Tortosa, Catalonia, Spain. Wikmedia. CC.Catalonia’s independence referendum on 1 October this year brought journalists from the rest of Europe and beyond flooding into Barcelona, the regional capital.
They heard Spain’s national government pronounce the referendum illegal and observed scenes of police brutality on voting day. If they stayed on for a while, they will have recorded the imprisonment of more than half the Catalan cabinet and the flight of deposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and several other ministers to Brussels, where they await a Belgian court decision on Spain’s request for their extradition.
Reports on these events in the anglophone media have been mostly breathless, excited, misleadingly opinionated and depressingly shallow. Paul Mason’s piece in the Guardian is a partial exception - though it displays more enthusiasm for Catalan independence than understanding of the complexities.
