September 20, 2017. Flowers and a banner reading ' I want to vote' on the floor as Spanish Guardia Civil police officers stand guard close to Catalan Governance Ministry in Barcelona. Jordi Boixareu/Press Association. All rights reserved.
When the Spanish Government overturned the Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2010, even after it had been approved by an ample majority of voters in a referendum that had actually been permitted by the state, I said nothing because I wasn’t Catalan; when the Catalans then asked the state to engage in talks on federalism and the state refused, I said nothing because I wasn’t Catalan; when they asked for a new referendum and were told “we will never even talk about this”, I said nothing because I wasn’t Catalan; when the state denied Catalans any possibility for being listened to, sabotaged their security and taxes, undermined their schools and administration in order to use these as arguments to cover up their own corruption and play the victim, I said nothing because I wasn’t Catalan; when the state throttled their freedom of expression, intercepted their mail and shut down their economy, when uniformed men entered their political organizations and their media, when it confiscated publications, closed websites and arrested mayors, I said nothing because I didn’t read this press and hadn’t voted for those mayors. I even believed they deserved it for complaining so much and hoped they’d be silenced.
