war

In the institutional speech that the President of the Catalan Government makes each year the evening before Catalonia's National Day, Artur Mas asked the Spanish authorities to "listen to the peaceful and democratic claim" represented by Thursday's massive pro-independence rally. "Silencing the voice of a people that want to speak out is a mistake; denying the vote to those who see ballot boxes as the solution and not the problem is a double mistake", stated Mas. Before the institutional speech was broadcasted on TV, Mas attended the flower offering made to the mass graveyard where those who died defending Barcelona in the 14-month military siege were buried 300 years ago. In September 1714, Catalonia was defeated and lost its sovereignty, self-government institutions and its Constitution, and a long, harsh repression started. After the flower offering, a second ceremony started nearby, with music and poetry as the only ingredients.

The Instituto Cervantes in Utrecht was obliged to cancel the presentation of 'Victus', a novel by Catalan author Albert Sánchez Piñol on the Spanish Succession War and Barcelona's military siege of 1714, after which Catalonia lost its self-government institutions and political, social and cultural repression started. According to the author, his Dutch editorial house Signatuur and the Communication Director of the Cervantes Institute, the Spanish Embassy in The Netherlands obliged them to cancel the event the day before it was supposed to happen for political reasons. However, the Spanish Government is denying any political veto and states the cancellation was due to "diary problems". The scandal has been covered by Dutch media and Juliette Van Wersh, Publisher at Signatuur, stated they are "shocked" for a decision against "freedom of expression". The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, stated that this veto is "in line with the international boycott" which Spanish authorities are carrying out against self-determination.

The Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, stated that a unilateral declaration of independence would condemn Catalonia "to roam across space" and that it would be "excluded from the European Union for the centuries of the centuries". García-Margallo, who is one of the most vocal members of the Spanish Executive against Catalonia's independence, stated that such a scenario is "a high risk operation". He criticised the politicians supporting independence, who "put at risk a population that is essentially European", which goes against the will of a majority of Catalans "who want to be part of the European area". "Secession is extremely harmful for Spain but particularly harmful for Catalonia", he insisted. On the same day, the Candidate of the Greens to chair the European Commission, German Ska Keller, stated she was supporting Catalonia's right to self-determination.

From this Monday onwards, visiting the fortress at the top of Barcelona’s Montjuïc hill will cost €5. Special discounts will be available as well as free admissions on special days, like the other museums in the city. Within Montjuïc Castle, history-related exhibitions will be held. Visitors can currently discover the exhibition ‘Postwar Barcelona’, organised by the City Council’s Archives with the collaboration of the Carles Pi i Sunyer Foundation. The exhibition starts with Franco’s troops entering the city on the 26^th of January 1939 and finishes with the end of term of Fascist Mayor Miquel Mateu i Pla in 1945. In fact, it is a time travel back to post Civil War Barcelona, displaying more than 250 documents, including illustrations and photos, as well as historical texts and articles.

On Sunday evening, almost 6 months after having been kidnapped in Syria, Marc Marginedas, El Periódico de Catalunya’s war correspondent, arrived at Barcelona El Prat Airport in a plane of the Spanish Air Force. The journalist was “in good health”, according to the Spanish Government. Marginedas was able to cross the border between Syria and Turkey, where he boarded the plane after having been freed in the middle of the night on Saturday. He was welcomed back by his family, the Director of El Periódico, Enric Hernández, the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, and the Spanish Executive’s Delegate in Catalonia, María de los Llanos de Luna. Catalan Ricard Garcia Vilanova and Andalusian Javier Espinosa are still in captivity in Syria; there are around 30 international reporters and 100 local journalists still held prisoner in the Arab country.

On Tuesday, the Catalan Government approved the International Protection Plan of Catalonia, which aims to protect people forced to leave their country for being persecuted. It is the first time Catalonia has its own legal instrument to face the issue of asylum seekers, displaced people and human trafficking victims. This new tool establishes the principles, measures and funding schemes to host and offer protection to people who fled their country due to a grounded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership of a social group, gender or sexual orientation. Among other things, the Plan encourages issuing new proposals to improve the legal status of these people, offer them better training, improve their reception, integration and participation.

SITA Ibérica, a Catalan company located in Martorell, close to Barcelona, is one of the fourteen companies to have submitted a petition to destroy 500 tons of chemical weapons from Syria. But the submission was made without the prior knowledge of the Martorell City Council, which opposes the idea to destroy weapons in the Martorell area. The winner of the contest will be announced in early February by the UN body which is responsible for the destruction of the weapons.

Freelance photojournalist Ricard Garcia has been kidnapped in the Syrian province of Raqqa together with El Mundo reporter Javier Espinosa by a group related to Al-Qaeda. On the 4^th September, the Catalan Marc Marginedas, reporter from El Periódico, was also kidnapped in Syria. Barcelona-born Garcia and Málaga-born Espinosa have been missing since the 16^th September near the Tal Abyad checkpoint. However, the news had not been announced until this Tuesday, when El Mundo published the information. They were kidnapped near the Turkish border together with 4 soldiers of Ahfad al Moustapha, one of the brigades of the Free Syrian Army, who were supposed to protect them. The 4 soldiers were released 12 days after they were taken away, but not the 2 journalists. Marginedas also remains in captivity.

The Argentinean Judiciary is investigating crimes perpetrated under Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, notably the execution of Catalan President Lluís Companys in 1940. Companys was the only incumbent president to have been executed during World War II. A few weeks ago, his political party (ERC) filed a complaint in Argentina in order for his speedy military trial to be declared null and void, as the Spanish institutions have refused to do so on numerous occasions. Spain’s Amnesty Law of 1977, which is still in force to this day, has always prevented Franco crimes from being investigated and from going to trial. In 2010, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who became internationally famous for investigating Argentinean and Chilean dictatorships, was disbarred from office after trying to open a case against Franco crimes. Therefore, the plaintiffs have appealed to universal Justice, seeking restitution in other jurisdictions.

Barcelona has unveiled a new museum located in the Born neighbourhood, next to the Gothic quarter, which explores how life was in the city during the early 18^th century, and will exhibit 8,000 objects. The Born Cultural Centre shows the neighbourhood’s ruins dating from 1714, when residents were forced to destroy their own homes and leave without any compensation after Barcelona’s military defeat. Next to the area, the largest urban military citadel in Europe was built, being part of the fierce repression that the Bourbon troops inflicted on Catalan citizens. From that moment onwards, Catalonia lost its self-government institutions, its own laws and freedoms, and Catalan language was banned and persecuted with the aim to homogenise the recently-formed Spain.

During the Spanish Civil War, from 1936 to 1939, Franco’s rebels received military help from Italy among other countries. The Italian Legionary Air Force, based in Mallorca, was responsible for the aerial bombardment of the city of Barcelona from 16th March to 18th 1938, exactly 75 years ago. For three days, Italian aviation forces bombed civil targets and neighbourhoods and caused the death of approximately a thousand civilians. The bombing of the Catalan capital was one of the most lethal bombing missions of the Spanish Civil War. Barcelona High Court has ordered a full investigation on crimes against humanity.

‘La boda de la Rita: història d’una família iraquiana II’ ('Rita`s wedding: The story of an Iraqi family II') is the second part of ‘El viaje de Mazin’ (‘Mazin’s trip’), a unique Catalan documentary made in Iraq. The plot of the documentary talks about three Iraqis, members of the same family, who came to Barcelona in different moments.

In 1939, Franco’s troops entered Catalonia and plundered most of the official documents of the Catalan Government, institutions, political parties, trade unions, and cultural organisations. In addition, they also took personal documents belonging to Catalan personalities. In total more than 300,000 documents were sent to an archive in Salamanca. They were processed and the information they contained used by the Fascist regime’s repression in the post-war years. The documents are known as the ‘Salamanca Papers’. The Spanish Government ordered the return of some of the ‘Salamanca Papers’ in 1995, but political opposition has delayed the process until now. There are still around 300 boxes of documents in Salamanca.

The photography exhibition shows the pictures that were found in the so-called ‘Mexican suitcase’, in which original films by Capa, Taro and Seymour had been kept for decades. The exhibition displays not only pictures from the Spanish Civil War, but also the negatives and the manner in which photographers worked. Since the suitcase kept the original films, the contact sheets can be displayed and thus the photos are shown in the order they were taken.

‘Goodbye Barcelona’ will be on show by the end of the year in London. It will be premiered the year of the 75th anniversary of the International Brigades’ creation, the foreigners who came to Spain to defend the Republic against the Fascist uprising.