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:
