(Original post in Emma website >>)

Col·lectiu Emma is a network of Catalan professionals living in different countries who have made it their job to try and set the record straight on news items published in the international press relating to different aspects of the Catalan economy and society

(from Susan M. DiGiacomo, Ph.D., Professor at Universitat Rovira i Virgili)

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20500-0004
United States of America

Dear President Obama:

I write to you not only in your capacity as president of the United States, but also in your capacity as a former professor of constitutional law. In The Audacity of Hope, you propose shifting the metaphor through which we understand democracy in order to see it “not as a house to be built, but as a conversation to be had.” What the American constitution does, therefore, is to “organize the way by which we argue about our future.” Importantly, “Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or ‘ism,’ any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single unalterable course…”.

I write to you, then, because in the country in which I live and work, what is happening is precisely this sort of attempt to end conversation by arguing that the house is already built, constitutionally, and that no further debate is even legimate. In a formally democratic European state, a completely politicized constitutional court, four members of which – including the chief justice – have served for years on expired terms of office, has taken four years to produce a decision using the constitution as a weapon to crush the legitimate national aspirations of a people and to set absolute limits, once and for all, on the powers of home rule defined in that people’s statute of autonomy. The European state in question is Spain. The country in which I live and work is Catalonia. Its statute of autonomy was approved no fewer than three times: by the Catalan parliament, by the Spanish parliament, and by the Catalan people in a referendum. What is happening here, then, is an assault on democracy. In the United States, when the will of the people is not reflected in the constitution, the constitution has been amended, a total of 27 times since the year 1791. What the Spanish constitutional court has done is to consider the Spanish constitution of 1980 untouchable, engraved in stone, and their reading of it is so restrictive that the democratically expressed will of the Catalan people has no place in it.

What is Catalonia? You will remember something about it from your visit to Barcelona many years ago. Catalonia is an ancient European nation with an equally ancient tradition of representative government. The document on which this form of government is based predates the English Magna Carta, and only Iceland has an older parliament. In the Middle Ages Catalonia was an independent polity, and later the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation ruled a Mediteranean empire that extended as far as Greece. During the 14th century, the dynastic marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile integrated Catalonia into “the Spains”, as the composite kingdom was known. But Catalonia did not lose its institutions of self-government until 1714, by force of arms, at the end of the Spanish War of Succession, when an absolutist monarchy came to power. It did not get them back for another 200 years, with the arrival of the Second Spanish Republic, but lost them again at the end of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Despite this history, Catalonia continued to remain linguistically, culturally, socially and economically distinct from the rest of the Spanish state. With the death of General Franco and his dictatorial regime in 1975, Catalonia began to recover once more its political institutions and the powers of home rule home abrogated by the victorious fascists, to reconstruct its national story in its own voice.

How and why does the decision of Spain’s constitutional court affect me, since I retain my American passport although I am a permanent resident who lives and works here? It affects me because I have known Catalonia for three decades, since I came here to do anthropological research at the end of the Franco dictatorship and the beginning of the transition to democracy, when it became apparent that the transition would have no legitimacy at all unless the political autonomy Catalonia enjoyed under the Second Republic were restored. Because I experienced, as an anthropologist, the cultural and political resistance to the Franco regime and the beginning of the process of national reconstruction in Catalonia during the transition to democracy. Because with the passage of time I have become a professor in a Catalan university, where I teach my classes in Catalan. I have, then, things at stake in Catalonia’s future. Many things, starting with the language in which I teach and write, which is recognized in the Catalan statute of autonomy as having preferential status in Catalan public institutions including schools and universities. This language, my second first language, is now threatened by the decision of the Spanish constitutional court.

On Saturday, July 10, more than a million Catalans (according to the Barcelona city police, 1,100,000; according to the organizers of the demonstration, a million and a half; the total population of Catalonia now stands at just over 7 million) filled the streets in the heart of Barcelona, the Catalan capital, to reject the court’s decision to eviscerate the Catalan statute of autonomy and make our voices heard: “We are a nation. We decide.” After years of indignities, the court’s decision was the last straw and increasing numbers of Catalans see no other path to national survival except through full sovereignty, a peaceful and negotiated separation from the Spanish state and the establishment of a new Catalan state within the framework of the European Union. Kosova’s history is different from Catalonia’s, but there is nothing in international law that prevents the democratically elected representatives of a people from unilaterally declaring independence.

Earlier this summer former president Jimmy Carter came to Barcelona to accept from the president of the Generalitat (the Catalan government) the Premi Internacional Catalunya, an international award in recognition of his work on behalf of human rights, democracy, and peace. His visit coincided closely with the announcement of the decision of the constitutional court. President Carter described this decision as an “error,” and offered to send international observed in the event of a referendum on Catalan independence. You should know that to date well over half a million Catalans have already voted for independence in nonbinding municipal referenda all over Catalonia. More such referenda are planned.

I am not asking you to invervene in this process. I ask only that you interest yourself in what is happening here, that you discuss it with your advisers, that you seek information, and that you begin to establish contacts with the Catalan government that will emerge from this fall’s election. If I can help you to do this, you need only ask. Catalonia badly needs international interlocutors and international visibility.

Respectfully yours,

Susan M. DiGiacomo, Ph.D.
Professor
Departament d’Antropologia, Filosofia i Treball Social
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Tarragona
Catalunya

Yesterday, 10th July 2010 (#10j) will be an historical day.
More than 1 million march in Barcelona against the Spanish constitutional court very centralist declaration (9 July 2010) rules that can be compared to the rules before the Democracy. Catalonia is treated as a colony (economically, culturally and in  citizen rights).

The Spanish decentralization, started after the 40 year’ dictatorship, in 1977, today , after the Spanish court declaration, is finished. And a new age starts. In one side the spanish feelings: one nation, one language, one country. In the other side: a new democratic way to decide the future of Catalonia, with referendums for independence and the biggest march ever in Catalonia.

• 1000 reasons for te independence of Catalonia

• Some international news here

Workshop and round table, 1st July 2010 @ CCCB, inside CCCBlab ICI (Investigació i innovació en l’àmbit cultural). Barcelona (CAT)

Second workshop 13th July

The CCCB has worked on the digitization of its documentary for more than three years. It is now fully searchable and offers to the visitors the materials of the activities organized since the foundation of the center in 1994. To mark the completion of this process, this session proposes a debate on the future of the archives from the horizon of the web 3.0 or the key issues of information architecture and data visualization, to the meaning to maintain and disseminate the knowledge generated files cultural institutions.

11h-14h / 16h-18h: Workshop ” display of data in archives “with Jaume Nualart i Mar Canet

The display of information not only serves to show, teach or represent archives and digital. It also serves to multiply the access, enhanced search and understand the data collections. In short, to transform data into knowledge. In this workshop we are challenged to propose tools and ways of viewing the newly digitized archive of the CCCB.

- 19h: Panel discussion “Future Files”, with Laurence Rassel , Jaume Nualart , Reig Dolors and Mario Perez-Montoro .

Slides of the presentation (here)

gràcies a.s.

We (Paco and me) have organized probably the our last “big” event in Vienna. Two super bands are coming to play and show how is a party in the catalan way.

You are all invited

On Friday October 16th:

Nit eclèctica d’electrònica mediterrània

Xerramequ, El Belda, Biano Selecta and Jaumet el del Tabalet

On Saturday October 17th: RAUXA – die katalanische Nacht

Live: Orxata Soundsystem, Belda Badabadoc

dunkelbunt, DJ Andyloop, DJ Sid Data

Further info in Klub Ost

ese tronco!

Catalonia pays homage to the EU, not Spain, as push for independence grows

A growing number of Catalans want independence for their prosperous region, spurred on by the possibility of separate nationhood within the European Union

Continua a telegraph UK

Title: Liquid Loft live atrean by thescreen

Location: Salzburg

Link out: Click here

UPDATED: check the video of the stream here

Description: Lovely Liquid Lounge

Tags: cultural codes, identity, jin xing dance theatre, liquid loft, transgression, undefined

liquid loft creates room. a liquid lounge. persons are moved. inside. sensitively. they talk about encoding, outfit, transgression, sound bytes, settings… they walk gently. almost levitating. no one steps in. no one stops the process. china is vast and this is too a good thing. the socialite, or shall we call her a lounge lizard, tells of winters in the private room. in the back Wan Tao is grinning. strangers are posing. divas are whispering secretly. things happening simultaneously, the performance escalates. one feels at ease…

sommerszene salzburg

Start Time: 19:00

Date: 2009-06-25

End Time: 21:00

A live stream through the Internet continues to be a an super natural experience. Video streams, in particualr, appear and disappear like clouds in the sky on a windy day…

The worldwide simultaneousness breaks the space-time continum, as well as some people’s patience. Here in Krems, slum-tv is performing and we stream the content almost 24h per day. We broadcast the daily production of slum-tv and there is a special show everyday around 19h (GMT+1)

The network itself makes it very easy to get another stream in the net and restreamed in our own channel. The net is made to be an enormous speaker for the voices of the people. We had the plesure to meet Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir. They preach an idiosyncratic message of imaginative anti-capitalism and are totally great, I found my church!

Today is not less amazing. From Barcelona it is going on the 3rd Free and community media meeting and from slum-tv we are restreaming it. Info about the meeting: okupem les ones (”squat the waves”) Automated English