On flags and nations

Imagine your country. Imagine a political party, an important one in your nation. They are doing campaign for the eleccions. They talk about the nation. Suddenly, a flag appears. No wonder. It happens often. The problem is that due to an incredible mistake the colors of your flag are not the ones they should be. Or maybe some other element has been changed. Where are you reading this post from? The USA? Do you know how many stars and stripes the flag contains? What if Bush or Gore or any other else appears in front of a five-stripe flag? What if only a dozen stars are included? You might take it as a joke, because this is something really unlikely to happen. However, it has happened in Catalonia (by now, in Spain), where the party that represents spanish president Zapatero in Catalonia has used the catalan flag incorrectly on a campaign video. Catalonia has a four-red-stripe flag on a yellow background representing four blood red fingers from a dying man wounded. Everybody knows that in Catalonia like everybody knows the 4th of July in the USA. How come they make this mistake? I do'nt know, but there has not been any public apologize, the campaign video has not been retired. Furthermore, the incident has been used to deplore that some catalans give so much importance to things that are not worthy. PSC members (that is the name of the party in question) do not accept to be called spanish nationalists, but would you call that kind of attitude? Can you imagine president Zapatero showing a five-stripe spanish flag?

Harry Potter fan accused of terrorism in Spain

More than 360.000 people have already seen this documentary. It might help people understand a lot of things going on right now in Catalonia.

A new cause in Facebook for Catalonia

Facebook is an everyday-growing social network. Members can search for friends and start virtual relations. It'l like a whole virtual life. I do not know how far it will go, how many members will support the net next year, for example. It has just been recently that people in the Catalan Countries have discovered this web. However, our aim at an own state has already found a space, a little spot in this expanding universe. Lluís Soler has created a cause. Causes are one of Facebook's most interesting things, and the expectation is high, so the Catalan Secessionist Cause for an own state has already near to 200 members. It's not much if we consider orher causes with thousands of members, but time will show how it grows and grows.

So, if you never heard of Facebook before, go ahead, log in and find your friends and causes. If a virtual parallel society is starting, we must see it as a chance to make a better world. In this better world, the Catalan Countries want an own state. Are you for it? Are you from a non-state nation too? Then join our cause. Tell all your friends.

The idea by Lluis Soler actually comes from a campaign that ran on catalan blogs on september 2006. The campaign proposed to use the same title (I also want an own state for the Catalan Countries) for all bloggers' postings to be published the week before september the 11th. The result was astonishing and several papers included the sentence. You can see a report by Vilaweb TV on this video. As a result, the Xarxa de Blocs Sobiranistes (pro-independence bloggers net) was born, a net for secessionist bloggers grouping now up to 550 people. On april 2007 another singular campaign was presented: estatpropi.cat shows the support for an own state on a Google Map (visit the english version of this web!). According to this, Lluis Soler has had the idea of notifying to all Facebook members the existence of this political aim.

Sooner or later (better sooner than later), Catalonia will be the next state in Europe. The best thing a blogger can do is to know the catalan version of the facts that are leading to it. Don't miss this democratic process to freedom. Sociologists should have a look at Catalonia right now, since very interesting things are happening here.

What goes on in Catalonia

If you want to be at date about what' s going on in Catalonia, the following sites might be helpful. Do not use spanish sources exclusively. Through this blog, I'll try to point out some interesting sites so you can have more information about the evolution of catalan politics and its way to an own state. So have a look at the following as a first browse:

Free Catalonia: http://www.freecatalonia.com/fc/main.asp?opc=3&idi=eng

Catalan Institute of America: http://www.friendsofcatalonia.com/index_eng.php

Catalonia News Magazine: http://www.gencat.net/catalonianews/eng/index.htm

Blog by Ian Llorens: http://ianllorens.blogspot.com/

The Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Catalonia

Catalan writer Víctor Alexandre has an english version of his site:

http://english.victoralexandre.cat/

If you know other sites, you can tell me about them.

On the demonstration in BCN and catalan public TV

The demonstration we saw yesterday had a double virtue. On the one hand, it consolidated the one on February the 18^th 2006. It could have remained like the great referent, the last time that the Catalan people went out to the street before the slow and irreversible integration into the homogenic kingdom of Spain; in a similar way, before February the 18^th we had one single and mythical referent as for demonstrations: those on the 1st and the 8th February 1976. However, it will not be like this. The recent history of our country, the time that starts with the end of Pujol's era, has already seen two demonstrations of a quite remarkable secessionist tone in less than two years. And nobody can erase this fact any more. Nobody with a minimal common sense can minimizes this any more. Nobody can if they are to be honest and show pride.

It seems, however, that once again there has been the attempt to minimize it. I ask myself which is the journalistic criterion when deciding what is worth a live TV report. I ask because I am astonished that the multitude of people yesterday overflowed Barcelona have not been reason enough for such a live TV report by the public television of the country where this happens. I hope that the criterion when deciding it is a purely journalistic, professional one, so it surprises me that 700.000 people in the street are not a strongly enough crowd. Is there a determinate number from which the report should be made? Or maybe other criteria which are not strictly professional have been imposed? Only a brief report to the Evening Newscast distinguishes this country from the regims in which the inconvenient demonstrations are systematically silenced. From a public television paid by all 700.000 that yesterday demostrated, I believe that a different coverage could be expected. Now it will be necessary to wait for explanations.

I said, however, that the demonstration has had a second virtue apart from consolidating the one on February the 18^th 2006: it opens a new horizon towards a third demonstration not to be dated yet. Among other political facts we have in a short period of time, there are the elections on March the 9th. Depending on the result that comes out of them, an agreement could aproach PSOE and PP to use the law in their own benefit and to cut the representativeness of the political forces that want to transform the State or, directly, to leave it. Bono seems to be the one they are thinking of as Congress chairmain, so predictions can not be very good. Still there is much to talk about it, however. The other important fact is the sentence pending on the Constitutional Court. The possibility of this sentence being restrictive, combined with the remembrance of this demonstration, leads us irreversibly into a third demonstration for the right to decide. And this time it will be the last, because this time, if the Spanish State says no, there is not more possible decision than the referendum of self-determination.

The desertion made by PSC and president Montilla leaves him in a more than delicate position. The coincidence yesterday of ERC CiU and ICV (all of them pro-selfdetermination) preconfigures an alternative majority to catalan socialism, more powerful than ever, but also far from the people as they never were. After yesterday's demonstration, it is not so evident that the legislature can come to an end. The socialist left is disposed to sacrificing the welfare and the progress of the country not to put the PSOE in risk. And this is reason enogh not to vote for them. But the alternative has to be a determined selfdeterministic forehead, disposed to playing under own rules. 700.000 people on the street are a basis more that solid to lead a process of secession. A 52,7% of citizenship that wants a state (be it federated or independent), too. Catalan people has marked the path. Now it is a matter of taking the reins of the country and plotting the sheet of route. In 2008, and once the elections have passed, the CiU and the ERC will have their congresses. The country will then be prepared to plan the final step.