December 14, 2020
Laurence Taillade
Argelès-sur-Mer is to be the site of a Catalan independence demonstration on December 19. While the government is adopting a law to fight separatism, and we are going through a global epidemic phase, these pro-sovereignty are showing off the support of French elected officials to hold an international rally, ignoring health standards. While our country slowly takes the measure of the danger of Islamist communitarianism, another threat to national unity is being organized, before our eyes, with complete impunity, taking the face of Catalan separatism.
By Laurence Taillade.
Reality check: In October 2017, Mr. Puigdemont organized a referendum calling for Catalonia’s independence. This one, obviously rigged, had resulted in a “yes”, with the expression of a third of those registered. Subsequently, he declared the independence of Catalonia, only to retract. This illegal referendum led a dozen Catalan political and associative leaders to prison sentences for sedition and embezzlement by the Spanish courts. The less courageous fled to Belgium, Switzerland, to escape a conviction in absentia, which does not exist in Spanish law. This is the case of Mr. Puigdemont, leader of this movement, who continues to work provisionally as an MEP, despite the annulment of his election by the Spanish electoral commission in January and the referral to the Court of Justice of the EU, by its country of origin1. He lives in Belgium and walks with impunity in France to distill his dangerous speeches for our Nation with, sometimes and this is very serious, the support of elected officials of the French Republic.
Indeed, it is time to lift the veil on the activities of this organization which extends its tentacles from Spain to Switzerland, via France and claims the independence of Catalonia.
The objective pursued therefore seems to be to break down the political regimes in place in the targeted territories.
The work of undermining in the department of the Eastern Pyrenees is organized in the direction of all audiences. The creation of associative schools, the Bressolas2, co-financed by parents and French and Spanish local authorities, makes it possible to convey a discourse of victimhood and separatism to children claiming that “The territory of Catalunya North, under French administration, has suffered for several decades from a policy of linguistic substitution of Catalan by the French language. The language policy of the French state has meant that Catalan has become the minority language of the country today. There is no question here of calling into question the richness of regional languages, which are an important part of our culture, but of noting that with all impunity, it is considered that there exists a fantasized Catalan country mistakenly attached to France which imposes French there.
The teaching of the Catalan language, by volunteers from the APLEC association, would give rise to strange stories evoking the “Catalan country”, when these same people do not evoke a French linguistic apartheid and this even in our public schools.
False embassies have been opened in different countries of the European Union, including one in Paris, with the aim, it seems, to maintain an illusory legitimacy of members of a pseudo autonomous government and to convey a discourse of systematic denigration of the Spanish government.
Basically, these manipulators contest the Treaty of the Pyrenees dating from 1659 and claim the Eastern Pyrenees on our territory and with the support of a large part of the French left, always quick to defend David against Goliath, unless it’s just low clientelist maneuvers… Again.
Thus, the behaviors of the mayors of the towns of Elne and Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda raise questions in many respects, multiplying the official support for Carles Puigdemont and for alleged “political prisoners” that would be the elected secessionists, condemned by the Supreme Court of Spain for violating article 2 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
The departmental council 66 provided identical support, erecting banners on the facade of the departmental building, as well as the Occitanie regional council, under the impetus of rebellious France and EELV3, by a resolution calling for “political solutions and democratic choices to be given priority instead of judicial and repressive choices by the central power in Spain with regard to the Catalan crisis, and as such prisoners and exiles to regain their full and complete freedom”.
Thus, we have French elected officials who interfere in the democratic life of other countries seriously endangering our diplomatic relations, denying the quality of the rule of law and its expression by its justice in Spain.
I wonder about the advisability for France to maintain relations with such an organization and its representatives who convey in our territory a secessionist message seriously undermining the indivisibility of the State. By their speeches, they fracture the Nation and whip up the appetite of other Corsican, Breton, Basque pro-sovereignty … Slowly, but surely, these activists are weaving their web so that the Eastern Pyrenees live in the same climate of tension as Catalonia.
France cannot have several representatives of the same country on our soil, without blurring the understanding of its diplomatic relations, and of the French, as for the Catalan region.
Finally, if we have to come back to the phenomenon of this meeting of December 19, it seems totally absurd to authorize such a gathering, at the height of a pandemic without seriously endangering our fellow citizens and the French hospital system which could be found, for example, subsequently, overwhelmed by the cases of Covid-19. Indeed, on February 29, 2020, the Perpignan delegation of the so-called “Council of the Republic”, depending on the cabinet maintained by Carles Puigdemont from Belgium, had convened a large independence demonstration. This event brought together 110,000 people according to the French police. What would happen if such a demonstration actually took place?
What healthy prefect can authorize such an aberration?
The French state must recall its attachment to the indivisibility of the Republic, cease all relations with the representatives of this separatist current and have all gatherings on its soil banned.
Our credibility in fighting separatism, the unity of the Nation and the maintenance of our relations with Spain, a friendly country and a European partner, depend on it. We must protect ourselves from any interference in Spanish internal affairs, which is governed by the rule of law and whose government has full legitimacy.
Laurence Taillade
Essayist, consultant, founder of the Republican Solidarity Party
- https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/europe/parlement-europeen-puigdemont-denonce-la-violation-du-droit-par-madrid_2114638.html
- https://www.bressola.cat
- https://www.lindependant.fr/2019/04/02/le-conseil-regional-doccitanie-au-soutien-des-independantistes-catalans-prisonniers-et-exiles,8106222.php
Add comment