To the editor of the College Tribune
Re: Catalonia in crisis (Aarow Bowman, 31st October)
After reading your editorial, I cannot remain idle about the lack of objectivity demonstrated in your newspaper, with a clear omission of the facts and misunderstanding of the real situation. I would therefore like to clarify some of the statements you make.
You correctly mention the results of the pseudo-referendum in Catalonia; a vote whose numbers cannot be verified, where people are known to have voted more than once, where the ‘yes’ votes surpassed the registered census in more than 71 towns or that the Catalan government itself broke the unconstitutional laws it had approved to regulate the referendum. If we were to look at the last real elections in September 2015, the secessionist parties did not obtain the majority of votes, but due to the electoral laws they obtained the majority of the members of the regional parliament.
You state, that Catalonia has “the right to self-determination as recognised in international law and the UN Charter of Human Rights. This especially states that all people will have the right to freely determine their political status and pursue their own economic and cultural development”, a categorically incorrect affirmation, as the UN Resolution 2625 only recognizes this right to self-determination in the process of decolonization or in the case that the peoples occupied or oppressed suffering a mass, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights. Something that fortunately has not happened in Catalonia.
It is also forgotten that every written Constitution in the world, with the exception of St. Kitts and Nevis and Ethiopia, and including the Irish Constitution in its articles 1 and 5, recognizes the sovereignty of the country, and thus the right of the whole nation to decide, and not only Catalans.
As an Erasmus student in UCD and Spanish citizen, I am obliged to defend a non-biased view of the facts which I believe have been omitted.
Gabriel Elorriaga
Dublin
