Catalonia bans bullfights

The Catalan Parliament has approved a law that bans bullfights since January 2012. The decision was taken with 68 votes in favor, 55 against and nine abstaining. Catalonia is the second autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain that bans bullfights, the first one being the Canary Islands, which forbade them in 1991. There is only one active bullfight plaza in all Catalonia.

While the vote was made on individual convictions, the vast majority of Catalan nationalist deputies voted for the ban while most Spanish nationalist ones voted against.

I am totally in favor of forbidding such cruel rituals and therefore I welcome the law and hope it's extended to other territories in Iberia and France, as well as America. However I disagree with those who oppose all kind of bull-themed fiestas such as encierros (running the bulls), recortes (dribbling the bull attacks much as in Knossos' frescoes) and vaquillas (similar with bullocks and open to public participation), which are essentially harmless to the animal (human participants know the risks they take). The important point is that the bulls are not tortured and also to prevent damage to horses, also suffering in the most cruel and well-known variants of bullfighting.

In my hometown there is a huge bullfight plaza that is almost unused except for the fiestas in late August. I have yet to meet a person who likes bullfights but there seem to be some in social strata I don't mix with. But I know a lot of people who enjoys vaquillas (or enjoyed them when younger). I would think that the plaza could have much better use as some sort of public venue, as for concerts (used on occasion) or massive popular assemblies - or just to gain a much needed new park after its demolition.

Source: Gara.

Catalans take Barcelona by millions!

We are a nation - Self-determination!

More than one million people, according to the city police, took to the streets in Barcelona today in defense of their Statute as the people and democratic institutions designed it, and not the mutilated remnant that the Spanish Constitutional Court would allow.

Catalonia has 6 million inhabitants, so these figures mean that practically every Catalan is supportive of the Statute. It also meant that the demo had major difficulties proceeding as planned because the people itself prevented it from advancing unwillingly, which happened at the rate of very few meters per minute, with streets and streets cramped with people and republican Catalan banners.

Sources: VilaWeb, Gara

This situation really pits Catalans and the Spanish institutions into a confrontational dead-end that can only be resolved with a radical change of the Spanish Constitution, something that the Spanish parties are not for.

Unlike the small Basque Country, Catalonia is a major demographic (and even greater economic) component of the State of Spain and it is very difficult to see how can it be ignored for long.

Basques demonstrate for independence and solidarity with Catalonia

The demo, under the main slogan of "We are a nation - Self-determination", was called by the Basque Nationalist Left and Basque Solidarity (EA) and Alternative (Alternatiba), in solidarity with Catalonia, which has seen how the statute democratically designed by Catalans was wildly mutilated by the Spanish Constitutional Court.

Basque parties feel that this attack on Catalan self-rule has also grave implications for the Basque Country, making virtually impossible to work for self-determination within an institutional frame that does not acknowledge that right.

Source: Gara

Spanish energy corporation behind Guatemala murders

Eight Guatemalan activists who opposed the abuses of Spanish energy corporation Unión Fenosa have been murdered in the Guatemalan department of San Marcos, near the Mexican border, in the last months, according to Spanish bi-weekly newspaper Diagonal[es].

The first victim was Víctor Gálvez, who was shot 32 times when he left an office where he attended neighbors affected by the activities of DEOCSA, one of the two affiliated companies that Unión Fenosa has in the Central American country, on October 24 2009. Gálvez was member of the Front for the Defense of Natural Resources and the Rights of the Peoples (FRENA).

In December 22nd, the right-wing government decreed the state of prevention (a variant of the state of exception), suppressing in practice civil rights in the department and attempted to criminalize the FRENA. Since then other seven activists have been murdered.

On January 13th Evelinda Ramírez, another activist of the FRENA who had been meeting with guvernamental officers to attempt to clarify the murder of her comrade was shot and killed while driving back home.

On January 29th Pedro García, member of the local workers' union and activist for the nationalization of energy services, was also shot dead a few days after he denounced irregularities in his municipal council of Malacatán.

On February 17th Octavio Roblero, grassroots Catholic, activist of the FRENA and of the National Front of Struggle for the Defense of Public Services and Natural Resources (FNL) and one of the main leaders in the struggle for the nationalization of the energy sector, was murdered as well.

On March 21st three other activists, Carlos Noel Maldonado, Leandro Maldonado y Ana María Lorezo, who fought for the expulsion of Unión Fenosa from the country and the right of the communities to access edible water, were murdered with guns and machetes.

The next day, Santiago Gamboa was killed Army shooting after the citizens had held workers of Unión Fenosa who had arrived to disconnect the electrical supply to the community.


Context of the struggle: mafioso extortion.

The struggle has an old background, dating to the 1990s, when the energy sector was "privatized" under IMF pressure and given in effective monopoly to the Spanish multinational, which, in order to pretend "free market", split its subsidiary in two, one taking charge of the East and the other of the West of the country. A similar procedure took place in Nicaragua, then ruled by the conservatives.

In July 2008, after Unión Fenosa was acquired by Gas Natural, another Spanish corporation, partly owned by La Caixa (a public non-profit Catalan savings bank) and partly by oil giant Repsol YPF (also Spanish), the activist organizations sent an open letter to Spanish NGOs, worker uions and political parties denouncing the abuses by the corporation, among them: illegal charges on electric bills, poor service and collective punishments against the communities that protested by cutting electrict supply.

After a year of payment strike, in December 15th the company cut electric supply to many communities of the department. After a week, water supply was also cut.

This action sparked anger and the communities took to blockade the roads linking to Mexico, as well as organizing demonstrations and assemblies. It was in this context that the government decreed the state of prevention, which has been prorrogated several times and is still in effect.

According to Rigoberto Madriz, member of the political committee of the FLN, since then the hitmen of narcotraffic mafias comb the department impunely blackmailing the people: "pay or we will kill you". The very next day to the declaration of the state of prevention, Unión Fenosa opened a new office just side by side to the home of the main capo of the department, in a building well known to be his property.

After the second murder a new denounciation letter was sent to the Spanish premier Rodríguez Zapatero and the Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom, as well as the directors of Unión Fenosa-Gas Natural and its main shareholders: La Caixa and Repsol YPF.

The only effect so far has been to increase the state terrorism against the people, demonstrating that the Spanish state is again accomplice with corporative crimes and terrorirsm in Latin America.

The Neanderthal-Sapiens transition at Cova Gran (Catalonia)

Found at Pileta de Prehistoria.

J.M. Moreno et al., The Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Cova Gran (Catalunya, Spain) and the extinction of Neanderthals in the Iberian Peninsula. Science Direct, 2010. Pay per view.

A good article can be found at El País in both Spanish and English.

Most relevant seems to be that the transition between the occupations by the two species is separated by a thick sterile layer, meaning that there was no sudden replacement but maybe just the colonization of an empty land.

Cova Gran is located at the Catalan Pyrenees in the province of Lleida.

Informal referendum for independence in Catalonia

After the new statute has been challenged by the tories (fascists) at the Constitutional Court, Catalans are thinking that they are probably best on their own. An informal referendum is set up for today in 170 Catalan towns, including 700,000 voting citizens (Catalunya as a whole has more than 6 million inhabitants, many concentrated around Barcelona).

From BBC:

"More and more people think we have no room in the Spanish house, so we need a house of our own," organiser Alfons Lopez Tema says.

"[The Spanish] don't want us, they don't love us, they don't give us what we want. So the best thing is to vote and decide."

Joan Canela ponders at Rebelión:

If the Republic was formed after municipal elections, who knows what can bring independece.

The fact that this referendum acknowledges the right to vote to immigrants has brought their organizations to support Catalan independence. Diego Arcos, president of the Argentine House, says:

Catalonia acknowledges our citizenship while Spain does not.

Immigrants have already organized a political platform in favor of Catalan self-determination.

Anna Arqué, speaker of the organizing platform, hopes that the effect of these co-ordinated municipal referendums will be that the Catalan Parliament will call an official poll on the matter at national level.

Catalans demand self-determination in Brussels

Some 10,000 Catalans and supporters from various other nationalities demonstrated yesterday in Brussels demanding the EU authorities the recognition of the right of self-determination for the Catalan nation.

The slogan: "We want a Catalan state". Besides Catalan four-barred banners, ensigns from other opressed nations of Europe and the Mediterranean could be spotted as well: Basque, Breton, Flemish, Corsican, Venetian and even Berber flags were present.

"Spanard who doesn't jump" was one of the cries heard in Brussels.

Source: Gara.
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Radioactive emission in Tarragona

It happened in November but has only now been known to the public. The nuclear central Ascó I, near Tarragona (southern Catalonia) had a problem with radioactive emissions to the enviroment last November. Now, after elections, the director and the rariological protection chief of that central have been suspended in what Greenpeace describes as mere scapegoating (source: Gara).

Considering the extreme laxitude that Spanish nuclear industry is treated with, with totally obsolete centrals still at work and consumers paying arbitrarily for the "nuclear moratory" (implemented in the 80s) in our electricity bills, the cessation of two such high profile figures must mean that the problem was very serious, even if we don't know yet the exact dimension of it.