[Since 1997, the town of Viladrau has been shedding light on its history of witch trials. Several streets were named in honor of the women killed.Credit: Lucía Benavides/The World]
"About 400 hundred years ago, in the small Catalan village of Viladrau, 14 women were accused of witchcraft, tortured and hanged. At the time — between 1618 and 1622 — there were fewer than 10
“We’ve gone down in history for being the town with the biggest witch hunt in Catalonia,” said Noemí Bastias, the town’s mayor. “But they weren’t witches — they were marginalized women like widows, immigrants and herbalists.”
Last month, the regional Catalan government in northeast Spain passed a resolution to pardon up to 1,000 people executed for witchcraft in Catalonia 400 years ago...
Witch hunts relied heavily on accusations from neighbors who were desperate for scapegoats whenever bad luck struck the town — such as crop failures, sudden diseases or natural disasters."
Read more from source at PRI and listen to story here.
"Spain is the first country in Europe to ban smoking on all of its beaches after the government passed a new law following a public petition.
From now on, anyone caught lighting up on a beach is set to be hit with a hefty €2000 ($USD 2258) fine. A ban is already in place in Barcelona and the Canary Islands, where smoking on popular tourist beaches is prohibited.
A petition in Spain that led to the smoking ban
The move comes in a bid to clean up pollution on the country’s 3000 miles of coastline. The new law passed on December 23 followed a petition of 283,000 names demanding action on beach pollution was handed to the Spanish government. Cigarette butts are a hazard on many beaches, as they contain non-biodegradable plastic polymer. The European Environment Agency found cigarette butts among the most common items littering Europe's beaches. As well as contaminating the soil, they are also extremely harmful if swallowed by sea life. Sardinia in Italy and some areas in southern France have already banned smoking on their beaches.
In 2020 in a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19, Spain banned smoking in outdoor public spaces where people can't maintain a social distance of at least six feet. Galicia, in northwestern Spain, first introduced a ban on smoking in streets, bars and restaurants and this was adopted by the country’s health minister and brought in nationally.
Marta, 24, was supposed to work as an au pair in London but without a work visa, she was sent to the Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre.
"They took me to prison; then I burst into tears..."
[Dozens of EU citizens have reportedly suffered similarly.]
Unlike the UK or USA, one of the more visible ways that many Europeans are used to seeing black people is at work as street sellers, especially during summer in the bigger cities. These are the so-called ‘top manta’ who display their products on blankets in busy places.
In July three years ago, Barcelona’s ‘top manta’ vendors – virtually all of whom are of African descent – decided to set up their own website and clothing brand. Their aim was to turn an illegal activity into a more widely accepted one by “officially registering as a non-profit organisation/union.”
In a piece of good news, they recently finished the first round of their crowdfunding campaign to which almost 2,500 people donated (mainly in amounts of less than 50 euros) to reach their initial target.
(This entrepreneurial move predated the 2015 tragic death of a local man of Senegalese origin who fell from his third floor apartment balcony in Salou during a law enforcement raid. His family sued the police.)
The union collective says the business venture is part of a broader goal to improve their living conditions as marginalised people and because they “want an alternative to the fake products we dreamt we could take off the streets in our city.”
The association was formed by migrants from various African countries who have found a form of daily subsistence in street vending. They argue that they want to have legal employment and residence status but that has been denied them.
Under the slogan “Surviving is not a crime,” their collective had been founded as “a way to support [themselves] in the face of the harshness of selling in the street every day and as a way to defend [themselves] in the face of institutional racism, persecution and criminalisation.” They are also keen to remove the stigma around their jobs and emphasise that they are “creative individuals with ideas and ambition, [just] like you.”
Some members have talked about the dignity of their work even though many earn an income that barely reaches 200 euros a month.
A recent Barcelona council investigation found that, contrary to allegations, there was “no mafia” involvement in the supply of products to ’top manta’.
It is believed that there are organised groups involved in the trafficking of people who bring these immigrants to Spain and there are also “criminal bands” linked to counterfeit goods.
Partly due to pressure from several migrant collectives, in 2010 street vending was “de-penalised” in Spain and it became a minor infraction.
But again in 2015, a penal code reform, carried out by the conservative government of the People’s Party (PP), reestablished street vending as an offence with sanctions of between six months and two years jail.
Legal status of ‘top mantas’ aside, I am interested that these men and their families have an income that allows them a decent life that keeps each of them away from serious crime as a way of making ends meet financially.
Some other members of the public have expressed frustration that ‘top manta’ sellers take business away from established shops and businesses, as well as the complaint that they pay no tax and are selling goods manufactured by children in extreme poverty.
These strike me as probably valid points that need to be worked out, but on a European-wide basis rather than a national or local one. Overall though, we face the problem of what should (and can) be done when people are trapped in the kind of situation the ‘top mantas’ are.
Everyone has the basic right to a decent living. How governments and society deal with this is a huge question that tests how humane we really are.
"In response to the current Covid-19 crisis, a freephone number has been set up to handle labour queries from citizens and a new Barcelona Activa portal opened up to facilitate financial support and resources to help workers, organisations and self-employed professionals in the business sector. In addition, Barcelona Activa will not be charging rent to any companies housed in its business incubators while the state of emergency is in place.
New freephone number for citizens
The new service offers personalised phone support and is aimed at anyone with doubts and queries which Barcelona Activa may be able to resolve. The freephone number (900 533 175) will be operational from Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 6 pm. Depending on the nature of each enquiry, they will be referred to specialist services and resources.
Points to protect labour rights
While the state of emergency is in place, face-to-face support provided at labour rights protection points at the three district offices has been suspended. The service is being provided by phone and online instead and is available citywide.
Three phone numbers have been set up: 932 346 122, 932 346 121 and 932 346 120.
Barcelona Activa has set up a new information portal on financial resources and support provided by all administrations, aimed especially at micro companies, SMEs, the self-employed and workers, who have borne the brunt of the drop in turnover since the state of emergency was declared. The website also provides services for businesses, cooperatives, organisations and associations who request it.
Subsidies for projects from the cooperative, social and solidarity economy
Organisations also have access to an online advice service to present projects from the cooperative, social and solidarity economy for open subsidy calls. The goal of this service is to resolve queries relating to documents for calls from the programmes ‘Impulsem el que fas’ and ‘Enfortim l’ESS 2020’.
[Anna Amato from Italy. Photo: REUTERS/TOBY MELVILLE]
"BRISTOL, England(Reuters) - Anna Amato was just two when she moved to Britain from Italy with her parents 55 years ago. She has lived in Britain ever since, attending school and university, working in a variety of jobs, and paying taxes. She has always lived in the city of Bristol in the west of England, marrying a British husband and raising two British children.
Like thousands of European Union nationals who have made Britain their home after living in the country for decades, Amato always assumed she had earned the legal right to settle permanently.
But the government didn't agree. The interior ministry rejected her request for permanent residency last year, saying she did not have enough evidence to document her status.
She was devastated.
"You are in your country, it is a democracy, all of a sudden you are told after this time no one knows what is going to happen to you," Amato, 57, told Reuters. "Where do I go? It is really, really scary."
Amato is one of a growing number of EU nationals denied the right to live indefinitely in Britain ahead of the country's departure from the bloc, currently scheduled for October 31.
For decades, Britain's membership of the EU has guaranteed the bloc's citizens the right to live and work in the country. But as Britain prepares to sever ties with Brussels after 46 years, EU citizens must apply for a new legal lifeline to remain, known as settled status.
Under the government's plans, EU citizens who can prove they have lived continuously in Britain for five years will be granted settled status, giving them the same rights to work, study and benefits they currently hold.
But Reuters has spoken to six EU nationals, including a top French chef, who have been refused settled status, even though they should automatically qualify through continuous residency.
Many EU nationals are concerned they could lose the right to free healthcare or employment. Others are worried about how they will prove they have the right to return if they travel abroad.
The fate of EU migrants has been thrown further into confusion by the government's announcement this month that their automatic right to live and work in Britain will end abruptly - and sooner than expected - in the event of a no-deal Brexit."
Who do you think said these words three days after the 2016 UK Brexit Referendum, in an attempt to explain the result?
“Waves of migration and globalised culture washed among us, eroding our sense of self. Whole communities changed colour and language, leaving older people cut off...but the self-confidently multi-ethnic, liberal, urban class… barely noticed.”
It’s more than a bit surprising but the person who spoke these words looking directly down the camera on public television is not a candidate for an ultra right wing political party. His name is Andrew Marr and since 2005 he has been the host of his own hour-long BBC TV news and current affairs interview show.
In fact, his program has long been a part of my family’s Sunday morning routine. (We are usually eating my wife’s wonderful, home cooked crepes at some point when his show is on.)
Like almost all of the entrenched British Establishment, Marr is a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge universities.He has the general appearance of a quite shy and usually polite man, especially so when speaking to royalty and Hollywood film stars. Recently though he has seemed increasingly excitable at times.
I recently saw his post-Brexit piece-to-camera again and realised that his excitement was genuine this time. What viewers originally saw back then on this particular edition of his show was a man taking sides after a profound event. The words he used were deliberate and showed up his true allegiance. Marr was siding with the conservative racists, some of whom are clearly new-style fascists.
In other words, he was lining up with those who are -- underneath all the polished British smiles -- in love with power. They are power worshipers: one accurate definition of a fascist. The most important element in their outlook is having someone to hate and this is always a minority group. Even better if the minority is easily recognised in public places.
Historically, these lovers of power have come from all social sections of society but have always favoured supporting the strong over the weak, the poor, the disabled, the unemployed. In the UK, they have always trumpeted the ‘Parliament and rule of law’ argument as a fundamental ‘British value’ then ignored it or broken it when it suits them.
Of course, in modern Britain and the wider world today (and probably for a long time in the past) there is no law. There is only power. This is what George Orwell said about totalitarian societies like the one he imagined in his novel ‘1984’. In my opinion, it is phrase that perfectly describes our time. The law does not exist, except the ability to enforce it. Andrew Marr knows this. He is a frightened man. So am I. I am frightened of the exact same thing as him: a rule of brute force in Europe.
In Britain now, the rule of law has been shown to be a hollow claim. Rule by those with the ability to compel others to their will, by force, has now begun. The courts and prisons are more than full. Police numbers are now so shrunken by conservative government funding cuts and station closures that they are at times unable to defend one person or group against another. The peaceful are being attacked by the violent, some of whom are fascist criminals, others are just criminals.
Broadcast all across the nation, watching Andrew Marr’s rant almost three years later, I realised something critically important. This wasn’t the moment Britain changed. It was the moment I realised it had started to completely change.
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2019.]
[The September 6, 2018, trial of 11 people who have helped migrants in Belgium has attracted a number of protesters. Photo: Melissa Vida. Used with permission.]
"Eleven people who had been arrested and charged with human trafficking in October 2017 appeared in court in Brussels on September 6, the first hearing of a trial that activists say is yet another case of “criminalization of solidarity” in Europe.
The defendants have allegedly assisted 95 undocumented migrants, including 12 minors, to travel from Belgium to the United Kingdom last year, either by hosting them in their homes, by lending them phones and thereby indirectly helping them cross the channel.
On the day of the trial, three hundred people protested in front of the courthouse. Demonstrators say this is a political trial, aimed at dissuading people from helping migrants by establishing an intimidating judicial precedent.
The defendants are two Belgian journalists, one Belgian-Moroccan social worker, a Tunisian man who is a legal Belgian resident and seven people who are undocumented migrants themselves. Eight of the defendants have been in jail since the arrest.
Belgian law states that there must be a monetary transaction involved for an act to be framed as human trafficking, something the defendants deny ever happening. However, the relationship between the migrants and their helpers seems to fall into a legal grey area, raising fears that the law's scope is unjustly being expanded to target activists.
Myriam Berghe, one of the two journalists, said in an interview with RTBF (Belgium's public service broadcaster) that she's received money on behalf of a migrant she was hosting. The migrant in question had been sent money from abroad via Western Union, Berghe says, but had no way of collecting it due to having no papers. What for Berghe was simply an act of kindness, in the eyes of the authorities was payment for smuggling.
In the same interview, she explains that despite some of the people she's hosted being smugglers themselves, she wouldn't consider them “human traffickers...”
"[This week] the European parliament has voted to trigger the EU's most serious disciplinary procedure against Hungary, saying the country’s government poses a “systematic threat” to democracy and the rule of law. Gergely Nagy writes about the impact of the political right on culture in Hungary."
"For two and a half years, environmentalists have waged a war with the Polish authorities for Białowieża Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Europe's last and largest remaining patches of Europe's original primeval forest.
In April 2018, the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court, ruled that Poland violated EU laws by logging in the forest, imposing fines of a minimum of 4.3 million euros (five million US dollars), potentially rising to 100,000 euros a day, if the felling doesn't stop.
In March 2016, former Polish Environment Minister Jan Szyzko, a member of the [right-wing] Law and Justice party who's backed by forester lobbies, approved tripling the amount of wood that could be harvested from Białowieża, allegedly to combat an infestation by the bark beetle.
In July, a handful of Polish environmental organizations filed a formal complaint to the European Commission, which then sued Poland in the EU Court of Justice.
Straddling the border between Poland and Belarus, Białowieża includes extensive undisturbed areas and is home to a rich wildlife of which 59 mammal species, including the European bison.
But while on the Belarussian side over 80 percent of its extension is circumscribed under a national park, only 17 percent of Poland's forest enjoys a similar level of protection.
Watchdog environmental organizations say at least 160,000-180,000 trees have been felled since Szyzko's 2016 new management plan.
Neglect for the environment is an issue touching all corners of Eastern Europe. In Romania, Greenpeace estimates that three hectares of trees are lost every hour in the Carpathian mountains, also home to one of Europe's last patches of primeval forest. In Slovakia, official declarations that forests are growing undermined by aerial photography.
In Poland, Szyzko was eventually sacked in January 2017, only days after another controversial bill which he had sponsored was approved in parliament. The bill removes the obligation for private landowners to apply for permission to cut down trees or to inform local authorities that trees have been or will be removed.
The new environment minister, Henryk Kowalczyk, agreed to comply with the EU’s decision, but controversy still surrounds his administration. In May, he established a team to envision a long-term plan for the forest, including plans to replant the logged areas, which environmentalists claim could do more harm than good.
The protests
In May 2017, protestors established a permanent camp in the forest, often chaining themselves to harvest machines. The settlement, organized on a bottom-up basis, encouraged the development of online petitions and international awareness.
The situation detonated when some protestors were forcibly removed from the area, in handcuffs, by the Forestry Corps, and a legal ban was put in place to forbid entry to certain parts of the land. By the height of 2017 Summer, the Environment Ministry had declared any opposition to logging would be seen as political opposition.
As Poland’s state media, which had been increasingly subject of intervention by the government of the conservative Law and Justice party, began to attack these protests with vitriol, campaigners decided to season their message with patriotic sentiment, promoting a message of national heritage that is in line with the party's ideas.
A digital 3D model of the forest, produced by a collaboration between Greenpeace and Minecraft, allows players to explore Białowieża complete with biodiversity and weather patterns. Called “To the Last Tree Standing”, the game eventually removes the trees from players’ sight without warning, leaving them scrambling to find the last one."
[Protesters demonstrate in support of the sacked Supreme Court judges.Photo: Getty] Photo: Getty
"On Monday, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, referred the case to Europe’s highest court, but Poland has a month to respond, and any ruling might come too late to stop the overhaul.
When [the] Law and Justice [party] came to power, it campaigned against what it saw as a corrupt bureaucracy, calling for Poland to “get up from its knees”. But for Mr Kaczynski, transforming the courts was always a central goal.
When his party was in power from 2005 to 2007, many of its legislative efforts were blocked by judges. He came to believe that the transition to democracy that started in 1989 was flawed because many former communists were allowed to hold on to their positions. Although the number of people from the communist era still in judicial positions has dwindled, the party says that communist thinking still infects the system.
So when the party returned to power in 2015, it moved swiftly to rebuild the judicial system. It stacked the Constitutional Court, which decides if legislation violates the constitution. Once that court was under the party’s control, its lawmakers passed a series of measures aimed at other parts of the court system.
But their first effort to reshape the Supreme Court, a year ago, was met with widespread protests. The government backed down.
Last winter, it proposed new measures, slightly watered down, that critics said would have the same effect — turning the Supreme Court into an instrument of the party.
In December, after a devastating report by the Venice Commission, which monitors rule-of-law issues for the European Union, the bloc of nations invoked Article 7 of its founding treaty to take action against Poland. It became the first country in the history of the union to be threatened with losing its voting rights.
This time, however, the government would not be deterred.
Under the legislation, Mr Duda can grant exemptions to the mandatory retirement age, but judges must ask him to do so. The president did so for Mr Iwulski on Tuesday.
Ms Gersdorf and many colleagues refused, setting the stage for the standoff on Wednesday morning.
The country’s deputy minister of justice, Michal Wojcik, told the Polish Press Agency that Ms Gersdorf had been allowed into the court because no citizen is barred entry, but he said she would not be allowed to rule on cases."
– New York Times [sourced from The New Daily here.]
[Below is the text text of a letter shared online through social media...] If you are a British resident in Catalonia and you agree then please copy, paste and sign the document and send it to the British Consulate. Address is: British Consulate General Barcelona Avda Diagonal 477-13, 08036 Barcelona email: spain.consulate@fco.gov.uk We the undersigned are British citizens resident in Catalonia. In our time here we have enjoyed peaceful coexistence with Catalans, interacting and integrating to our own different degrees with Catalan society. We now stand aghast at the Spanish government’s response to the recent political developments in Catalonia. The single most striking episode was the indisputable police brutality of the 1st October, which marked an arrogant, heavy-handed and oppressive armed attack against peaceful Spanish citizens gathering to cast their vote, and to express thus their opinion, in the referendum on Catalan independence. It hardly seems necessary to delve into a description of the events of that day, as graphic images of police charges, attacks with batons, injured people and the peaceful nature of the voters were broadcast around the world. No degree of falsely bemoaning “fake news” by the Spanish authorities can change the truth that most people perceived. Now the most recent scenario is that of the Spanish government announcing severe measures in the imminent application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution. These include the destitution of the democratically elected President of Catalonia and all of his cabinet, usurping the control of public TV, radio and the Catalan police force, imposing new elections (with the foreseeable illegalization of one or more independence parties?), and imposing tighter controls on the education system. Much of this hammer-fisted intervention is in fact illegal in both form and content as gathered under that selfsame constitution. Undoubtedly, this is a very unsatisfactory culmination of a process which has been gathering momentum for years now, and with no attempt at all by the Spanish government to engage in dialogue, and to explore a political solution. Subsequent, as yet isolated, outbreaks of violence against pro-independence symbols and supporters by extreme and violent right-wing groups is another factor which gives us cause for concern, especially since we have seen no signs at all of the Spanish government making any moves to condemn or shun such attacks. Above all, however, there is the recent incarceration of two civil rights activists guilty only of promoting peaceful protests. This holding of political prisoners is an abomination, and we do not understand why it has not been censured by European governments and institutions in the strongest of terms. We believe that attempting to cloak events with a mantle of falsehoods, using immoral, illegitimate and illegal measures of coercion and ugly brute force are in fact the trademarks of an authoritarian state, and have no place in a Western democracy. The Spanish Constitution is not sculpted in stone, and neither should it be written in blood. Laws are drawn up to impose restraints in order to maintain a functioning society; when such laws fail in this objective and become a straitjacket wielded by a privileged few to keep society from developing and pursuing legitimate desires then, in democratic terms, those laws have failed and the time has come to modify or eradicate them. We believe that it is within the British Consulate’s scope and interests, as well as a moral duty, to convey the content of this letter and its spirit of extreme disapproval of the Spanish government’s actions in the most insistent and strongest terms possible to the highest representatives of the Spanish Government and to the British Embassy in Madrid. Signed,
