Show the world

It is almost a century since my grandparents were stoned out of an English coastal village.

They were foreigners, you understand. Not welcome by a brutal few. My late father was a baby in a pram. The family had just moved some 160km from a city to the rolling hills on the east coast and were trying to start a new life.

They didn't have transport and were renting a tiny house in a market town, but it was a much needed, hopeful moment for them, a fresh beginning after difficult times.

They desperately wanted to see the sea, so after a few days set off with picnic and pram on the long walk through woodland and fields towards the beach. Cuts and bruises pulled them up short and they bled home.

It was a stunning intolerance, a revulsion, a violence fuelled by suspicion and ignorance in an age of insular island life where we can understand some communities were still, to a great degree, very insular and distant.

That was then. Now, of course, is now, very different, the reverse in many ways. Perhaps we now know an enormous amount, or think we do. I fear, however, the consequence could be the same, of exclusion and incendiary isolation, if nations do not prize humanity as highly as sovereignty.

Catalonia's attitude could not be clearer. The three paragraphs of welcome to refugees on the comprehensive, accessible and intelligent refugee.gencat.cat website defines what all nations should must be doing, offering the hand of support and welcome, striving “to provide answers to social problems and humanitarian crises happening in the world from the position of solidarity and democratic responsibility”.

Fine, vital words backed up by will. It in a very small way counters my gross sense of impotence and despair. The situation for the Syrian people is beyond desperate.

How, honestly, can we, with the simple privileges of peace, a roof and a table, not be deeply disturbed by the knowledge that this mass atrocity is happening? Yet life in the information-overload, numb nations of privilege seems to bumble on as if it does not touch us. News bulletins of blood and twisted metal slot in between celebrity red carpets and wonder goals. But it is there, isn't it, like a ceaseless voice in our heads, or mental images of dead children, telling us we cannot ignore.

That is the essential gene of decency and morality.

Barcelona especially has shown once again it is a worldly-wise, tolerant capital, fostering yet further a fundamental pride in this remarkable nation that remembers all too vividly what it is like to experience bombing, executions and mass exodus. Such a statement of humanity and clearly defined commitment is, in defiance of moral cowardice , also a reinforcement of sovereignty.

But can we get to the numbers? As with Britain I remain stunned and profoundly agitated by how little Spain and some other countries are doing in relation to the catastrophe. With more than 11 million people forced to flee their homes, hundreds of thousands killed and the gut-wrenching repeated news of unthinkable acts such as the bombing of hospitals the need is overwhelming greater than the response.

This is my plea to the Generalitat to move out of the shadow of Spain right now on this defining issue, to act independently, with urgency, with the unquestionable legitimacy of common humanity, morality and compassion, and for the Catalans to comfort and help rebuild not thousands but tens of thousands of lives.

We in this house offer sanctuary. Refugees are welcome.