:p></o:p></h3><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306811037249028962" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 237px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrx6YT30X7WlfSVe5-K62Rr1mDUvt9jOzsJk4oHmczQo5fh0ZhIOhj4FQIQ6EDwlp4p6NkwEfXwMSWpNU8ZseslO9CoVBw0fm-B84fh449SoS1VbjRw8Iv2jrNR85Nrfyt-sXkZkk0WK16/s320/dibuix2.JPG" border="0" /> <h3><p class="spip" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 12pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">L’association </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tamazgha</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> soutient cette action et exprime sa solidarité au peuple catalan dans son action en faveur l’autodétermination.<br /><br /></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tamazgha</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> appelle Imazighen de Bruxelles, de Belgique et des pays voisins (Pays-bas et France notamment) à se joindre, nombreuses et nombreux, à cette initiative pour manifester aux côtés des Catalans à Bruxelles le samedi 7 février 2009.<br /><br />C’est une occasion également pour nous d’exprimer notre attachement à l’autodétermination des peuples et dire au monde notre volonté de nous inscrire dans un combat de libération nationale du peuple amazigh pris, depuis des siècles, par les griffes de l’arabo-islamisme qui a programmé son éradication.<br /><br />Et que les drapeaux amazighs soient brandis ce samedi 7 février aux côtés du drapeau catalan pour exprimer la solidarité amazigho-catalane.<br /><br /><br /></span></span><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:personname st="on" productid="La Rédaction."><strong><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">La Rédaction.</span></span></i></strong></st1:personname><strong> </strong><o:p></o:p></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" align="center"><span lang="CA"><hr align="center" width="100%" size="2"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="CA"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" align="center"><span lang="CA"><a href="http://deumil.cat/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; text-underline: none">Pour plus d’informations à propos de la manifestation catalane à Bruxelles</span></strong></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 12pt"><span lang="CA"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" align="center"><span lang="CA"><hr align="center" width="100%" size="2"></span></div></h3><h2> <o:p></o:p></h2><span lang="CA" style="mso-fareast-Times: ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:12;" ><br /></span><span style="FLOAT: left"></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-29214945912170993082009-02-25T13:24:00.000+01:002009-02-25T13:25:04.103+01:00EU Minority in support of 10.000<p><span class="titre">ACTUALITÉ • LES BRÈVES D'EUROMINORITY</span></p> <span class="titre"><b>10 000 Catalans invités à Bruxelles pour l'autodétermination en mars prochain</b></span><br /> <span class="texte-petit">[24/01/2009] </span><br /> <br />Ce qui a commencé comme un simple fil de commentaires sur un blog s'est transformé en une mobilisation qui a poussé des milliers de Catalans à Bruxelles pour y réclamer le droit à l'autodétermination. La plate-forme Deumil.cat a présenté hier la campagne pour réclamer dans la capitale européenne un référendum sur l'indépendance en Catalogne.<br /><br />Enric Canela, un des promoteurs de l'initiative, a déclaré que l'objectif de la mobilisation est d'"internationaliser le conflit qui a lieu en Catalogne", afin qu'il apparaisse "au yeux du monde". En tête de cortège, on pouvait lire : "Nous devons réussir à organiser un référendum sur l'autodétermination". Les promoteurs de la campagne souhaitent qu'il s'agisse d'une initiative de la société civile et non directement des partis politiques, lesquels sont invités à s'y associer.<br /><br />Selon la plate-forme, maintenant le moment est venu de poser la question du référendum, parce que la réforme statuaire a conduit le pays "dans une impasse". Pour Deumil.cat, il s'agit simplement que la Catalogne soit dotée d'un état propre, étant donné qu'en Europe actuellement "seuls les États y sont reconnus".<br /><br />La mobilisation, qui utilise massivement les outils Internet comme les blogs ou Facebook, veut réussir à ce que 10.000 Catalans se mobilisent à Bruxelles le 7 mars prochain et y réclament le droit de décider de l'avenir de la Catalogne, lors d'une manifestation qui parcourra les rues de la ville flamande.<br /><br />L'initiative de Deumil.cat est apparue après que l'article "Perplexe, moi ?", d'Enric Canela, publié en septembre dernier sur le blog Grand du Sobiranisme, ait suscité un bon nombre de commentaires des lecteurs.<br /><br />Article traduit du catalan : MónDivers.cat est partenaire d'Eurominority.eu<br /> <br /> (<i><a href="http://www.mondivers.cat/" target="_blank">Source : MónDivers</a></i>)Critichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05517573203208631816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-29351848176810260842009-02-25T13:20:00.001+01:002009-02-25T13:22:29.563+01:00Singapore democrats note 10.000<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:7;color:#666666;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span>http://yoursdp.org/index.php/news/nonviolent-action-news/europe/1960-nva-in-europe-2009-february-21<br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:7;color:#666666;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />10 thousand in Brussels for self-determination</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">By: European Free Alliance, February 17, 2009</span><br />10 Thousand in Brussels for Self-determination", this is the name of the manifestation organized by Catalan organisations, that will take place in Brussels on the 7th of March. The initiative came from a spontaneous reaction of catalan people to the article "Bewildered, I?" in which the author Enric Canela highlights the current political situation in Catalunya and asks himself if it would be possible to bring thousands of people in Madrid to defend the right of Catalans to self-determination, as the American people led by Martin Luther King did in 1963, when 200.000 people met in Washington to defend the rights of black people.</span>Critichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05517573203208631816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-34018973460978237012009-02-25T10:29:00.004+01:002009-02-26T09:56:38.931+01:00INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:‘10 thousand Catalans to Brussels’ with Professor Enric I. Canela<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiPqRcFf8dXrgG0irFV__TbP9zkkTffSlClKh9PdPo7asSI738ayXw4ui-MInzG6TzpF9ANClrz1Q5Jxp-p0yRZCq5ntaZ6yPl4DxoNuRg9dKKibG7GEUM_UxTYg_05nAUqfjOCO_0l08d/s1600-h/Enric+Canela_web_cast.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306672315121916274" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 283px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 153px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiPqRcFf8dXrgG0irFV__TbP9zkkTffSlClKh9PdPo7asSI738ayXw4ui-MInzG6TzpF9ANClrz1Q5Jxp-p0yRZCq5ntaZ6yPl4DxoNuRg9dKKibG7GEUM_UxTYg_05nAUqfjOCO_0l08d/s320/Enric+Canela_web_cast.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>‘10 thousand Catalans to Brussels’ with Professor Enric I. Canela<br /></strong></span><br /><em>To listen the interview click in this link </em><a href="http://webcast.deumil.cat/"><em>http://webcast.deumil.cat/</em></a><em><br /></em><br /><br /><span style="color:#000066;">In just a few days time, on the 7th of March, Catalonia, a stateless nation in the heart of Europe, is ready to march to Brussels in a gesture to show its determination for Independence. ´Ten thousand Catalans to Brussels`, is the name given to this iniciative, borned from the very social fabric of Catalunya. Today we ask professor Enric I. Canela, head of the BioChemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona, and one of the main figures behind this social movement, why is that Catalans feel the need to be marching to Brussels and what is that europeans, and other citiziens of the world, can do to support their right to decide their own fate.<br /></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#000066;"><strong>1. Interviewer: 10,000 Catalans marching into Brussels are a lot of people. This initiative must therefore have a lot of support. What is going on in Catalonia?<br /></strong></span>1. Enric I. Canela: Catalonia has always been a different nation to the country of Spain and that’s the reason why we have so many different traits. A recent illustration of the Spanish fixation for not letting Catalonia live fruitfully within her rights is back in 1981 when a coup was attempted by the Spanish military, led by a follower of the deceased dictator Franco. At that time, it was the beginning of the Spanish democracy and the coup was a reaction to talks that were taking place between Catalonia and Spain to develop the idea of a co federation status, a dual power status between Catalonia and Spain. Step by step, as years have passed, we’ve come to realise that this will never be possible and so in 2005 the Catalan Parliament approved the Catalan Estatut, a type of constitution but this has been completely dismissed by the Spanish Government and will shortly be sentenced by the Spanish Courts to mean nothing at all. All of this has driven Catalan people to say enough is enough and our frustration is now manifesting itself in very clear ways, louder than ever before. Now the determination for independence from Spain is getting very alive and strong.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">2. What type of people supports the independence? Which type of people would come to Brussels on 7 March?</span></strong><br />2. I think if we consider the people that have joined this manifestation so far, we can safely say that they come from all corners of Catalonia and all walks of life. We have business people, professionals like doctors, lawyers, we have workers, butchers, the young, the elderly. Just people who feel that the independence of Catalonia is the only way for our people, for our culture.<br />The march is not branded by any political party but we have received the support of individuals from all of the nationalist political parties of the country.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">3. What would your ideal outcome of the march be?</span></strong><br />3. We have 2 objectives. That Europe, the world, acknowledge that in Catalonia we live in conflict, not armed conflict perhaps but none the less we live in constant conflict. So we aim for the internationalisation of the conflict, we want the media, the politicians, the citizens of Europe in general, to acknowledge what is happening here in Catalonia, on their doorstep. Following from that, getting the conflict out in the open, we wish to ensure that the local Catalan politicians have to consider that a great number of people are now demanding the final independence of Catalonia. We want to force them to take this into account and make it become a political reality and in doing so therefore, the Spanish politicians will have to end up negotiating on the conflict, instead of simply ignoring it for their own benefit.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">4. Do you hope for European understanding? Is it not enough that we all are just Europeans? Why do you need a strong nationalist?</span></strong><br />4. We Catalans have great tradition. First of all Catalonia has a culture, a language that are as distinct and unique and different as all of the other different European languages. We’ve maintained it and preserved it for centuries. It’s worth considering that Catalonia had the first European Parliament, even before the English, which was the cradle of all of the European democracies that we have today. Therefore we have a great tradition of being a fully functioning and distinctive nation and a political state by itself that goes back as far as the 8th Century and the legacy of Charles the Great. This capacity that we have for self government has been maintained for all of those centuries right up to the configuration of the Spanish co federation at the beginning of modern times. We Catalans have been subject to endless wars in which we have regularly been defeated by a larger army but we have to understand here that there’s not always been a united nations, historically the bigger the territory, the bigger the army and as a result of these defeats we’ve had our culture persecuted and our language banned. In recent times this persecution peaked after the Spanish Civil War when all the Catalan bodies of governments and the Catalan Republic were dissolved by Franco. Franco, the fascist dictator, winner of the Spanish Civil War, maintained a very tight alliance with Hitler and Mussolini and they and their fascist agenda stepped over Catalonian free doers and restarted heavy persecutions. Finally, when the dictator died and democracy arrived to Spain in 1975, there was created a constitution where Catalonia once again aspired to establish a bi-lateral power status on the form of a cofederation but again little by little the situation eroded as I explained earlier. We have the right to protect our language, which now, although spoken by 7 million people which is many more than some other recognised European languages, Catalan is still considered a second class language. In order for us to maintain our different traits, our culture as a nation, we need our own state.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">5. Professor Canela, what would you say to a European citizen, Finnish for example, or an Austrian person, who is not aware of your conflict and therefore indifferent towards your cause?</span></strong><br />5. Maybe I would turn my thoughts to the history of the Nordic countries for example and how the Swedish crown established a separation of the Nordic states in order to preserve each of their own different national identities, leading to what we now know as the modern Scandinavia. Or I would recall how Czechoslovakia, via a mutual understanding created 2 different independent republics, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The first reasons for Europe to exist is to be the people’s Europe. The Europe of the states has no future because it will only represent the interests of those with enough power to pressure, they will not represent the real needs of the European citizens. By helping to protect the rights of other European countries, you ensure your own rights are protected. Europe’s great strength has always been in its cultural diversity and the innovation and the creativity that it generates. The greater number of strong and independent European cultures that are allowed to flourish, the better.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">6. Catalans have a long history fighting for their freedom, why are you still part of Spain? Which are the main reasons?</span></strong><br />6. There are mainly 2 reasons. Firstly, prior to globalisation, it was in the economical interests of the elite within Spain to maintain the Spanish internal market and here therefore there was always this terrible fear of losing the privileges if Catalonia and its citizens stopped being part of this market. Secondly, there are the continuous wars that we’ve been engaged in fighting to defend ourselves since the 17th Century. Wars that we have unfortunately lost because of more formidable powers to our borders. Portugal for example, only got the chance to be independent because Spain chose to direct its fighting efforts towards keeping hold of Catalonia instead of fighting on both fronts. Following all these centuries of battle and struggle, suffering and resistance against this aggressive attitude towards Catalonia, we arrived to modern times and the fascist alliance of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini which as you may imagine made very harsh times for our people. The guns have always been the method to keep us but in the end all these forced relationships have to end up breaking.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">7. What disadvantages do Catalan people experience every day as a result of being under Spanish rule?<br /></span></strong>7. One of it is economical. Catalonia has always been by far the most developed region in the Iberic peninsula, that the wealth that Catalonia generates is unfairly distributed among the less productive territories of Spain and as such Catalan citizens actually end up receiving less benefit than the citizens of the regions which don’t produce nearly as much and that’s a well known fact.<br />What problems does this produce? Well if Catalonia doesn’t have enough resources to reinvest, we lose the capacity for development. In practical terms what this means for example, is that Catalonian citizens have more problems to have schools and hospitals compared with other regions, when it is in Catalonia where the vast majority of the resources are generated. Another clear example, one that I know very well as a professor of a university, universities in Catalonia are run by the university rules that the Spanish Central Government decides. These rules prevent our productive development. Right now for example, all of Europe is working towards a standard for higher education. Europe has decided for a 3 year bachelor course. Spain have not. They’ve decided on a 4 year bachelor course. Catalans can’t do anything about that and the homogenisation of our students with other European students is now in jeopardy. We don’t have either the flexibility to decide upon salaries in order to attract and hire professors or researchers coming from other countries. We can’t develop our own research centres without the resources that have been taken from us by the Spanish Government. As you can imagine it’s a very frustrating and very difficult situation. We can’t attend to the migration from other countries because it is an area managed by the Spanish Government. In reality, in practical terms, we cannot do anything without the permission or without a law that is for all of the rest of the Spanish territories that does not take into consideration the possibility of differences in needs. This generates situations which makes us lose competitiveness, resources, capacity for reaction, capacity for development etc.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">8. How is it that there is still such national identity, what do you attribute with that to?<br /></span></strong>8. When transportation was slower and less available, language was a natural frontier and as any other European nation that has had a language develop in a different way to another, it creates a community that holds different traits to another. Catalonia has always been a land of passing for many different cultures which impacted upon our own. Meanwhile in other areas of the interior of the Iberic peninsula this didn’t happen. All of this created the very different culture, the more European facing culture that is the Catalan culture that we have today. However, these days the problem arises when Catalonia media is under a constant submission to the vast quantities of Spanish media, TV, news etc. Because language is so important and the Spanish nationalism is very active with lots of means at its disposal, we find ourselves empty handed in order to prevent the slow erosion of our culture. With globalisation, it’s only these natural frontiers, like language, that can assure the survival of one’s own culture. Therefore, now more than ever, we need the right to promote our own identity.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">9. Catalonians have made a lot of progress on their own, without external help already. For example Catalan is a language used to teach in all schools in Catalonia. Recently the Spanish Police (Guardia Civil) have been removed. So why is total independence still so important?</span></strong><br />9. To keep the language and the culture. Yes the school system is in Catalan but it’s also true that these days we find ourselves in a very different situation than a few years ago. Although Catalan is spoken in the schools, Spanish is increasingly the language on the street due to massive immigration which is mainly coming from South America. This is a phenomena that a few years ago we didn’t have and it’s a very serious problem for the continuity of our language unless we can create and regulate the mechanism that could guarantee the survival of our language. This is a problem that immigration does not cause in countries who are in charge of their own language of course. It is totally impossible that with a system as the one that we have today working within the Spanish state, that Catalonia can keep on being innovative, that we can keep on attracting foreign capital and have the position to be a decision-making centre. This is progressively more and more difficult because the tension that Madrid provocates is enormous. If Catalonia is to be a developed country in the next 25 years it is a prerequisite that we must have our own state.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">10. So why does Spain not give you the independence?</span></strong><br />10. The departure of Catalonia would mean a decrease in the capacity for other parts of Spain to develop, in the way that we are a factory, the benefits of which are pocketed on other territories by other people. I’ll give you an example. Catalonia had 2 robust, very important electric companies. These 2 electric companies were simply taken by the Spanish Government, made into one, which was then headquartered in Madrid. A company headquartered in Madrid, who had all its clients in Catalonia. This doesn’t make any sense at all. The national spirit of the Spanish Government is very strong. Another example happened in the País Basc with one of their main banks. The Spanish simply proceeded to join it with a Spanish bank and again headquartered the bank in Madrid when it had been traditionally a Basc bank. I mean it’s like a genetic sense of possession which makes it unavoidable that these strong tensions arise. Spain will never, without external pressure, accept our independence.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">11. Why can’t this go to referendum amongst the people in Catalonia?</span></strong><br />11. Because of a very easy legal reason. Referendums can only be authorised by the Spanish central power and it’s the Spanish state who end up deciding what is that Catalonia wants to be.<br />What it is that Catalonia has the right to be can only be decided by the whole Spanish state, by the opinion formulated by all the citizens of all the Spanish territories. The right to decide is not a right owned by the Catalans. The Spanish as a whole will never accept in any way shape or form that Catalans could express their desire by referendum. It’s a question of saying, we have the capacity to decide if you guys can make a referendum and we just don’t want to let you. Plain and simple.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000066;">12. And finally Professor Canella, what could the European citizen who agrees with your right to freedom, do to help?</span></strong><br />12. Well it helps that people just understand what is the situation that Catalans live under. In<br />Canada, in Quebec where French is spoken, Quebec can call a referendum in which the people of Quebec can decide if they wish to be independent or not and the French citizens are absolutely in agreement with that right. Are the French citizens in agreement that a referendum could be held in Catalonia? Why is one different than the other? There they speak French regardless that the rest of Canada speak English. So why can the same reasoning not be applied here in Catalonia. We therefore simply ask for the support of the European citizens for us to be allowed to hold a referendum. We don’t ask for them to decide if Catalonia has to be independent or not, we are only asking for European citizens to agree with the fact that the people of Catalonia, should be allowed to decide for themselves, if they want their nation to be independent or not.<br /><br />………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….<br /><span style="color:#000066;">Thank you very much.<br />For any comments or feedback please do not hesitate to contact us at,</span> </div><br /><div align="justify"><br /><a href="mailto:anna.arque@deumil.cat">anna.arque@deumil.cat</a><br /><a href="http://www.deumil.cat/">http://www.deumil.cat/</a><br /><a href="http://webcast.deumil.cat/">http://webcast.deumil.cat/</a> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-23054401394361778282009-02-24T19:05:00.020+01:002009-02-26T09:57:18.925+01:00PRESS DOSSIER: 10.000 in Brussels for self-determination of the Catalan Nation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtZWFk8-G_c66-VxmUSx6zVOC2G9MBYIc97ugEppPrKegPReXfkAEiXzaQZku2lFZQJ8RWTgJG0oZb1wAjwpaEqt2bo5E_Oz7G93e9luVBbxVwgXM4Gf1zQQS5XdaSIu5xudkTAUNnNS-/s1600-h/Logo+10mil+(2).JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306430089784057218" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 262px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 172px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtZWFk8-G_c66-VxmUSx6zVOC2G9MBYIc97ugEppPrKegPReXfkAEiXzaQZku2lFZQJ8RWTgJG0oZb1wAjwpaEqt2bo5E_Oz7G93e9luVBbxVwgXM4Gf1zQQS5XdaSIu5xudkTAUNnNS-/s320/Logo+10mil+(2).JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="LINE-HEIGHT: 19px;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:13;" ><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">10.000 in Brussels for self-determination of the Catalan Nation</span></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Help us make a firm step towards independence</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"></span></p><h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Inntroduction and objectives</h2><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The Catalan Nation is a nation without a state with over one thousand years of history, and most of whose territory is now within the Spanish State. It has an official population of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">13 million inhabitants</span>, with its own language, broad, comprehensive literature, and a service- and industry-based economy with a GDP of $482 bn. representing 30.5% of Spain's GDP and a per capita GDP of over $37,000.</p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Historically, the Catalan nation has been a great European power, and in the 14th century was the most powerful nation in the Mediterranean. However, in the early 18th century, Catalonia lost its independence in a war against an alliance between Spain and France.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">For over 300 years now, the Catalans have not ceased trying to recover their freedom, and even through wars, political persecution and forty years of fascist dictatorship during which its language and culture were downtrodden, the Catalan identity remains firm and we are unwavering in our claim to recognition for our own state in Europe.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Catalan civil society, in the form of cultural, sports and civic institutions, constantly takes action in initiatives to demand our right to self-determination as a European people.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic" mce_name="em" mce_fixed="1">Ten Thousand in Brussels for Self-Determination of the Catalan Nation</span></span> is an example of a<span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Society 2.0</span> initiative. It arose in response to the article <a href="http://blocgran.cat/?p=187" mce_href="http://blocgran.cat/?p=187">Perplex, jo?</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic" mce_name="em" mce_fixed="1"> (Perplexed, me?) <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: normal">posted by Enric Canela in the <a href="http://blocgran.cat/" mce_href="http://blocgran.cat/">Bloc gran del sobiranisme</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"> </span>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Sovereignty's Great Blog<span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal">) on the 6th of September, 2008, and the readers' comments, from which the initiative immediately began its propagation via a <a href="http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25635198441&ref=mf" mce_href="http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25635198441&ref=mf">Facebook</a> group and our <a href="http://deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/">deumil.cat</a> website.</span></span></span></span><br /></p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306430282615283874" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 195px; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmTpPxQ9BS_D8g1bl3KsN5aJ6ez9hSSsfUrg6efqHwlcru9d8B6C954a047wz9VLvEvx1r_5TGDXbUs1xf_SfqBoSP4EDOhurmIDiJnqC0GaDNSYSZMjPIXWydytcad_h2CgEja9mvmk4p/s320/CAT_EU.GIF" border="0" /> <p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">This platform is the basis from which we are working together for the consolidation and eventual success of our aim: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">we are all going to Brussels <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">on the 7th of March</span> to our common call: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">"We want our own State"</span>, claiming independence for our country.</span></span></p><p></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">We want <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">self determination for the Catalan nation to figure on the international agenda</span> and that of our nation's political parties, driven by our force, that <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">they declare formal support for independence and<span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">include it in their programmes</span>. Furthermore, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">we want them to commit to working towards achieving it</span>.</span></span></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><br /></span></p><h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Who we are addressing</h2><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The initiative for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic" mce_name="em" mce_fixed="1">Ten Thousand in Brussels for self-determination of the Catalan Nation</span></span> is of a<span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">transversal</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"> nature and is</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">totally open to the individual citizen as well as to the associations that make up our civil society <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">that show their commitment to the defence of the Catalan language, its culture and nation, and especially to the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">citizen platforms that have lately stood out in the largest mobilizations in response to the aggressions to our freedom, claiming the right to decide</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">. But we are also </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">addressing professionals, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">trade unionists and social agents </span><span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">who have understood that the defence of their positions and of their industries goes hand in hand with greater freedom and capacity for the country to decide its own policies.</span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306431045711769618" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 199px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 298px; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeDwXmBINaV7Xu5o6sjACBihI8xT-1MconDkf-6TLkjgnwZhHI_OIDy_Y4LyrQ5v0g7rT2lDWS3JoxGtus121kD8mbSLrs9IF8dlnyHPCXXeACsE_tlfhOc2ebB21_Bylnr5Ij1g5TG2sR/s320/VWIMGBMljpw.jpg" border="0" /></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">But above all, we are conscious that</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">we are mainly addressing Catalan citizens who, tired of their not being heard, want to make clear with their own voice in Europe and the world our wish to be an independent nation.</span><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br /></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">This project, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">which is not subject to any particular political group or party</span>, is open to all<span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">individuals, organisations and platforms</span> to work together, maintaining their independence, but with a common objective: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline; webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline" mce_name="u" mce_fixed="1">the Independence of the Catalan Nation</span></span>.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Why now?</h2><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306432292433953730" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 263px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 296px; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWSgLRFTLgSUDzo5NmSNNZmu-jrnluEq7Zdfh1KerT8ogNPNHowRH_iIMFk7yGgEcuoI3Mwvyn2q-UdG6Y7JWCyE00nb7-aouKmOyDmFEAs1R9UQdbO0UHUBj3HLchiwPTtrc2X5aceEBo/s320/Mapa_Eur_Cat.GIF" border="0" /> <p></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Now that we live in an ever more globalized world, Catalonia, and by extension, all the Catalan-speaking countries, is coming to a difficult, disconcerting crossroad. The constant submission during three-hundred years of our nation by the Spanish State <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">constitutes the greatest burden for our development</span>, and further, it <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">endangers our survival as a nation within Europe</span> where only States are recognised.</p><p></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">The time has come</span>. The cul-de-sac we have been led into by the recent Statutory reforms, the Miravet Statute, passed in 2006 after several serious cutbacks (and which is currently in the hands of the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal which clearly intends to limit the competencies still further), ought to make the whole of our country's political class and civil society that wants a better future think very seriously. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">The time has come for the Catalans to decide on our future,</span> it is time to become sovereign as a fully recognised nation in the international context, so we can deploy all our collective capacities.<br /></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Over the last years, the political environment, whether Catalan, Spanish or European, has taught us <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">that there is no other alternative for us to be Catalans with the same rights and duties as other European peoples who have their own state</span>. That is why we have to go to Brussels to demonstrate <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">our will to become a European Union member state</span>.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><br /></span></p><h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Organization</h2><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikS-5b7pKhZZHa12K0JYVtKIaKmmLQoHVG4cBa5Wm03CnttFoN0Uvkjl2mchGYrn9KKtE12xZxIKlWjFkD-KlokZSdkDiD_a5R3yLEXlwAYtqgnivtdjcBtkmwX4b32oj-oTz0FmVUmT7z/s1600-h/xarxa.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306433201013400850" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 302px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 203px; TEXT-ALIGN: justify" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikS-5b7pKhZZHa12K0JYVtKIaKmmLQoHVG4cBa5Wm03CnttFoN0Uvkjl2mchGYrn9KKtE12xZxIKlWjFkD-KlokZSdkDiD_a5R3yLEXlwAYtqgnivtdjcBtkmwX4b32oj-oTz0FmVUmT7z/s320/xarxa.JPG" border="0" /></a> <p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">In order to make this event possible, we need <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">the participation and the commitment of the largest possible number of people and organisations</span>. So as to coordinate all the activities and, above all, to guarantee the success of the event, the platform <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">has been constituted by a council with limited membership, and is responsible for the coordination of the action points</span> in order to get as many Catalans to Brussels next March 7th.</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Each member responsible for an action point is free to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">create as many volunteer networks as they deem necessary, and each volunteer network can set up further networks</span>. The council is permanently in touch via the <a href="http://deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/">deumil.cat</a> website.<br /></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The action points set up so far are:<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><ul class="unIndentedList"><li style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Relations with Institutions and Political Parties</span></li><li style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Relations with other Catalan pro-Sovereignty and Cultural Platforms</span></li><li style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Logistics and Transport to Brussels</span></li><li style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Communication and Promotion</span></li><li style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Territorial Deployment of the Volunteer Network. One delegate is planned for each Catalan town and also in others cities worldwide.</span></li><li style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Virtual Management and the Internet</span></li></ul><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The documents required for the establishment of the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Deumil.cat</span> association have been submitted to the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan government).</p><h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Participation in the project</h2><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The success of the project lies in the participation of the greatest possible number of people ready to work during the coming months in order to mobilise thousands of Catalans to take part in the demonstration in the streets of Brussels.</p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">We are therefore requesting your commitment to this project, whether you can attend personally or not. There are many ways in which you can act and collaborate: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">making the march known via the media, preparation of public events far and wide, organising activities, making contacts with the press and other media, attending meetings with volunteers</span>, etc. Any activity will help with making the project publicly known and making people aware of the situation.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">One example is signer-songwriter <a href="http://www.gerardsese.com/" mce_href="http://www.gerardsese.com/">Gerard Sesé</a>'s chant or hymn for the "Som 10.000 a Brussel·les" initiative, which you will find on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/10MilCat" mce_href="http://www.youtube.com/10MilCat">You Tube</a>, <a href="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&channelid=433120612" mce_href="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&channelid=433120612">MySpace</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1067599414034&oid=25635198441" mce_href="http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1067599414034&oid=25635198441">Facebook</a> and which you can also download from the <a href="http://www.deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://www.deumil.cat/">Deumil.cat</a>website.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">There is also a promotional video at:</p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYj6NY-a8U&eurl=http://deumil.cat/index.php?;action=login2" mce_href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYj6NY-a8U&eurl=http://deumil.cat/index.php?;action=login2">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYj6NY-a8U&eurl=http://deumil.cat/index.php?;action=login2</a><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">You can register at the <a href="http://deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/">deumil.cat</a> site, joining the sections or action points. Above all, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">we request volunteers to set up territorial networks, not only in the Catalan-speaking countries, but also worldwide</span>.</p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Each of the territorial delegates will be responsible for communicating information on the project, preparing public or media events in the territory, and above all, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">filling a coach, a plane or a train, depending on the particular demand and the offer</span> being made ready by the Logistics and Transport section.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Each delegate is totally free to mobilise their fellow citizens, as long as they use the material and the information made available on the <a href="http://deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/">deumil.cat</a> website (Catalan) and <a href="http://catalanstate.blogspot.com/" mce_href="http://catalanstate.blogspot.com/">http://catalanstate.blogspot.com/</a>(English)<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The ‘Cause' created in <a href="http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25635198441&ref=mf" mce_href="http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25635198441&ref=mf">Facebook</a> will be maintained to send messages and communicate easily and quickly. But for discussions, contributions, materials and documentation, please use the website.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">We firmly believe that, thanks to new technologies, particularly the distributed social networks around the territory; we will contribute to making a firm step forward towards independence of our nation.</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Thank you in advance for your help!</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Addresses & contacts</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal">Territorial Coordination: <a href="mailto:extensio@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:extensio@deumil.cat">extensio@deumil.cat</a></span></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">International: <a href="mailto:casalscatalans@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:casalscatalans@deumil.cat">casalscatalans@deumil.cat</a></p><p></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Press: <a href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat">premsa@deumil.cat</a><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Virtual Admin: <a href="mailto:admin@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:admin@deumil.cat">admin@deumil.cat</a><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Other Issues: <a href="mailto:correu@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:correu@deumil.cat">correu@deumil.cat</a><br /></div><p></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">There were nearly 200 territorial delegates upon writing this document (February 2009); we need many more.<br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">You can register at our site: <a href="http://deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/">http://deumil.cat/</a> Click on <a href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?action=registrarse" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?action=registrarse">Enregistrar-se</a>. (Register)<br /></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">If you want to collaborate in spreading the word and recruiting more volunteers in your town and neighbourhood, go to <a href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?board=6" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?board=6">Delegats Territorials Països Catalans (més...)</a> or to<br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?action=mapaterritorial" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?action=mapaterritorial">Mapa centres territorials</a> to see if there is already a territorial delegate (where you can comment on your availability). If there is no one, you can start a new subject, to volunteer, at <a href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?board=6;action=post;title=Crear%2Bnou%2Btema" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?board=6;action=post;title=Crear%2Bnou%2Btema">Crear nou tema</a>.<a href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?action=mapaterritorial" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/index.php?action=mapaterritorial"><br /></a></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">To post on the site, you must have registered.<br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1"><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Once your readiness has been confirmed, we will add you to the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-STYLE: italic" mce_name="em" mce_fixed="1">official</span> list of territorial delegates.<br /></div></span><p></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">Join our initiative</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" mce_name="strong" mce_fixed="1">!</span></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br /></span></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-14569996359811505722009-02-23T22:33:00.005+01:002009-02-26T09:57:41.873+01:0010,000 Catalans to March on Brussels<span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(64,0,88);font-family:Arial;font-size:13;" ><div class="post-body" style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 0.75em; LINE-HEIGHT: 1.3em"><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); LINE-HEIGHT: normal; WHITE-SPACE: pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;">10,000 Catalans to March on Brussels</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">Posted in British Nationalists in Wales WATCH on </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">Monday, February 16, 2009</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Once you've been on the <a style="COLOR: rgb(157,0,216)" href="http://stdavidsday.org/">St David's Day parade</a></span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> in the capital, you may wish to go another parade - <a style="COLOR: rgb(157,0,216)" href="http://deumil.cat/">this time in Brussels</a></span><br /><br /><a style="COLOR: rgb(157,0,216)" href="http://deumil.cat/"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 4px; BORDER-TOP: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 4px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 4px; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; PADDING-TOP: 4px; BORDER-BOTTOM: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid" alt="Deumil" src="http://deumil.cat/imatges/Logo%2010mil%20%282%29.JPG" align="left" border="0" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">I've just been alerted to a massive campaign in the Catalan Countries to march on the European Capital on 7 March to demand the right of the Catalan nation to chose their own constitutional future. The organisers are aiming for 10,000 persons to travel from Catalonia to Brussels for the march... and seem to be on target!<br /><br />At the moment, the Spanish constitution has made it illegal to hold a referendum on succession from the Spanish state. So, although this right is part of the Good Friday Agreement in the UK and one supposes were Wales or Scotland to wish so, then we could also hold a referendum to leave the UK. This basic right doesn't exist in Spain. This illogical decision is one reason for the continued violence in the Basque Country.<br /><br />If the Spanish constitution gave the historic nations which make up the Spanish state (nations which precede that state) the right to a democratic vote, then any legitimacy which ETA claims to have would have been taken from beneath their feet. It would then be the job of ETA's supporters to make a peaceful case as to why the Basque country should gain independence.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the Spanish Cortes </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibarretxe_Plan"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">voted down the Basque premiere Ibarretxe's bill on the right to a vote on 'free association'</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">. Making Ibarrexte a nationalist of WAJ-PNV party (the SDLP-type party) look stupid, and give credibility to the ETA supporters who say Spain will never democratically allow the Basques the right to chose.<br /><br />Fortunately, there is no ETA-type militant wing in Catalonia. However, the Spanish elite are stalling many </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_of_New_Statute_of_Autonomy_for_Catalonia_of_2005"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">agreed principles in the New Statute which the Catalans campaigned and won a few years ago</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">.<br /><br />It's a basic questions. What moral right does the Spanish state, which was formed in 1492, have to deny nations which precede that state, the right to independence? It's a right which the west didn't recognise for the USSR, the Habsburg Empire, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Ireland nor countless other nations. Should we only recognise those states which existed in 1492?<br /><br /></span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">Why not take a Draig Goch flag and take a trip to Brussels in support of our Catalan friends?</span></span><br /><br /></p><div style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 0.75em; COLOR: rgb(255,0,0); LINE-HEIGHT: 1.3em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Visca Catalunya - Cymru am Byth!</span></span></div><p></p><div style="CLEAR: both; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0.75em; LINE-HEIGHT: 1.3em"></div></div><div class="post-footer" style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 0.75em; COLOR: rgb(64,0,88); LINE-HEIGHT: 1.3emfont-size:87%;" ><p class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-1"><span class="post-author">Posted by Nicholas Michael Morgan</span></p></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-51437803940348124572009-02-23T11:54:00.005+01:002009-02-26T09:58:11.291+01:0015 reasons why Catalonia can no longer form part of Spain<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong><span style="font-size:+0;"></span><span style="font-size:+0;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(255,0,0)">15 reasons why Catalonia</span></span></strong></span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="COLOR: rgb(255,0,0)">can no longer form part of Spain</span></strong></span></p><p align="left">1. Because Spain prevents the Catalans from deciding our political future.<br /><br />2. Because official Spain is allergic to the Catalan language and culture.<br /><br />3. Because the 10% of Catalonia’s GDP that is creamed off by Spain devastates our economy.<br /><br />4. Because repressive sentences passed by Franco are still in force.<br /><br />5. Because Catalonia is prevented from participating in international sport.<br /><br />6. Because Spain systematically ignores U.N. calls against impunity for the Franco regime<br /><br />7. Because the mass graves of Franco’s victims are still uninvestigated.<br /><br />8. Because Spanish courts systematically overrule Catalan laws.<br /><br />9. Because many Spanish streets are still named after Nazis and Fascists.<br /><br />10. Because Catalans are a constant target of prejudice and abuse.<br /><br />11. Because Spain never apologized for executing our President in 1940.<br /><br />12. Because Catalonia wants to contribute to the future of Europe.<br /><br />13. Because Catalonia wants to share its language with all Europeans.<br /><br />14. Because Catalonia needs a constituency for its own MEPs. .<br /><br />15. Because Catalonia wants France and Spain as amiable neighbours on friendly terms.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:180%;color:#ff0000;">No European can fail to understand this</span></strong></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6338144692725804436.post-85409989684346708072009-02-22T12:44:00.009+01:002009-02-26T09:57:58.956+01:00PRESS RELEASE: THOUSANDS OF CATALAN TO CLAMOUR IN BRUSSELS FOR SELF-DETERMINATION ON MARCH 7TH<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"></span><p style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" align="center"><span style="font-size:130%;">THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE CATALAN HIGHLIGHTS THE MAJOR NATIONAL ISSUES YET TO BE SOLVED IN SPAIN</span></p><p><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b>For the first time, an initiative born out of Society 2.0 (Web 2.0) using new technologies, such as social networks like Facebook, is realising an initiative via a virtual community.</b></p><p align="center"><a href="http://facebook.10mil.cat/" mce_href="http://facebook.10mil.cat">http://facebook.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><br /></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Catalan civil society, through all its cultural, sports and civic institutions, is carrying out several initiatives to claim back our right to self-determination as a people. The "<b>Deu Mil a Brussel·les per l'Autodeterminació</b>" (Ten Thousand in Brussels for Self Determination) is trans-partisan, born and based on the active participation of civil society. Our aim: to demonstrate in Brussels on March 7<sup>th</sup> under the cry of "<b>We want a Catalan State</b>", claiming independence for our country. Getting self determination on the international agenda and Catalan political parties to declare they are in favour of sovereignty and on their programmes.</p><div></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b>Spain</b><b> has always been reticent about full recognition of its multiple national diversity</b>. Catalonia has seen recent Spanish central governments closing the autonomous political system and leaving the regions as mere decentralised administrations with no sovereignty or even any federal recognition for the Catalan nation. With the Constitutional Court's forthcoming sentence on competencies of the new Statute of Autonomy approved by referendum in 2006, which all analysts expect will be adverse, Spain is attempting to make any sign of sovereignty for Catalan democratic institutions without effect. It refuses to accept any form of federal or confederal treaty for its historical nations such as Catalonia. And worse yet, the Spanish constitutional system refuses point-blank the right to self determination. It explicitly bans any region or historical nation from calling or organising referendums for its citizens to decide on their future democratically. <b>That is why we are going to Brussels in order to claim our international and democratic rights, for the self determination the Spanish State refuses us</b>.</p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b></b></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b>We live in a globalised world</b> with major migratory fluxes. In this context, Catalans see our productive and economic model endangered, but we also see risks for our model of an open, integrating, welfare society for all our citizens, without distinguishing among gender, race or origin. With a tax deficit unparalleled in any European region or state, which experts style continuous fiscal plundering, Catalans are ever more conscious of the need to endow themselves of the same instruments as sovereign nations in order to face necessary structural reforms with any guarantee. Without sovereignty and the resources needed to solve our problems (which are currently managed by the Spanish central government), the very survival of Catalonia as a distinguishable nation is endangered. We are going to Brussels in order to claim our right to become a State, with the same mechanisms of political sovereignty to administer our own resources like any other European country.</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">This initiative via Internet is not connected to any particular political party, although we have secured the support of several politicians, and most support comes from citizen platforms, cultural organisations, social collectives of all sorts and writers, like ex-member of the General Council of the Judicial Power of Spain, notary Alfons López-Tena, author of polemic "Catalonia under Spain: National Oppression in Democracy" (<i>Catalunya sota Espanya. L'opressió nacional en democràcia</i> - Dèria editors-La Magrana 2007), a blockbuster in Catalonia.</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b></b></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b></b></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b>The European Parliament has repeatedly refused full recognition of our language</b>, which is our national identity as a people. And even though it is a millenary language with over 10 million speakers and a literature of world significance, it is not recognised as an equal of other European languages with less than half its number of speakers and minor literatures, simply because we have no state. That is why we want to go to Brussels, to the European Parliament and the Commission to let them know, following their indications, that we want to become a sovereign State within the European Union.</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The Catalan Nation is a nation without a state with over one thousand years of history, most of whose territory is now within the Spanish State. It has an official population of 13 million inhabitants, 80% of which speak the Catalan language, with its broad, extensive literature with worldwide recognition, a service- and industry-based economy generating a GDP of $482 bn. which represents 30.5% of Spain's GDP and a per capita GDP of over $37,000.</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Since Catalonia lost its independence as a result of the War of Succession of 1704-1725 almost 300 years ago, the Catalan people have unceasingly striven to recover their freedom. Even through war, political persecution and the 40-year fascist dictatorship, stifling its language and culture, Catalan identity has remained firm and forceful enough to demand its recognition as a State within Europe.</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Barcelona, February 19<sup>th</sup> 2009</p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></div><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /></p><br /><p>Press Relations - Deumil.cat</p><p><a href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat">premsa@deumil.cat</a></p><p>Website: <a href="http://deumil.cat/" mce_href="http://deumil.cat/">http://deumil.cat/</a></p><p>Press: <a href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat" mce_href="mailto:premsa@deumil.cat">premsa@deumil.cat</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Other links of interest:</p><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:11;"><a href="http://banderola.10mil.cat/"></a></span></p><a href="http://banderola.10mil.cat/">http://banderola.10mil.cat/</a> <p></p><p><a href="http://dossier.10mil.cat/">http://dossier.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://presentacio.10mil.cat/">http://presentacio.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://himne.10mil.cat/">http://himne.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://donatius.10mil.cat/">http://donatius.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://facebook.10mil.cat/">http://facebook.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://myspace.10mil.cat/">http://myspace.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://youtube.10mil.cat/">http://youtube.10mil.cat/</a></p><p><a href="http://twitter.10mil.cat/">http://twitter.10mil.cat/</a></p><a href="http://twitter.10mil.cat/"></a><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1