Civi Europaeo Praemium 2014

CARTA OBERTA AL PRESIDENT DEL PARLAMENT EUROPEU

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

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November 25 2014

Rt. Hon. Martin SCHULZE

President, European Parliament

Brussels / Strasbourg

Dear Sir,

First of all, please allow me to congratulate you on your renewed responsibility as President of the European Parliament. 

My email is a plea to you to prevent the 2014 Civi Europaeo Praemium falling into serious discredit. 

An NGO founded in April 2014, pretentiously called "Societat Civil Catalana", with the aim of denying Catalonia the right to democratically decide on its own future (indeed, by fact denying that Catalonia exists) and opposing those that defend it with a clear parliamentary majority behind them, was put forward as a candidate by a Spanish MEP belonging to a Unionist party. 

His party came fifth, fifth, in Catalonia in the recent EP elections. 

Five months after being founded, it organised a highly costly rally, widely described as a laughable flop (whose only achievement was to keep neo-Nazis and radical anti-Catalan Spanish nationalists at bay), which was attended by five hundred times fewer people than another one organised on the same day by two Catalan NGOs that DO recognise Wales' right to democratically decide its own political future (Assemblea Nacional Catalana, founded in 2011 and Òmnium Cultural, founded in 1961).

These two organisations, to my mind, since they democratically and peacefully seek Catalonia's independence within a united Europe while at the same time promoting important values such as harmony, coexistence, respect, tolerance, freedom of speech and dialogue, would in my view deserve the Prize far more than "Societat Civil Catalana" which, after all, describes itself as a political organisation. I shall not go into the democratic background of some of its founders, or speculate whether it was founded and/or is funded at the instance of the Spanish government. 

In conclusion, it seems very clear to me that this organisation is a political organisation that wants the voice of one of the oldest people of Europe to be silenced, and that the Madrid ceremony announced is almost certain to turn out to be a hideous display of Spanish nationalism and a direct attack on the Catalans' wish to decide our future at the ballot box. 

The prize is a humiliating slap in the face to the Catalan people (let me claim that it is a majority of the people of Catalonia). The European Parliament's prestige stands to drop grotesquely in Catalonia.

If there is anything you can do at this late stage, I (and many other democrats in Catalonia) will be most grateful for your immediate intervention, however discreet.

Yours sincerely,

Miquel Strubell

[Address and email]

 p.s. See also "Welsh Civil Society"  http://miquelstrubell.blogspot.com/2014/11/citizens.html