Catalonia: A personal response LUKA LISJAK GABRIJELCIC

The attempt by Catalan authorities to hold a referendum on independence was marred by violence on Sunday, 1 October. Several hundred people – including approximately 30 policemen – were hurt in clashes between security forces and citizens attempting to vote in the referendum, which had been denounced as illegal by the Spanish central government.

For the past 18 days, the editor-in-chief of Slovenian Eurozine network partner journal Razpotja, Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, has been commenting on the events in Catalonia via a series of Facebook posts. Lisjak Gabrijelčič is an intellectual historian of nationalism and a translator from Catalan to Slovenian, and is part of the Catalan Weekend project group, organized and founded by the Òmnium Cultural association, an informal group of scholars and journalists founded in 2015 who regularly visit Catalonia to observe, discuss and critically engage with the process of independence. He was not in Catalonia for the referendum.

Here, in the order they were posted on Facebook, are Lisjak Gabrijelčič’s instant, personal, and sometimes passionate responses to the process that culminated in the clashes on 1 October. They are a contemporaneous record, republished here in the form and style in which they were originally written, lightly edited only to correct spelling and syntax.

Friday, 15 September at 22:12
Constitutional guarantees have been basically suspended in Spain, without any authorization by the parliament. Today, a court shut down a talk by a Catalan MP in Vitoria (Basque Country). Two days ago, a similar order was issued by a judge in Madrid. This time, the police was sent to enforce it.A cultural association was prevented from holding an event in Santa Coloma de Gramenet near Barcelona.


Armed police have raided the headquarters of at least five major Catalan media outlets (El Nacional, El Punt Avui, Vilaweb, Racó Català, Nació Digital). Newspapers face punitive fines for publishing ads regarding the referendum (they can be effectively shut down), and it’s technically a crime to share information regarding the referendum on social media. Writing an article in favour of the referendum is considered illegal if it could be understood as ‘inciting participation’.

The Spanish Post Office has refused to deliver a local newspaper because it included an article in favour of the referendum. The same has happened to the journal of the cultural association Òmnium Cultural. The website Punt.cat, a foundation for the promotion of the Catalan language online, has been shut down by a court order. The foundation claims it has not published any material declared illegal by the state.

100,000 posters related to the referendum have been confiscated by the police, mostly from private companies. At least three people have been arrested for putting them up. There are reports and videos of police searching private vehicles, often without individual warrants, and harassing citizens suspected of carrying or performing ‘illegal propaganda’. At least one citizen was arrested, in the Sant Andreu neighbourhood of Barcelona, for standing up for his constitutional right of free expression. These actions have been met with mass protests… read more:
http://www.eurozine.com/catalonia-a-personal-response/


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