A year of rights and freedoms under threat

Cat­alo­nia, Eu­rope, 2018, 21st cen­tury. Tra­di­tion has it that every De­cem­ber we take a look back at the year that is about to end. To start with, it’s been a year with politi­cians in prison and in exile, just for let­ting peo­ple vote. Vot­ing is a de­mo­c­ra­tic right, or is it?

Ap­par­ently, the right to vote, a right recog­nised by the United Na­tions, is seen as such in Scot­land and Que­bec, but not in Spain. The Cata­lan peo­ple wanted a ref­er­en­dum like these coun­tries, but ob­vi­ously Spain is not the UK or Canada. 2018 will sadly go down in his­tory as a year in which politi­cians were forced into prison and exile, just for hav­ing po­lit­i­cal ideas dif­fer­ent from those of the Madrid gov­ern­ment. They are in this sit­u­a­tion for re­spect­ing the will of the peo­ple and their po­lit­i­cal man­date from the peo­ple who voted for them.

2018 will be re­mem­bered as a year of re­pres­sion, which saw the fall of the Rajoy gov­ern­ment, only to be sub­sti­tuted by a so­cial­ist one that turns a blind eye to the cri­sis in Cat­alo­nia, re­fuses di­a­logue, and has demon­strated great in­sti­tu­tional cyn­i­cism, as if ig­nor­ing a prob­lem means it will go away. All this with the tacit agree­ment of the Eu­ro­pean Union, which is sup­posed to de­fend the de­mo­c­ra­tic rights, free­doms and well­be­ing of its cit­i­zens. In 2018, we also sadly saw how peo­ple like the rap­per Valtònyc had to seek refuge in exile after being sen­tenced to three years in prison for lyrics crit­i­cis­ing the Span­ish crown. Need­less to say, the Sex Pis­tols’ lyrics in God Save the Queen would have been un­think­able in today’s Spain. And the list could go on and on...

Cat­alo­nia, Eu­rope, 21st cen­tury: we saw a peo­ple dressed in yel­low, tak­ing to the streets every day call­ing for democ­racy, free­dom of speech and di­a­logue... So what’s your wish for Christ­mas and the New Year? I bet you can guess what mine is.