Attacking freedom by closing down TV channels in Europe, still

As you can see I’ve been away from blogging for the last few weeks and concentrating on other personal projects that have kept me quite busy (and will continue to do so). Hence my diminished frequency of updating this blog.

So even though this happened on February the 19th I think it was necessary to make a note in this blog since I believe international media didn’t take much notice about this grave issue.

The Government of the Valencian Country forced last month the Public Catalan TV (TV3) to stop broadcasting in that territory, the Spanish Government says it is not their problem what the Valencian Government do. This is yet another attack from the Spanish nationalism against Catalan culture and another sample of their phobia to any non Castillian (Spanish) language in the Spanish state.

This is following a long tradition of attacking Catalan culture on their weakest spots (ie the Valencian Country) and insisting (against the criteria of the Valencian universities and the Valencian Language Academy) that Valencian is a different language from Catalan. Therefore ceasing the emissions of the Catalan TV is another step in the strategy to culturally isolate the Valencian Country to intensify the Spanish cultural colonisation.

The popular reaction against this measure on the streets and online was remarkable, with the hashtag #sensesenyal (without signal) being the top hashtag in twitter in the Spanish state following the ban and hundreds of demonstrations all over the Catalan Countries.

This issue has been going on for many years now and the previous chapter was when a popular law petition (ILP) backed with more than 650.000 signatures in October 2010 asked the Spanish Government to guarantee that the Catalan TV is broadcast in the Valencian Country by law. Seems like when it comes to the Catalan culture the will of 650.000 people is not important for the Spanish since for the first time, the Spanish Parliament didn’t even allow the debate.

All this made me remember an interesting remark by a representative of the European Union last year when asked if the European Union could do anything to stop the TV3’s broadcast and she answered that if Catalonia was a state within the European Union then Spain would be forced to guarantee it.

On the good side, still there’s nothing they can do to stop people from watching TV3 through their fantastic website.