Pro-independence organization to take legal action against Spanish TV

One of the main pro-independence civic organizations in the country, the National Catalan Assembly (ANC), announced on Monday that it will take legal action against the Spanish public radio and television corporation (RTVE), after the Spanish public broadcasting failed to translate a word into Spanish from a statement made by the organization in Catalan. When reporting on ANC’s latest statement regarding any possible lack of agreement between pro-independence parties on who the next president should be, RTVE translated “brave actions” as “violent actions.” The Catalan word for 'brave' is 'valentes', while 'violentes' is the Catalan for 'violent'. 

In the statement, the pro-independence civil society organization says that it “denounces inaction” and announces new “mobilizations to support brave actions”. Yet the subtitles that appeared on the screen read as “mobilizations to support violent actions,” marking a distinct divergence from the original meaning of the sentence. In response to this mistranslation, on Monday the pro-independence organization announced that it will take legal action in order to demand a rectification.  

Controversy over Catalan TV

This controversy comes only few days after the Spain’s defence minister, María Dolores de Cospedal, accused Catalan public TV of “propagandistic and manipulative.” She said that in the case direct rule of the country from Madrid is extended, the function of the channel would have to be discussed. Yet an independent report found that TV3 covered the campaign for the December 21 with the “biggest” diversity with regard to the airtime given to each political party.