Photo by Marie Bellando-Mitjans on Unsplash Originally published in Spanish. “Fábrica de naciones”. Antonio Elorza. El País. 2nd May 2018 In a lecture given some years ago, a smart Catalan political scientist, now deceased, wanted to make clear to his audience, in Alicante, what was a national language. For example, the widespread use of the Catalan, […]
Categoría: In English
Coups, «pronunciamentos» and cheap labels
Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash Originally published in Spanish. “Golpes, pronunciamientos y etiquetas fáciles”. Ricardo Dudda. Letras Libres. 2nd May 2018 A few weeks ago, the historian Santos Juliá wrote an op-ed in El País entitled “Subduing the State”, where he says that the Unilateral Declaration of Independence proclaimed by the Catalan Parliament on […]
The silencing distortion
Photo by Olya Kuzovkina on Unsplash Originally published in Spanish. “‘La distorsión silenciadora”. Mikel Arteta. El País. 25th April 2018 Many speak of Catalonia’s ‘silent majority’, but few discuss just how it was silenced: basically, nationalists activated a fear of disagreeing. According to [Catalonian fact tank] GESOP, 91.7% of voters of the [far-left Catalonian nationalist coalition] […]
Little unimportant lessons
Photo: Mpho Mojapelo | Unsplash Originally published in Spanish. ´Pequeñas lecciones no importantes´. Andrea Mármol. The Objective. 23 April 2018 As it happened also with so many others, my parents didn’t manage to pass on to me their passion for football. They tried their best, and I’m sure that for a couple of seasons I was the girl […]
“Spain is stealing from us”
Excerpts from «El golpe posmoderno. 15 lecciones para el futuro de la democracia», a book by Daniel Gascón, 20018, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Collected by Juan Claudio de Ramón. Excerpts from Chapter 9: «El discreto encanto del supremacismo« “Spain is stealing from us”. —Alfons López Tena, Solidaritat per la Independència. “The Spanish state harasses […]
My friend the teacher Oya
Originally published in Spanish. «Mi amigo el profesor Oya». Francesc de Carreras. El País. 27th April 2018 Francisco Oya is a veteran history teacher in secondary education. He also has belonged for many years to the association Profesores por el Bilingüismo (Teachers for the Bilingualism), which was already defending a bilingual Catalan-Spanish model for the […]
Instructions to become a dissident
Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash Originally published in Spanish. “‘Instrucciones para ser disidente”. Ricardo Dudda. Letras Libres 25th April 2018 On the day of Saint George, former Podem regional representative Albano Dante Fachín, who is very close to secessionist postulates (he buys the whole discourse but insists he is not a secessionist), wrote a letter that read: “Saint […]
Spain as a pain in the neck
Photo: Hans Eiskonen | Unsplash Originally published in Spanish: «España como tabarra». Félix Ovejero. El País. 20th April 2018 I’ll confess I’ve never managed to finish an article by Laín Entralgo. Especially when he kept circling Spain as a problem. It was not the author I was allergic to, but the subject matter. That is why Calvo Serer […]
A General Case? Just more nonsense
Foto: Brian Wertheim | Unsplash Originally published in Spanish.“¿Causa general? Otra majadería”. Xavier Vidal-Folch. El País. 23th April 2018 The latest novelty coined by indy propagandists is that the state is prosecuting a general case [Causa General, in Spanish. The name of an infamous catch-all prosecution conducted in the early years of Franco’s dictatorship -TN] against secessionism, Catalanism, […]
European arrest warrant: technical note, political perspective
Photo: Patrick Tomasso | Unsplash Originally published in Spanish. «‘Euroorden’: Apunte técnico, mirada política». Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín. Agenda Pública. 17th April 2018 The European arrest warrant (EAW) is an instrument of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). This is relatively new domain of European regulation. Its roots date from the 70s, with the first informal meetings […]