For the first time, an initiative born out of Society 2. 0 (Web 2. 0) using new technologies, such as social networks like Facebook, is realising an initiative via a virtual community.
Catalan civil society, through all its cultural, sports and civic institutions, is carrying out several initiatives to claim back our right to self-determination as a people. The "Deu Mil a Brussel·les per l'Autodeterminació" (Ten Thousand in Brussels for Self Determination) is trans-partisan, born and based on the active participation of civil society.
Our aim: to demonstrate in Brussels on March 7th under the cry of "We want a Catalan State", claiming independence for our country. Getting self determination on the international agenda and Catalan political parties to declare they are in favour of sovereignty and on their programmes.
Spain has always been reticent about full recognition of its multiple national diversity. Catalonia has seen recent Spanish central governments closing the autonomous political system and leaving the regions as mere decentralised administrations with no sovereignty or even any federal recognition for the Catalan nation.
With the Constitutional Court's forthcoming sentence on competencies of the new Statute of Autonomy approved by referendum in 2006, which all analysts expect will be adverse, Spain is attempting to make any sign of sovereignty for Catalan democratic institutions without effect. It refuses to accept any form of federal or confederal treaty for its historical nations such as Catalonia.
And worse yet, the Spanish constitutional system refuses point-blank the right to self determination. It explicitly bans any region or historical nation from calling or organising referendums for its citizens to decide on their future democratically. That is why we are going to Brussels in order to claim our international and democratic rights, for the self determination the Spanish State refuses us.
We live in a globalised world with major migratory fluxes. In this context, Catalans see our productive and economic model endangered, but we also see risks for our model of an open, integrating, welfare society for all our citizens, without distinguishing among gender, race or origin.
With a tax deficit unparalleled in any European region or state, which experts style continuous fiscal plundering, Catalans are ever more conscious of the need to endow themselves of the same instruments as sovereign nations in order to face necessary structural reforms with any guarantee.
Without sovereignty and the resources needed to solve our problems (which are currently managed by the Spanish central government), the very survival of Catalonia as a distinguishable nation is endangered.
We are going to Brussels in order to claim our right to become a State, with the same mechanisms of political sovereignty to administer our own resources like any other European country.
This initiative via Internet is not connected to any particular political party, although we have secured the support of several politicians, and most support comes from citizen platforms, cultural organisations, social collectives of all sorts and writers,
like ex-member of the General Council of the Judicial Power of Spain, notary Alfons López-Tena, author of polemic "Catalonia under Spain: National Oppression in Democracy" (Catalunya sota Espanya. L'opressió nacional en democràcia - Dèria editors-La Magrana 2007), a blockbuster in Catalonia.
And even though it is a millenary language with over 10 million speakers and a literature of world significance, it is not recognised as an equal of other European languages with less than half its number of speakers and minor literatures, simply because we have no state. That is why we want to go to Brussels, to the European Parliament and the Commission to let them know, following their indications, that we want to become a sovereign State within the European Union.
The Catalan Nation is a nation without a state with over one thousand years of history, most of whose territory is now within the Spanish State. It has an official population of 13 million inhabitants, 80% of which speak the Catalan language, with its broad, extensive literature with worldwide recognition, a service- and industry-based economy generating a GDP of $482 bn. which represents 30.5% of Spain's GDP and a per capita GDP of over $37,000.
Since Catalonia lost its independence as a result of the War of Succession of 1704-1725 almost 300 years ago, the Catalan people have unceasingly striven to recover their freedom. Even through war, political persecution and the 40-year fascist dictatorship, stifling its language and culture, Catalan identity has remained firm and forceful enough to demand its recognition as a State within Europe.
La necessitat de la creació d'una bandera de combat, pren forma definitiva a través de la inspiració de l'activista i polític Vicenç-Albert Ballester, l'any 1918.
En signar-se aquell any l'armistici de la primera guerra mundial i amb l'esclat de laparició de nous estats a Europa, uns joves propers a la Unió Catalanista i pertanyents al semiclandestí Comitè Pro-Catalunya, del qual Ballester n'era el president, aprofitaren el moment polític per internacionalitzar el fet nacional català utilitzant la bandera de l'estel solitari.
Dins d'aquest grup, Ballester hi creà o inspirà la senyera estelada, perquè tan els catalans com les potències estrangeres visualitzessin clarament les aspiracions independentistes de Catalunya.
La quadribarrada tradicional els quedava curta en soler lluir al costat de l'espanyola que la neutralitzada ideològicament. L'estelada en canvi, es convertiria en la nova bandera de la Catalunya insurrecta, fins que aquesta recuperés la independència, moment que retornaria, en paraules del propi Ballester, de bell nou la bandera de les quatre barres, la Bandera Catalana, sense estels, sense blaus, però amb tots els honors. Ben alta, ben dreta i ben sola!.
El fet d'haver-hi un estel i un triangle en la nostra bandera de lluita, no és un fet casual. La simbologia del l'estel solitari simbolitza, per ell mateix, la llibertat, i en la bandera, la independència del país que representa. El triangle equilàter representa l'estabilitat i la simplicitat. Tradicionalment, és el símbol de la divinitat. Les societats de maçons lempren sovint en la seva iconografia simbòlica.
Si ens fixem en les banderes d'estats independents i en les de nacions sense estat, encara no reconegudes, en moltes hi sovintegen estels. De tots aquests estats independents, el més antic de tots on hi figura un triangle i un estel, és Cuba, antiga colònia espanyola fins lany 1898.
La lluita de Cuba per la seva independència era ja seguida amb atenció pels catalanistes del segle XIX. La simbologia dels cubans insurgents influí decisivament en els independentistes catalans que residien a l'illa, alhora de dissenyar la nova ensenya de combat.
Un cop acabada la guerra d'Independència de Cuba, es va crear, a Santiago, lany 1906, el Centre Catalanista de Santiago, on ja s'hi podia veure un primer apunt de la futura bandera catalana estelada: Al mig d'una senyera, damunt mateix de les quatre barres, hi lluïa un estel blanc de cinc puntes.
Prenent doncs com a model la bandera de Cuba, Vicenç Ballester, que hi residí temporalment i n'admirà la seva lluita contra l'imperi espanyol, impulsà el disseny definitiu de la bandera del triangle i l'estel.
Els colors tenen la mateixa simbologia que els dels ideals de la revolució francesa, posteriorment adoptats a la bandera dels EUA i finalment a la cubana. El triangle blau representa el blau del cel la humanitat on al bell mig hi llueix l'estel blanc de la llibertat.
El 1906, apareix un estel a la capçalera de la revista Fora Grillons!, feta a Santiago de Cuba per exiliats catalans (publicació que ja reivindicava sense embuts la independència de Catalunya). A la dècada dels anys 20, un cop acabada la primera guerra mundial, es respiren vents de llibertat, propiciats pel president dels Estat Units d'Amèrica Woodrow Wilson.
La Societat de les Nacions, embrió de l'ONU, provoca esperances infinites. Molts pobles veieren clara la seva oportunitat històrica d'alliberar-se, i així ho aconseguiren la República Txeca, Finlàndia, Estònia, Letònia, Lituània i Armènia al llarg de lany 1918. Altres pobles com Ucraïna, Bielorússia i Geòrgia, són proclamats independents però ben aviat són ocupats pels soviètics, no sense revoltes populars.
Totes aquestes nacions que aspiren a alliberar-se, comencen a crear grups de pressió internacionals, per a transcendir la seva lluita en altres països. En el cas català, el Comitè Pro-Catalunya, amb Vicenç Ballester al capdavant, en fou un dels més actius.
Fou en aquestes circumstàncies que es veié amb la necessitat de dotar-se d'un símbol que representés les seves aspiracions i les de Catalunya i aquest fou, com no podia ser d'altra manera, el de l'estel a la bandera. La popularitat de la bandera estelada, comença a notar-se a partir d'aquell moment.
La primera fotografia del definitiu símbol dels independentistes, apareix en una publicació de 1918. Es tracta del butlletí L'intransigent, on es reproduïa una imatge d'uns joves nord-americans i uns separatistes catalans subjectant les seves banderes respectives. També fou el mateix any 1918, que es posa en circulació, una vinyeta (segell sense valor postal), dedicada a la futura Societat de les Nacions, on també apareix una estelada.
Ja a la dècada dels anys 20, trobem dues imatges més d'estelades. L'una en el darrer número de La Tralla (revista independentista radical dels anys 20 i 30), abans del cop d'estat de Primo de Rivera de l'any 1923 i l'altra en un document imprès pel Comitè Pro-Catalunya escrit en català i en àrab, per tal de saludar i encoratjar a un dels dirigents polítics del Marroc revoltat contra Espanya.
A Cuba, apareix impresa per primera vegada, a la capçalera de la revista La Nova Catalunya (1920). A partir d'aleshores, les banderes estelades aniran trobant-se habitualment en publicacions separatistes catalanes.
Es presenta a Santa Bàrbara la Plataforma deumil. cat
Butlletins Informatius, Local, Manifestacions
Posted by Josep-Tere
La plataforma deumil. cat és una iniciativa ciutadana, nascuda de la societat civil i fonamentada en la participació activa de totes les persones coordinades a nivell local i comarcal de cara a reivindicar internacionalment els drets del poble català a decidir sobre el seu futur.
Aquesta plataforma arriba ara també a les Terres de l'Ebre i segons que explicava el promotor al Montsià ,el planer Marc March es tracta de donar a conèixer també a la gent de l Ebre aquesta fita ambiciosa per aconseguir aplegar el dia 7 de març a Brusel•les 10.000 persones per a reivindicar amb el crit Volem lEstat propi, reivindicant la independència del nostre país.
L'objectiu de la manifestació és voler aconseguir que l'autodeterminació de Catalunya figuri en lagenda internacional i que els partits polítics nacionals, arrossegats per la nostra força, es declarin oficialment a favor de la independència i la incloguin en el seu programa i sobre tot que es comprometin a treballar per aconseguir-ho.
Aquest projecte, no sotmès a cap sigla política específica ,segons March, està obert a treballar, mantenint la seva autonomia, amb totes les persones, organitzacions i plataformes que tinguin el mateix objectiu: la Independència de la Nació Catalana.
Per aconseguir-ho shan creat aquestes delegacions arreu dels països catalans de cara de donar a conèixer, difondre i informar a tothom en que consisteix i que es pot fer per col•laborar.
Podeu trobar mes informació i adscriure-us al projecte consultant la pàgina web w w w . deumil. cat
Un grup de sabadellencs ja sha sumat a la proposta eu mil catalans a Brussel·les per a lautodeterminació de la nació catalana, que va néixer com a resposta a larticle Perplex, jo?, que va publicar EnricCanela al Bloc Gran del Sobiranisme el 6 de setembre del 2008, a partir del qual sen va iniciar la difusió a través
Des daquesta plataforma es vol treballar per lèxit de lobjectiu: anar el 7 de març a Brussel·les sota el lema Volem lEstat propi,
reivindicant la independència.
El col·lectiu pretén que lautodeterminació de la nació catalana figuri en lagenda europea i que els partits polítics nacionals es declarin a favor de la independència i la incloguin en el seu programa.
Sorgeix ara perquè es considera que el conjunt dels Països Catalans travessa una cruïlla històrica difícil i confusa: El manteniment de la submissió durant tres-cents anys de la nostra nació per part de l'Estat és la llosa més gran per al nostre desenvolupament, i posa en perill la nostra supervivència dins d'una Europa on només es reconeixen els estats, diuen els promotors.
Un dels propòsits dels sabadellencs que al març viatjaran cap a Brussel·les és, segons Àngels Folch, una de les organitzadores, pujar lautoestima dels catalans:
Que es digui amb la boca ben grossa que Catalunya és una nació i que vol un Estat propi, cosa que no vol dir que lendemà tinguem la independència, diu Folch.
Un castell i una sardana Les persones que coneixen la iniciativa de ben segur es pregunten què faran a Brussel ·les les 10.000 persones (o els que siguin, ja que l'organització no es planteja ni un mínim ni un límit).
A Terrassa fins ara sha treballat bàsicament a nivell intern per organitzar-ho tot: hi ha un centre territorial de la iniciativa. Les tasques van començar a finals de desembre.
De moment, hi ha gent vinculada a l'àmbit de la cultura tradicional, persones residents al barri de Les Fonts, ciutadans vinculats a les joventuts de Convergència, com el seu actual president, Carles Oriach, i terras-senques que havien estat en la candidatura municipal d'Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.
Anna Parés és una de les dones que ha assumit el repte de potenciar el deu mil a Brussel·les a la capital egarenca: La idea és no deixar-nos cap entitat terrassenca, però tot just hem començat. En el cas dels partits polítics, hem deixat ben clar que es tracta de col·laborar- hi com a individus.
font: deumil. cat/Docs/2009/1/1233326990-Article_Avui_Sabadell. pdf
Un dels objectius de la iniciativa Deumil. cat és evitar que una ideologia determinada o un partit polític en concret se napropiï. Això vol dir que el que es proposa és un treball transversal on totes aquelles persones que pensin que el futur del nostre país passa necessàriament per assolir-ne la independència hi tinguin cabuda.
A banda daixò, la pròpia idiosincràsia daquesta convocatòria és la marca de la societat 2 . 0, la qual cosa vol dir, ras i curt, xarxa. Per això el Consell Nacional està format per un grup reduït de membres i per això mateix qui porta el pes real del treball a peu de carrer són els més de 170 delegats territorials que hi ha arreu dels Països Catalans i del món.
La Delegació territorial a Lleida ciutat també treballem en aquesta línia transversal. Si la idea és consolidar una autèntica teranyina que sestengui i arribi a tots els racons del nostre país, la millor manera és donar-se a conèixer al teixit associatiu local.
En aquests moments treballem en aquesta línia perquè arribar al ciutadà individual és molt més fàcil si sarticula a través del teixit associatiu existent a cada municipi.
Per ara, ja hem aconseguit el suport i recolzament de la delegació a les Terres de Ponent dÒmnium Cultural i també de lAteneu Popular de Ponent, dues entitats amb molt de prestigi entre la societat lleidatana. Ara toca arribar a la resta de teixit associatiu de la ciutat: associacions de veïns, entitats de barri, associacions de joves, etc.
Hauríem de fer un llistat dels casos de persecució política i judicial de l'independentisme.
Al seu costat també hauríem de mirar-nos les actuacions de l'estat i els seus governs successius, jutges, policia, i altres agents socials contra l'independentisme, així com la complicitat de la majoria de la premsa i mitjans d'informació en general en el que defenso hem de qualificar de vergonya política, social, intel·lectual, legal.
Per quina raó l acte tindrà lloc a Brussel·les? Partim de lexemple de la marxa sobre Washington que va liderar Martin Luther King a favor dels drets civils. Brussel·les és avui dia la capital de la Unió Europea i el nostre objectiu és que Catalunya sigui un Estat sobirà de la UE.
És molt habitual que es facin manifestacions a Brussel·les. Com aconseguireu ressò mediàtic? Evidentment, que 10.000 catalans es manifestin a Brussel·les per l'autodeterminació no tindrà cap mena de rellevància si no aconseguim que la premsa internacional ho esbombi.
Què passarà si la manifestació és un èxit? Els partits polítics hauran d'assumir les nostres demandes. Si els partits volen tenir determinats vots hauran de defensar en el seu programa electoral els postulats que més cotitzen, i l'independentisme avui dia ho fa.
Com munteu la infraestructura necessària per portar tanta gent a Brussel·les? Vam contactar amb una agència de viatges que ens organitza un paquet, des de viatges amb dos vols charter que hem fletat, fins als nombrosos autocars que sortiran de diversos punts del país en funció de la demanda que tinguin.
Lògicament, cadascú viatjarà de la manera que més li interessi. Què hi podem fer els ciutadans per avançar cap a l'autodeterminació? Hi hem d'aportar el nostre granet de sorra i daquesta manera portar el debat de lautodeterminació al centre del debat polític.
La iniciativa Deu Mil a Brussel•les per lAutodeterminació, de caràcter transversal, nascuda de la societat civil i fonamentada en la participació activa de totes les persones coordinades a nivell local i comarcal, ha sorgit com a resposta a l'article "Perplex, jo?" que va publicar Enric Canela, i als comentaris dels seus lectors, a partir dels quals es va iniciar immediatament la seva difusió a través dun grup del Facebook i del nostre web deumil. cat.
Des d'aquesta plataforma volem treballar tots plegats per a la total consolidació i èxit del nostre objectiu: anar el 7 de març a Brussel•les sota el mateix crit Volem l'Estat propi, reivindicant la independència del nostre país.
Volem aconseguir que l'autodeterminació de Catalunya figuri en lagenda internacional i que els partits polítics nacionals, arrossegats per la nostra força, es declarin oficialment a favor de la independència i la incloguin en el seu programa. Més encara, que es comprometin a treballar per aconseguir-ho.
Aquest projecte, no sotmès a cap sigla política específica que ens separi, està obert a treballar, mantenint la seva autonomia, amb totes les persones, organitzacions i plataformes que tinguin el mateix objectiu: la Independència de la Nació Catalana.
Aquest llibre fou escrit, en anglès, durant la Segona Guerra Mundial a Oxford, i l'Oxford University Press el va publicar l'any 1946, tan aviat com va disposar de paper per a fer-ho. Molts ens demanem com un cirurgià, enmig de la guerra, enfeinat com estava a atendre milers de ferits, tant militars com civils, va poder passar hores a la Radcliffe Camera (la biblioteca de la Universitat d'Oxford) per recopilar dades i dates i escriure el llibre.
Què el va induir a fer aquest immens esforç? Senzillament el desig de fer conèixer al lector britànic un petit país, dins la península Ibèrica, que ha produït, com diu ell mateix 'alguna cosa més que la Inquisició, la intolerància, el cant flamenc i les corregudes de bous'. Ras i curt: un país que es diu Catalunya i que ell tant estimava.
El seu propòsit, diu ell mateix, era de fer un breu inventari de la contribució catalana 'al progrés d'allò que en diem civilització occidental'. Era, per tant, una obra d'amor que començava amb un estudi del gran filòsof Lluís Vives (1492-1540) i continuava amb una llarga llista de grans catalans de totes les èpoques.
Però deixant ben clar que ell no era historiador, i que el llibre s'havia escrit amb l'ull crític d'un metge molt afeccionat a la història del seu país. Després de la mort de Franco es va publicar en català a Barcelona, i fins ara se n'han fet quinze edicions.
VilaWeb, és una obvietat dir-ho, és una web. Però una web que sempre ha tingut una relació intima 'amb els papers', un interès especial 'pels papers'. A vegades hem fet papers: llibres. A vegades hem portat llibres a la xarxa. De tota mena.
Vàrem publicar, per exemple, 'Les mil i una nit' en la versió de Proa, durant les mil i una nit que precedien el canvi de mil·lenni. O hem portat al paper el bloc que Biel Mesquida va escriure en escaure's els cent anys del Bloomsday.
El nostre regal als lectors, en aquesta diada marcada pel debat identitari, la que per a nosaltres fa deu, és 'The Spirit of Catalonia' de Josep Trueta.
És un llibre de molt difícil abast, en l'edició original anglesa, que ara volem que siga a l'abast de tothom des de la xarxa. Pensem que és una bona aportació per a conèixer-nos millor. I també vol ser un homenatge a tota una generació de persones derrotades militarment, però mai espiritualment, sense l'esforç i la tenacitat de les quals avui no tindríem res a discutir.
THE ANCESTORS OF THE PEOPLE DEALT WITH IN THIS book were Pyreneans, Iberians, Celts, Greeks, Romans and Visigoths. They lived in the southern part of Gaul and northern part of the Iberian peninsula: that is, the large area between the Loire in the North, the Ebro in the South, the Alps in the East, and the Cantabric Sea in the West.
Its geographical nucleus was the town of Narbonne, centre of the Roman administration for more than five centuries; in the extreme South was the town of Tarraco, the capital of the Roman province of Tarraconensis. Later, when the barbarians of the North invaded the decrepit Roman Empire, they made Toulouse—farther West—their capital.
As for the more remote ancestors of this people, we know that the races which migrated from Africa, Europe, or Asia always spread very evenly over the South of Gaul and the North of the Iberian peninsula.
In fact there was no geographical obstacle to their great invasions; this calls for an explanation, since the reader may think of the Pyrenees as a barrier between the middle and the southern parts of the area with which we are concerned.
The Pyrenees may be divided into three sections: the centre of the range which is very difficult of access, and the two sections at the ends with passes open even in the coldest winter.
Towards the Mediterranean end of the mountains, there are four routes linking the plains on either side. Iberians, Greeks, Celts, Carthaginians, Romans and Goths— none of them were ever checked by the Mediterranean Section of the Pyrenees; rather is it probable that the passes lured them on to the plains beyond.
But the middle and most of the western section are different: throughout history they have acted as a confining wall, partly because the passes through them are few and difficult, but principally because of the warlike nature of the Basques,
who have lived there from prehistoric times. The Basques, with the mountains to aid them, stopped the Romans with that same spirit with which, many centuries later, they fought Charlemagne's army—a struggle which inspired the Chanson de Roland and other poems.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the unique topography of the Central Pyrenees has preserved to our own day one of the few prehistoric human stocks in Europe; and it is to the mountains that the Basques are indebted for the preservation of many of their ancient characteristics, physical, mental, and moral.
The existence of the Basques all along the high ranges of the Central-Western Pyrenees is mainly responsible for the clear-cut difference between Frenchmen and Spaniards of today; as time passed the Basques of the plains have been strongly influenced by both, but most of the mountaineers have remained purely Basque.
This varying accessibility of the mountains has conditioned the history of the Iberian peninsula and has made its inhabitants what they are today. The simple view—which, like every simple impression, tends to stick in our minds—that the areas represented by modern France and Spain are well defined by nature, is incorrect if applied to the inhabitants.
And it is equally misleading if applied to the climate and other factors of their environment; in fact, climate and natural surroundings are very similar throughout both areas north and south of the Pyrenees. Thus, it is only natural that the older inhabitants of the zone between the rivers Ebro and Loire and the Alps and the Cantabric Sea had very similar characteristics.
If anything, in ancient times the Ebro was considered a better boundary than the Pyrenees; it was the frontier between the Carthaginians and the Romans, and later between Christians and Mohammedans. In later days, the southern limit of the zone occupied by this people was displaced to the south of the Moorish kingdoms of Valencia and Denia.
Much study has been devoted to the question of Greek influence in the Western Mediterranean after the foundation of the Phocaean colonies of Massalia—Marseille (seventh century B.C.), Rhoda—Roses, Emporion— Empuries, and Hemeroskopeion Denia: Greek influence on the later characteristics of the people was important even if it cannot be compared to that of the Romans. The term influence means not only the grafting of ideas and habits; it is used here rather in a biological sense.
The Greeks and particularly the Romans moulded the people of this zone and imparted to them their own characteristics to such an extent that the latter called a very large part of that area 'Provincia', as it were par excellence.1 Later it was named Septimania because the Seventh Legion was stationed at Béziers, another of the great towns of Roman Gaul.
During the fifth century A.D. these lands were occupied by the Visigoths, after being ravaged by the Vandals, Cimbris, Teutons, and Ambrones. Of all the barbarian tribes the Goths—Visigoths and Ostrogoths—were the most highly civilized, and the only ones to be Christianized at that early date (though they adhered to the Arian heresy), and to possess an alphabet adapted to their own language.2
They were easily absorbed by the more highly developed indigenous civilization, and after a relatively short time, in spite of being the ruling aristocracy, they mixed with the native population; the southern part of the country then changed its name to 'Gothia', or land of the Goths. The Roman traditions, laws and administration were so deeply rooted that for a time two parallel ways of living developed side by side;
on the one hand we find the newly-imported aristocratic manners of the leading families holding a personal power purely Teutonic in nature; on the other, a persistency of the old Roman Communes with their civilian intercourse. But both the new and the old social systems were rapidly changing with the changing times.
At the beginning of the eighth century, the stabilization of this society was interrupted by the sudden arrival of more barbarians, this time from North Africa. At the first blow they defeated the Christian army in the south of the Peninsula, and the Saracens spread, in the course of a year or two, almost to the northern confines of the Peninsula without meeting any serious opposition except for the courageous resistance of the people of Mérida.
The feature common to all the previous invasions was then repeated, but this time there was something more, which had a telling effect on the making of modern Spain. The population of the Peninsula behaved in the following ways.
I. The Mediterranean people of the Tarraconensis emigrated en masse to the north of Septimania as far as the region of central France called Limousin. The easy crossing of the mountains now became a source of deep terror.
After the Mohammedans had swamped without a fight almost the whole of the Iberian peninsula, the old imperial town of Tarraco, proud of her ancient prestige, tried to resist the invaders. After a bloody struggle it was taken, levelled to the ground, and its inhabitants massacred. The same fate befell Manresa, Casserres, Cardona, Ausona and probably the Greek Empuries further north.
This seems to have been more than the rest of that part of the Peninsula could stand.
Barcelona and Girona were occupied without a blow, and the towns and villages were abandoned by a great proportion of the Christian population, who fled to Gaul.
Only a few people, probably almost all of them Jews, remained in Barcelona; they were the population which the Christians found when they recovered the city ninety years later. We have some knowledge of what these people felt when their city was reconquered by the Christians: it seems they received the newcomers as enemies rather than as brothers, which suggest that very few if any Christians were among them.
2. The Basque people behaved as they had always done: they retired to their closed valleys in the mountains and continued the fight, supported from behind the protecting barrier by the Basques living on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. They were never conquered, and thus they viewed the Moors from a distance, but with the same vigilance with which, in centuries gone by, they had viewed the Celts and the Romans.
3. Near the Cantabric coast there runs a long range of high mountains which orographically are a continuation of the Pyrenees; and there, people from the south and centre of Spain, especially aristocratic families, found refuge from the Moors.
With their backs to the sea—an impassable barrier to a people who were not sailors— they continued the struggle in the mountains, and at length they began to recover their lost lands in a slow, southward movement known in Spanish history as the 'Reconquista'. This was completed almost eight centuries later, when the Moorish kingdom of Granada fell in 1492.
4. The people of the Atlantic coast, it seems, either stayed where they were or retreated to the north-west corner of the Peninsula.
They were mostly of Celtic origin and at the time of the Teutonic invasions of the Peninsula they had been conquered by the Sueve tribes. This region was called Galicia, and from its people on their southward march there arose, well within the twelfth century, the Portuguese nation.
Even nowadays, Galicians and Portuguese speak two derivative forms of the old Gallego language. The affinity of the Portuguese and the Spaniards has been recognized from early5 times.
The diverse behaviour of these Peninsular peoples at the time of the Moorish invasion lies at the root of their ensuing diversity, which has persisted almost unchanged throughout the vicissitudes of history. The people sheltering in the Cantabric mountains—Castilians or Spaniards —and those compressed by the Saracens into the northwest corner of the Peninsula—Galicians and Portuguese —moved in two parallel lines until they reached the southern limits of the Peninsula.
Thus the central and western parts were recovered by their original populations or at least by people of the same stock as the pre-Mohammedan inhabitants. The central people spoke the rapidly evolving variety of Romance now known as Castilian or Spanish; the people of the Atlantic lands spoke their Galico- Portuguese language, as they do now.
The Basques descended to the plains where they had previously lived since prehistoric times, and stayed there. They had recovered the country where their ancestors lay buried, and there they have remained, in almost exactly the same places, to the present day.
The reconquest of the lands deserted by the Christians of the Mediterranean coast was undertaken by the people of Southern Gaul.
Once across the Pyrenees, the Moors had continued northwards and taken Narbonne; their advance was at last arrested when the Frankish Charles Martel, duke of Austrasia, defeated them. The decisive battle was fought between Poitiers and Tours in 732.
From that day two simultaneous successions of attacks compelled the Saracens to go back whence they came. One of these was a movement of the Peninsular peoples only (Portuguese and Castilian); the other had a Continental origin: Gallic, Frankish, Gascon (see map on p. 7).
This movement liberated Narbonne in 759, and then, under the supreme command of Louis 'le Debonnaire', King of Aquitaine, and with soldiers from Aquitaine, Gascony, Septimania, Burgundy and Provence,6 the Christian army crossed the Pyrenees, and liberated Girona in 785—or shortly before—and Barcelona in 801.
Louis 'le Debonnaire' brought with him to the newly liberated regions soldiers of the same origin and language, customs and feelings, being united by a common purpose of a religious and—if this may be said referring to people of the eighth century—a patriotic nature. The newly-recovered parts were placed under a common administration, and lands were given to the soldiers, at first in a fief for life—benefici, and later in perpetuity—aprisió.
Families from the northern side of the Pyrenees settled on the southern slopes and in the valleys, and with them they brought the ties which connected these lands more than ever before, this linking again the populations from Nice and Limoges to Barcelona.
The newly-regained country was more than an expansion of Southern Gaul; it was the melting-pot in which the regional differences between the peoples of Southern Gaul were fused into a national type. The language they spoke was closely akin to the various dialects of Southern Gaul—all of them of a common origin, and known as Languedoc, Provençal, or Limousin (see map above); it had the advantage of preserving the most vivid expressions from the various dialectal forms.
The people of Southern Gaul had, under the Romans and probably also under the Goths, succeeded in preserving self-government, their own laws and their own magistrature; Northern Gaul—the parts later to be occupied by the Franks—did not obtain these rights before the twelfth century.8
In the eleventh century the citizens of the towns in which Langue d'Oc was spoken— in the area commonly called Provence, although it is very much larger than the Provence of today— constituted a separate social class distinct from the nobility, from the clergy, and from the serfs. They were called bourgeois, a term which occurs in the Catalan law Usatges in 1060, in Carcassonne in 1107, in Montpellier in 1113, and in Béziers in 1121; the towns nominated consuls for their own government.9
Soon the bourgeois of the villages formed militias to assist the armies of the nobility in their wars; this institution, although modified by centuries, still exists in Catalonia under the name of sometent. Narbonne was made the religious centre, and Barcelona became the political pole around which the national consciousness was forming. Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier and Toulouse were the complementary focus from which light was shed over science, art, and politics.
Thus it may be said without exaggeration that by the twelfth century a new civilization had emerged in Europe, for the first time after the collapse of Roman society. It had taken more than six hundred years, but this laborious process of gestation was now completed, and humanity began to move upwards again.
All conditions for a prosperous life were at hand: among them a fertile land favoured by one of the mildest and most equable climates in Europe; a geographical situation which made the country between the Ebro and the Loire the link joining the North with the South and the Mediterranean with the Atlantic;
numerous wealthy cities, in which society increasingly resembled the ancient Roman pattern; good communications; Mohammedan civilization developing in the neighbouring Spanish State;10 a refined aristocracy which protected the Arts, and a rich and energetic middle class composed of merchants and sailors, which provided the sources of the nation's wealth.
Commemorating the Gothic domination on both sides of the Pyrenees, a large part of that region in which the Langue d'Oc was later spoken was called Gothia or land of the Goths, and according to some authorities it was from this that the word Gothalaunia originated.
An alternative view is that it was derived from a settlement of people from the Gallic Champs Cathalaunis. As early as the beginning of the twelfth century, the name was used in its modern form, Catalonia, though then applied almost exclusively to the southern side of the Pyrenees. Thus Catalonia may be said to be the region where all the various characteristics of the Provençals became concentrated and, in many spheres, intensified.11
Among them was corruption in the monastic orders and religious hierarchies, which many were allowed to join not for their conduct, piety or wisdom, but merely as followers of a profession in which the poor could find subsistence and the rich a source of power.
Another danger for this young society was the fact that many of the aristocrats soon neglected the arts of war, preferring patronage of poets and singers to the exercise of their military prowess against the Mohammedans. This criticism however does not apply to the people who were more directly under the rule of the counts of Barcelona—the Catalans; they had to fight continually in order to drive back the Saracens from the lands they had conquered at the beginning of the eighth century.
The preponderance of Troubadour poetry in the northern part of the country over its southern part, that is, of Provence over Catalonia, is probably due to the fighting kept up by the Catalans.
From the time of the reoccupation by the Christians of the country from Narbonne to Barcelona, the feudal authority was held by the kings of the Carolingian dynasty. But in the course of time their authority dwindled to hardly more than a nominal fief, from which
the earls of Barcelona were freed at the end of the ninth century, 'from Narbonne to Spain', as the Gesta Comitum put it.
Some stigmata of the former dependency still remained in the names of the coins and the dates of the official documents, which were inscribed and dated according to the reign of the kings of France. In 1112, the Count of Barcelona became Duke of Provence by his marriage with Dolça the heiress of that dukedom.
This new authority of the House of Barcelona, extending from Nice almost to the Ebro, marked a further step in the growth of national consciousness among the people of the Langue d'Oc (see map on p. 11).
In books by Provençal writers on this period, we find definite expressions of gratitude to the House of Barcelona for the high development of Provence under its rule.12
The authority of the House of Barcelona over Southern Gaul took a more definite shape when, in 1137, the Catalan counts became kings of Aragon by the marriage of Count Ramon Berenguer IV with Petronella, heiress to the throne of Aragon.13
From that time onwards, Provençal was a language not only suited for poetry but generally spoken at a king's court as well. Toulouse, the great city of the river Garonne and the only centre resisting the hegemony of Barcelona, more and more came under its influence; at the beginning of the thirteenth century its dependency was complete, when the country was ruthlessly attacked by the Northern Frenchmen, the descendants of the Franks who had conquered Northern Gaul in the sixth century.14
The terrible struggle between the people of Northern and of Southern Gaul marked the end of Provençal nationality and cut asunder for ever the destiny of a people hitherto joined as one unit: from that time on, the Pyrenees have remained a frontier.
The superiority in wealth, culture and refinement of the people of Southern Gaul roused the envy of the warlike and primitive French of that time;15 but this alone would hardly have sufficed to disrupt so large a country, without the causes of disintegration already mentioned.
I have stressed that the most powerful of all was the state of the Church; but the type of remedy the people tried to apply to it was even worse. Among an intelligent and hard-working people of deep religious feeling, the spectacle of degenerate priests who practised simony and other irregularities produced a demand for reformation of these abuses.
Rome was unable or unwilling to meet this claim, with the result that heresy sprang from the criticism and depreciation of the monks and priests, and also from the economic development of the communities.16 It was a merchant from Lyons named Valdo who principally carried the propagation of the heretical doctrine.
His preaching was not in many points in conflict with the Catholic dogma; but among other striking doctrines he preached that poverty was essential in order to carry the Christian Apostolate in accordance with the will of our Saviour;
he and his followers also spread the belief that taking an oath was forbidden by God and that, in consequence, no man was entitled to swear an oath to another man. It will easily be realized that the acceptance of this doctrine would have brought about a collapse of feudal society, which was founded on the fief of obligation; and that it would probably have caused very real harm to a society not as yet sufficiently developed to be supported by the communities only.
The Roman Church fought the heresy with all her might, and Valdo and his followers were excommunicated. One of the excommunicated Valdenses called Duran—H. C. Lea, an authority on that period, calls him the Catalan Duran of Huesca17 —having repented of his heresy and returned to the fold of the Roman Church, asked Pope Innocent III for authorization to organize a new monastic order whose exemplary poverty, morality, and piety would serve as a model of Catholic life.
Duran's idea was not brought to a practical realization when, in 1207 he first approached the Roman authorities, but it was accepted and fully developed some years later when the Order of St. Francis was founded. It was probably considered out of place at a moment when religious war was ravaging the lands of Southern Gaul; the reformation of monastic abuses may have been considered more proper when complete victory had been won by the army of the French Crusaders.
El president de la Generalitat, José Montilla, va reclamar dimecres des de Brussel·les que l'any vinent, quan Espanya tingui la presidència de torn de la UE, l'Estat aprofiti per impulsar l'ús del català al Parlament Europeu.
Dit així, és clar, queda molt bé. Si no fos perquè Montilla és del PSC, partit que no té grup parlamentari a Madrid, on forma part del PSOE, que és el partit que, fins ara, ens ha negat tots els drets i no només els lingüístics com a catalans.
No s'enganyin. Vénen eleccions europees i ara tots els partits es convertiran en els defensors dels nostres drets a Europa. I en aquest camp, si algú no hi pot dir ni piu, és el PSC.
Si Montilla defensa de veritat això que diu, en pot fer un altre, de gest, a banda de fer grans declaracions. El 7 de març se'n pot anar a Brussel·les i ser un més dels deu mil (w w w . deumil. cat) que hi volen anar per defensar un estat propi. Que això sí que ens asseguraria els drets lingüístics.
font: w w w . vilaweb. cat/w w w /elpunt/noticia?p_idcmp=3449765
La visita del president del Parlament Europeu, lalemany Hans-Gert Pöttering, sha convertit en un lamentable espectacle datac a Catalunya i al català. Lindividu ja venia amb la lliçó apresa. I per si la memòria li fallava, el seu vice-president, linefable Vidal-Quadras no perdia ocasió per refrescar-lhi.
Amb les seves declaracions, Pöttering sha afegit a la llista de catalanòfobs europeus que ja comença a ser massa llarga. Recordo també, el 2004, la no menys patètica actuació del Taoiseach (primer ministre irlandès) Bertie Ahern, llavors president de torn de la Unió Europea, quan va fer tot el possible per excloure el català com a llengua oficial, quan es negociava la Constitució Europea, si no vaig errat.
I caldria afegir-hi també, com no podia ser altrament, la corresponent quota francesa, en la figura, per exemple, del senador Gérard Longuet, que no es va estar també, faltaria plus, de menysprear el català.
Aquests tres casos de catalanofòbia made in Europe, i daltres com els dAir Berlin i el més recent de Swiss Air, ens haurien de fer veure que Europa no serà un oasi on ens reconeixeran els drets que ens neguen a Ecspanya. Ben al contrari.
Els espanyols són conscients que han de jugar la carta europea com a punta de llança per deslegitimar lindependentisme català. I no tingueu cap dubte que la juguen. (A tall anecdòtic, no poques vegades he pensat que la victòria de la Roja a lEurocopa, no va ser cap casualitat, sobretot veient com de malament van jugar els alemanys!).
De fet, els europeus, pel que fa a la independència de Catalunya o de qualsevol altra nació, interpreten un paper força conegut, i que ha estat estudiat amb una certa profunditat des del Quebec, pel que fa al seu cas.
Aquest paper és el següent: davant la reivindicació independentista dun poble, els estats existents, per realisme polític -i sempre i quan es mantinguin les formes- sempre es posicionaran oficialment a favor de la integritat territorial de lestat del qual aquell poble es vol separar.
És un guió que mai falla. La raó és ben simple, un pragmatisme foramida que impedeix que un govern es jugui lenemistat dun altre govern en benefici dun futurible (laccessió a la independència del poble en qüestió). Sempre ha estat així i sempre ho estarà. Jo diria que és la lògica de les relacions diplomàtiques. Per dir-ho més planerament, dos socis dun club mai es discutiran per un tercer que no és soci del club (Llops amb llops, no es mosseguen).
Ara bé, aquest mateix pragmatisme també pot tenir efectes positius. En primer lloc, lexistència, la simple existència, dun moviment secessionista dins dun estat, és, per ella sola, una font de deslegitimitat daquest de cara al conjunt de la comunitat internacional. Fins al punt, que afebleix significativament el pes específic daquest estat en el conjunt de la comunitat internacional, i el converteix en un pària.
Lexistència dun moviment secessionista, efectivament, és un punt feble que pot fer que altres estats, en determinades conjuntures, se sentin temptats de jugar la carta, per tal dafeblir lestat implicat. Això es tradueix en el fet que si bé oficialment hi ha un suport tancat a lestat existent, per darrera no es fan fàstics als contactes o intercanvis amb els dirigents o enviats dels moviments secessionistes.
Daquesta manera, sempre tenen una carta guardada a la màniga, per si calgués treure-la, en el moment oportú -negociacions comercials, tractats internacionals, etc.
En segon lloc, aquest pragmatisme es pot acabar esquerdant, si lestat existent recorre a mesures dràstiques o ras i curt, viola els drets humans i les llibertats civils i polítiques.
Quan en la seva desesperació per a mantenir la integritat territorial, se superen les línies roges, llavors la legitimitat sen ressenteix i sobre la porta a la denúncia internacional i al progressiu aïllament diplomàtic, econòmic, militar i polític.
En certa mesura, això està començant a passar amb lestat espanyol, pel que fa a la seva escandalosa violació dels drets civils i polítics dun significativa minoria del poble basc.
Lestratègia dexclusió sistemàtica de lesquerra patriòtica basca, sota lexcusa, totalment manufacturada, de la seva pertanyença o dependència orgància duna titllada com a organització terrorista, pràcticament no té paral.lel a Europa, i de fet recorda més a les polítiques repressives practicades per Israel, Turquia o Algèria envers els seus moviments opositors.
Penso que els catalans hauríem de conèixer molt de prop la repressió espanyola actual al moviment independentista basc, perquè, ja anuncia certes polítiques que, no tinc cap mena de dubte, acabaran també daplicar-se al cas català.
We will be there to support our catalan friends!
oledenoe 2 years ago 5
Thanks friend, we really apreciate it.
Guillerq 2 years ago
Sunday, February 22, 2009
PRESS RELEASE: THOUSANDS OF CATALAN TO CLAMOUR IN BRUSSELS FOR SELF-DETERMINATION ON MARCH 7TH
THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE CATALAN HIGHLIGHTS THE MAJOR NATIONAL ISSUES YET TO BE SOLVED IN SPAIN
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
For the first time, an initiative born out of Society 2. 0 (Web 2. 0) using new technologies, such as social networks like Facebook, is realising an initiative via a virtual community.
facebook. 10mil. cat
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
Catalan civil society, through all its cultural, sports and civic institutions, is carrying out several initiatives to claim back our right to self-determination as a people. The "Deu Mil a Brussel·les per l'Autodeterminació" (Ten Thousand in Brussels for Self Determination) is trans-partisan, born and based on the active participation of civil society.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
Our aim: to demonstrate in Brussels on March 7th under the cry of "We want a Catalan State", claiming independence for our country. Getting self determination on the international agenda and Catalan political parties to declare they are in favour of sovereignty and on their programmes.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
Spain has always been reticent about full recognition of its multiple national diversity. Catalonia has seen recent Spanish central governments closing the autonomous political system and leaving the regions as mere decentralised administrations with no sovereignty or even any federal recognition for the Catalan nation.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
With the Constitutional Court's forthcoming sentence on competencies of the new Statute of Autonomy approved by referendum in 2006, which all analysts expect will be adverse, Spain is attempting to make any sign of sovereignty for Catalan democratic institutions without effect. It refuses to accept any form of federal or confederal treaty for its historical nations such as Catalonia.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
And worse yet, the Spanish constitutional system refuses point-blank the right to self determination. It explicitly bans any region or historical nation from calling or organising referendums for its citizens to decide on their future democratically. That is why we are going to Brussels in order to claim our international and democratic rights, for the self determination the Spanish State refuses us.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
We live in a globalised world with major migratory fluxes. In this context, Catalans see our productive and economic model endangered, but we also see risks for our model of an open, integrating, welfare society for all our citizens, without distinguishing among gender, race or origin.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
With a tax deficit unparalleled in any European region or state, which experts style continuous fiscal plundering, Catalans are ever more conscious of the need to endow themselves of the same instruments as sovereign nations in order to face necessary structural reforms with any guarantee.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
Without sovereignty and the resources needed to solve our problems (which are currently managed by the Spanish central government), the very survival of Catalonia as a distinguishable nation is endangered.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
We are going to Brussels in order to claim our right to become a State, with the same mechanisms of political sovereignty to administer our own resources like any other European country.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
This initiative via Internet is not connected to any particular political party, although we have secured the support of several politicians, and most support comes from citizen platforms, cultural organisations, social collectives of all sorts and writers,
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
like ex-member of the General Council of the Judicial Power of Spain, notary Alfons López-Tena, author of polemic "Catalonia under Spain: National Oppression in Democracy" (Catalunya sota Espanya. L'opressió nacional en democràcia - Dèria editors-La Magrana 2007), a blockbuster in Catalonia.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
The European Parliament has repeatedly refused full recognition of our language, which is our national identity as a people.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
And even though it is a millenary language with over 10 million speakers and a literature of world significance, it is not recognised as an equal of other European languages with less than half its number of speakers and minor literatures, simply because we have no state. That is why we want to go to Brussels, to the European Parliament and the Commission to let them know, following their indications, that we want to become a sovereign State within the European Union.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
The Catalan Nation is a nation without a state with over one thousand years of history, most of whose territory is now within the Spanish State. It has an official population of 13 million inhabitants, 80% of which speak the Catalan language, with its broad, extensive literature with worldwide recognition, a service- and industry-based economy generating a GDP of $482 bn. which represents 30.5% of Spain's GDP and a per capita GDP of over $37,000.
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
Since Catalonia lost its independence as a result of the War of Succession of 1704-1725 almost 300 years ago, the Catalan people have unceasingly striven to recover their freedom. Even through war, political persecution and the 40-year fascist dictatorship, stifling its language and culture, Catalan identity has remained firm and forceful enough to demand its recognition as a State within Europe.
Barcelona, February 19th 2009
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
catalanstate. blogspot. com/search/label/Press%20Release
5ilviaMC 2 years ago
L''ESTELADA: LA BANDERA DE COMBAT
La necessitat de la creació d'una bandera de combat, pren forma definitiva a través de la inspiració de l'activista i polític Vicenç-Albert Ballester, l'any 1918.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
En signar-se aquell any l'armistici de la primera guerra mundial i amb l'esclat de laparició de nous estats a Europa, uns joves propers a la Unió Catalanista i pertanyents al semiclandestí Comitè Pro-Catalunya, del qual Ballester n'era el president, aprofitaren el moment polític per internacionalitzar el fet nacional català utilitzant la bandera de l'estel solitari.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Dins d'aquest grup, Ballester hi creà o inspirà la senyera estelada, perquè tan els catalans com les potències estrangeres visualitzessin clarament les aspiracions independentistes de Catalunya.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La quadribarrada tradicional els quedava curta en soler lluir al costat de l'espanyola que la neutralitzada ideològicament. L'estelada en canvi, es convertiria en la nova bandera de la Catalunya insurrecta, fins que aquesta recuperés la independència, moment que retornaria, en paraules del propi Ballester, de bell nou la bandera de les quatre barres, la Bandera Catalana, sense estels, sense blaus, però amb tots els honors. Ben alta, ben dreta i ben sola!.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
El fet d'haver-hi un estel i un triangle en la nostra bandera de lluita, no és un fet casual. La simbologia del l'estel solitari simbolitza, per ell mateix, la llibertat, i en la bandera, la independència del país que representa. El triangle equilàter representa l'estabilitat i la simplicitat. Tradicionalment, és el símbol de la divinitat. Les societats de maçons lempren sovint en la seva iconografia simbòlica.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Si ens fixem en les banderes d'estats independents i en les de nacions sense estat, encara no reconegudes, en moltes hi sovintegen estels. De tots aquests estats independents, el més antic de tots on hi figura un triangle i un estel, és Cuba, antiga colònia espanyola fins lany 1898.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La lluita de Cuba per la seva independència era ja seguida amb atenció pels catalanistes del segle XIX. La simbologia dels cubans insurgents influí decisivament en els independentistes catalans que residien a l'illa, alhora de dissenyar la nova ensenya de combat.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Un cop acabada la guerra d'Independència de Cuba, es va crear, a Santiago, lany 1906, el Centre Catalanista de Santiago, on ja s'hi podia veure un primer apunt de la futura bandera catalana estelada: Al mig d'una senyera, damunt mateix de les quatre barres, hi lluïa un estel blanc de cinc puntes.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Prenent doncs com a model la bandera de Cuba, Vicenç Ballester, que hi residí temporalment i n'admirà la seva lluita contra l'imperi espanyol, impulsà el disseny definitiu de la bandera del triangle i l'estel.
Els colors tenen la mateixa simbologia que els dels ideals de la revolució francesa, posteriorment adoptats a la bandera dels EUA i finalment a la cubana. El triangle blau representa el blau del cel la humanitat on al bell mig hi llueix l'estel blanc de la llibertat.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
El 1906, apareix un estel a la capçalera de la revista Fora Grillons!, feta a Santiago de Cuba per exiliats catalans (publicació que ja reivindicava sense embuts la independència de Catalunya). A la dècada dels anys 20, un cop acabada la primera guerra mundial, es respiren vents de llibertat, propiciats pel president dels Estat Units d'Amèrica Woodrow Wilson.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La Societat de les Nacions, embrió de l'ONU, provoca esperances infinites. Molts pobles veieren clara la seva oportunitat històrica d'alliberar-se, i així ho aconseguiren la República Txeca, Finlàndia, Estònia, Letònia, Lituània i Armènia al llarg de lany 1918. Altres pobles com Ucraïna, Bielorússia i Geòrgia, són proclamats independents però ben aviat són ocupats pels soviètics, no sense revoltes populars.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Totes aquestes nacions que aspiren a alliberar-se, comencen a crear grups de pressió internacionals, per a transcendir la seva lluita en altres països. En el cas català, el Comitè Pro-Catalunya, amb Vicenç Ballester al capdavant, en fou un dels més actius.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Fou en aquestes circumstàncies que es veié amb la necessitat de dotar-se d'un símbol que representés les seves aspiracions i les de Catalunya i aquest fou, com no podia ser d'altra manera, el de l'estel a la bandera. La popularitat de la bandera estelada, comença a notar-se a partir d'aquell moment.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La primera fotografia del definitiu símbol dels independentistes, apareix en una publicació de 1918. Es tracta del butlletí L'intransigent, on es reproduïa una imatge d'uns joves nord-americans i uns separatistes catalans subjectant les seves banderes respectives. També fou el mateix any 1918, que es posa en circulació, una vinyeta (segell sense valor postal), dedicada a la futura Societat de les Nacions, on també apareix una estelada.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Ja a la dècada dels anys 20, trobem dues imatges més d'estelades. L'una en el darrer número de La Tralla (revista independentista radical dels anys 20 i 30), abans del cop d'estat de Primo de Rivera de l'any 1923 i l'altra en un document imprès pel Comitè Pro-Catalunya escrit en català i en àrab, per tal de saludar i encoratjar a un dels dirigents polítics del Marroc revoltat contra Espanya.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
A Cuba, apareix impresa per primera vegada, a la capçalera de la revista La Nova Catalunya (1920). A partir d'aleshores, les banderes estelades aniran trobant-se habitualment en publicacions separatistes catalanes.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Aquest spot està bastant bé com a reclam. Crida més l'atenció que l'himne del mateix projecte.
RobindelsBoscos 2 years ago
gen. 29
Es presenta a Santa Bàrbara la Plataforma deumil. cat
Butlletins Informatius, Local, Manifestacions
Posted by Josep-Tere
La plataforma deumil. cat és una iniciativa ciutadana, nascuda de la societat civil i fonamentada en la participació activa de totes les persones coordinades a nivell local i comarcal de cara a reivindicar internacionalment els drets del poble català a decidir sobre el seu futur.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Aquesta plataforma arriba ara també a les Terres de l'Ebre i segons que explicava el promotor al Montsià ,el planer Marc March es tracta de donar a conèixer també a la gent de l Ebre aquesta fita ambiciosa per aconseguir aplegar el dia 7 de març a Brusel•les 10.000 persones per a reivindicar amb el crit Volem lEstat propi, reivindicant la independència del nostre país.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
L'objectiu de la manifestació és voler aconseguir que l'autodeterminació de Catalunya figuri en lagenda internacional i que els partits polítics nacionals, arrossegats per la nostra força, es declarin oficialment a favor de la independència i la incloguin en el seu programa i sobre tot que es comprometin a treballar per aconseguir-ho.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Aquest projecte, no sotmès a cap sigla política específica ,segons March, està obert a treballar, mantenint la seva autonomia, amb totes les persones, organitzacions i plataformes que tinguin el mateix objectiu: la Independència de la Nació Catalana.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Per aconseguir-ho shan creat aquestes delegacions arreu dels països catalans de cara de donar a conèixer, difondre i informar a tothom en que consisteix i que es pot fer per col•laborar.
Podeu trobar mes informació i adscriure-us al projecte consultant la pàgina web w w w . deumil. cat
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
POLÍTICA
La Catalunya independent passa per Brussel·les
Un grup de sabadellencs viatjarà a la capital el 7 demarç per demanar lautodeterminació
J.M. Oller / B.Padilla
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
SABADELL
Un grup de sabadellencs ja sha sumat a la proposta eu mil catalans a Brussel·les per a lautodeterminació de la nació catalana, que va néixer com a resposta a larticle Perplex, jo?, que va publicar EnricCanela al Bloc Gran del Sobiranisme el 6 de setembre del 2008, a partir del qual sen va iniciar la difusió a través
dun grup del Facebook i del web deumil. cat.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Des daquesta plataforma es vol treballar per lèxit de lobjectiu: anar el 7 de març a Brussel·les sota el lema Volem lEstat propi,
reivindicant la independència.
El col·lectiu pretén que lautodeterminació de la nació catalana figuri en lagenda europea i que els partits polítics nacionals es declarin a favor de la independència i la incloguin en el seu programa.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Sorgeix ara perquè es considera que el conjunt dels Països Catalans travessa una cruïlla històrica difícil i confusa: El manteniment de la submissió durant tres-cents anys de la nostra nació per part de l'Estat és la llosa més gran per al nostre desenvolupament, i posa en perill la nostra supervivència dins d'una Europa on només es reconeixen els estats, diuen els promotors.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Un dels propòsits dels sabadellencs que al març viatjaran cap a Brussel·les és, segons Àngels Folch, una de les organitzadores, pujar lautoestima dels catalans:
Que es digui amb la boca ben grossa que Catalunya és una nació i que vol un Estat propi, cosa que no vol dir que lendemà tinguem la independència, diu Folch.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Un castell i una sardana Les persones que coneixen la iniciativa de ben segur es pregunten què faran a Brussel ·les les 10.000 persones (o els que siguin, ja que l'organització no es planteja ni un mínim ni un límit).
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La iniciativa, també a Terrassa
A Terrassa fins ara sha treballat bàsicament a nivell intern per organitzar-ho tot: hi ha un centre territorial de la iniciativa. Les tasques van començar a finals de desembre.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
De moment, hi ha gent vinculada a l'àmbit de la cultura tradicional, persones residents al barri de Les Fonts, ciutadans vinculats a les joventuts de Convergència, com el seu actual president, Carles Oriach, i terras-senques que havien estat en la candidatura municipal d'Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Anna Parés és una de les dones que ha assumit el repte de potenciar el deu mil a Brussel·les a la capital egarenca: La idea és no deixar-nos cap entitat terrassenca, però tot just hem començat. En el cas dels partits polítics, hem deixat ben clar que es tracta de col·laborar- hi com a individus.
font: deumil. cat/Docs/2009/1/1233326990-Article_Avui_Sabadell. pdf
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
23 Gener 2009...22:06
Fem xarxa
Salta a Comentaris
Un dels objectius de la iniciativa Deumil. cat és evitar que una ideologia determinada o un partit polític en concret se napropiï. Això vol dir que el que es proposa és un treball transversal on totes aquelles persones que pensin que el futur del nostre país passa necessàriament per assolir-ne la independència hi tinguin cabuda.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
A banda daixò, la pròpia idiosincràsia daquesta convocatòria és la marca de la societat 2 . 0, la qual cosa vol dir, ras i curt, xarxa. Per això el Consell Nacional està format per un grup reduït de membres i per això mateix qui porta el pes real del treball a peu de carrer són els més de 170 delegats territorials que hi ha arreu dels Països Catalans i del món.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La Delegació territorial a Lleida ciutat també treballem en aquesta línia transversal. Si la idea és consolidar una autèntica teranyina que sestengui i arribi a tots els racons del nostre país, la millor manera és donar-se a conèixer al teixit associatiu local.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
En aquests moments treballem en aquesta línia perquè arribar al ciutadà individual és molt més fàcil si sarticula a través del teixit associatiu existent a cada municipi.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Per ara, ja hem aconseguit el suport i recolzament de la delegació a les Terres de Ponent dÒmnium Cultural i també de lAteneu Popular de Ponent, dues entitats amb molt de prestigi entre la societat lleidatana. Ara toca arribar a la resta de teixit associatiu de la ciutat: associacions de veïns, entitats de barri, associacions de joves, etc.
font: deumildelleida. wordpress. com/2009/01/23/fem-xarxa/
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Apa Sílvia, t'has passat una mica..això sembla una novel·la!
Boncopdefals 3 years ago
Apa Boncopdefals, vols dir?
estaria bé fer molts comentaris, així el vídeo es situarà en llocs ben visibles al youtube i arribarà a més gent.
Anar apuntant i sumant comentaris és una bona manera de fer lectures, també, i escampar informació, i fer una força.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Hauríem de fer un llistat dels casos de persecució política i judicial de l'independentisme.
Al seu costat també hauríem de mirar-nos les actuacions de l'estat i els seus governs successius, jutges, policia, i altres agents socials contra l'independentisme, així com la complicitat de la majoria de la premsa i mitjans d'informació en general en el que defenso hem de qualificar de vergonya política, social, intel·lectual, legal.
Serviria per moltes coses, bones.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Per què hem danar 10.000
catalans a Brussel·les?
Necessitem un gest de força
per lautodeterminació,
10.000 és una quantitat
prou important i que podem
assumir. 1.000 és una xifra
ridícula i 100.000 és absurda
perquè és inassumible.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
I, precisament, aquest és
l'objectiu: o existeixes als
mitjans o no existeixes. Per
tant, sabem quines són les
cartes que s'han de jugar.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Com creus que respondrà
la premsa catalana?
No ho sabem, el que és clar
és que la premsa espanyola
no serà pas còmplice de la
iniciativa.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Per què fem aquest acte en
aquest moment?
La independència és una urgència
nacional. O exercim
el dret a l'autodeterminació
o acabarem sent una simple
regió administrativa com
Múrcia. El país està molt
desgastat.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
I hi insisteixo, lindependentisme
és una qüestió
d'urgència nacional.
Organitzar una manifestació
tan lluny i amb tanta
gent té certes dificultats.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Com prepareu lesdeveniment?
Som un grup de gent amb
molta il·lusió que creiem
fermament en les nostres
possibilitats. En aquest
cas tenim una estructura
territorial molt potent,
amb diversos delegats, per
involucrar el territori en la
realització d'aquest acte.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Quins són els llocs del país
que més estan responent?
Ens està sorprenent la força
que hi ha a comarques, a
més, molts catalans que viuen
arreu del món se'ns han
ofert per col·laborar-hi.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Aquesta iniciativa ha
tingut el suport de moltes
personalitats destacades
de diferents àmbits de la
societat. Lha sorprès?
No. Ja mesperava que gent
de tota mena ens donés
suport, és sobretot gent que
comparteix el sentiment de
la independència.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
A més a
més, estic convençut que
amb posterioritat molta
gent que ara no és independentista,
per pragmatisme
s'hi tornarà, perquè tenir un
Estat propi o no determina
la seva qualitat de vida.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Cada vegada hi ha més
independentistes?
No puc parlar de dades,
però sí que és clar que
la gent està cada vegada
menys cohibida per parlar
obertament dindependència
i de declarar-se partidari
dun Estat propi.
font: w w w . esquerra. cat/documents/en125-web. pdf
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La iniciativa Deu Mil a Brussel•les per lAutodeterminació, de caràcter transversal, nascuda de la societat civil i fonamentada en la participació activa de totes les persones coordinades a nivell local i comarcal, ha sorgit com a resposta a l'article "Perplex, jo?" que va publicar Enric Canela, i als comentaris dels seus lectors, a partir dels quals es va iniciar immediatament la seva difusió a través dun grup del Facebook i del nostre web deumil. cat.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Des d'aquesta plataforma volem treballar tots plegats per a la total consolidació i èxit del nostre objectiu: anar el 7 de març a Brussel•les sota el mateix crit Volem l'Estat propi, reivindicant la independència del nostre país.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Volem aconseguir que l'autodeterminació de Catalunya figuri en lagenda internacional i que els partits polítics nacionals, arrossegats per la nostra força, es declarin oficialment a favor de la independència i la incloguin en el seu programa. Més encara, que es comprometin a treballar per aconseguir-ho.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Aquest projecte, no sotmès a cap sigla política específica que ens separi, està obert a treballar, mantenint la seva autonomia, amb totes les persones, organitzacions i plataformes que tinguin el mateix objectiu: la Independència de la Nació Catalana.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
La jove 'Mirèlha' fa cent cinquanta anys
El gran poema de l'escriptor provençal Frederic Mistral es va publicar el 2 de febrer de 1859
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Bona nit.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Amèlia Trueta
Aquest llibre fou escrit, en anglès, durant la Segona Guerra Mundial a Oxford, i l'Oxford University Press el va publicar l'any 1946, tan aviat com va disposar de paper per a fer-ho. Molts ens demanem com un cirurgià, enmig de la guerra, enfeinat com estava a atendre milers de ferits, tant militars com civils, va poder passar hores a la Radcliffe Camera (la biblioteca de la Universitat d'Oxford) per recopilar dades i dates i escriure el llibre.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Què el va induir a fer aquest immens esforç? Senzillament el desig de fer conèixer al lector britànic un petit país, dins la península Ibèrica, que ha produït, com diu ell mateix 'alguna cosa més que la Inquisició, la intolerància, el cant flamenc i les corregudes de bous'. Ras i curt: un país que es diu Catalunya i que ell tant estimava.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
El seu propòsit, diu ell mateix, era de fer un breu inventari de la contribució catalana 'al progrés d'allò que en diem civilització occidental'. Era, per tant, una obra d'amor que començava amb un estudi del gran filòsof Lluís Vives (1492-1540) i continuava amb una llarga llista de grans catalans de totes les èpoques.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Però deixant ben clar que ell no era historiador, i que el llibre s'havia escrit amb l'ull crític d'un metge molt afeccionat a la història del seu país. Després de la mort de Franco es va publicar en català a Barcelona, i fins ara se n'han fet quinze edicions.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
El perquè d'aquesta edició
Vicent Partal
VilaWeb, és una obvietat dir-ho, és una web. Però una web que sempre ha tingut una relació intima 'amb els papers', un interès especial 'pels papers'. A vegades hem fet papers: llibres. A vegades hem portat llibres a la xarxa. De tota mena.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Vàrem publicar, per exemple, 'Les mil i una nit' en la versió de Proa, durant les mil i una nit que precedien el canvi de mil·lenni. O hem portat al paper el bloc que Biel Mesquida va escriure en escaure's els cent anys del Bloomsday.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
El nostre regal als lectors, en aquesta diada marcada pel debat identitari, la que per a nosaltres fa deu, és 'The Spirit of Catalonia' de Josep Trueta.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
És un llibre de molt difícil abast, en l'edició original anglesa, que ara volem que siga a l'abast de tothom des de la xarxa. Pensem que és una bona aportació per a conèixer-nos millor. I també vol ser un homenatge a tota una generació de persones derrotades militarment, però mai espiritualment, sense l'esforç i la tenacitat de les quals avui no tindríem res a discutir.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Font: 10anys. vilaweb. com/trueta/presentacio. html
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
• 1 •
Astride the Pyrenees
THE ANCESTORS OF THE PEOPLE DEALT WITH IN THIS book were Pyreneans, Iberians, Celts, Greeks, Romans and Visigoths. They lived in the southern part of Gaul and northern part of the Iberian peninsula: that is, the large area between the Loire in the North, the Ebro in the South, the Alps in the East, and the Cantabric Sea in the West.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Its geographical nucleus was the town of Narbonne, centre of the Roman administration for more than five centuries; in the extreme South was the town of Tarraco, the capital of the Roman province of Tarraconensis. Later, when the barbarians of the North invaded the decrepit Roman Empire, they made Toulouse—farther West—their capital.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
As for the more remote ancestors of this people, we know that the races which migrated from Africa, Europe, or Asia always spread very evenly over the South of Gaul and the North of the Iberian peninsula.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
In fact there was no geographical obstacle to their great invasions; this calls for an explanation, since the reader may think of the Pyrenees as a barrier between the middle and the southern parts of the area with which we are concerned.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The Pyrenees may be divided into three sections: the centre of the range which is very difficult of access, and the two sections at the ends with passes open even in the coldest winter.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Towards the Mediterranean end of the mountains, there are four routes linking the plains on either side. Iberians, Greeks, Celts, Carthaginians, Romans and Goths— none of them were ever checked by the Mediterranean Section of the Pyrenees; rather is it probable that the passes lured them on to the plains beyond.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
But the middle and most of the western section are different: throughout history they have acted as a confining wall, partly because the passes through them are few and difficult, but principally because of the warlike nature of the Basques,
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
who have lived there from prehistoric times. The Basques, with the mountains to aid them, stopped the Romans with that same spirit with which, many centuries later, they fought Charlemagne's army—a struggle which inspired the Chanson de Roland and other poems.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the unique topography of the Central Pyrenees has preserved to our own day one of the few prehistoric human stocks in Europe; and it is to the mountains that the Basques are indebted for the preservation of many of their ancient characteristics, physical, mental, and moral.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The existence of the Basques all along the high ranges of the Central-Western Pyrenees is mainly responsible for the clear-cut difference between Frenchmen and Spaniards of today; as time passed the Basques of the plains have been strongly influenced by both, but most of the mountaineers have remained purely Basque.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
This varying accessibility of the mountains has conditioned the history of the Iberian peninsula and has made its inhabitants what they are today. The simple view—which, like every simple impression, tends to stick in our minds—that the areas represented by modern France and Spain are well defined by nature, is incorrect if applied to the inhabitants.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
And it is equally misleading if applied to the climate and other factors of their environment; in fact, climate and natural surroundings are very similar throughout both areas north and south of the Pyrenees. Thus, it is only natural that the older inhabitants of the zone between the rivers Ebro and Loire and the Alps and the Cantabric Sea had very similar characteristics.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
If anything, in ancient times the Ebro was considered a better boundary than the Pyrenees; it was the frontier between the Carthaginians and the Romans, and later between Christians and Mohammedans. In later days, the southern limit of the zone occupied by this people was displaced to the south of the Moorish kingdoms of Valencia and Denia.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Much study has been devoted to the question of Greek influence in the Western Mediterranean after the foundation of the Phocaean colonies of Massalia—Marseille (seventh century B.C.), Rhoda—Roses, Emporion— Empuries, and Hemeroskopeion Denia: Greek influence on the later characteristics of the people was important even if it cannot be compared to that of the Romans. The term influence means not only the grafting of ideas and habits; it is used here rather in a biological sense.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The Greeks and particularly the Romans moulded the people of this zone and imparted to them their own characteristics to such an extent that the latter called a very large part of that area 'Provincia', as it were par excellence.1 Later it was named Septimania because the Seventh Legion was stationed at Béziers, another of the great towns of Roman Gaul.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
During the fifth century A.D. these lands were occupied by the Visigoths, after being ravaged by the Vandals, Cimbris, Teutons, and Ambrones. Of all the barbarian tribes the Goths—Visigoths and Ostrogoths—were the most highly civilized, and the only ones to be Christianized at that early date (though they adhered to the Arian heresy), and to possess an alphabet adapted to their own language.2
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
They were easily absorbed by the more highly developed indigenous civilization, and after a relatively short time, in spite of being the ruling aristocracy, they mixed with the native population; the southern part of the country then changed its name to 'Gothia', or land of the Goths. The Roman traditions, laws and administration were so deeply rooted that for a time two parallel ways of living developed side by side;
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
on the one hand we find the newly-imported aristocratic manners of the leading families holding a personal power purely Teutonic in nature; on the other, a persistency of the old Roman Communes with their civilian intercourse. But both the new and the old social systems were rapidly changing with the changing times.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
At the beginning of the eighth century, the stabilization of this society was interrupted by the sudden arrival of more barbarians, this time from North Africa. At the first blow they defeated the Christian army in the south of the Peninsula, and the Saracens spread, in the course of a year or two, almost to the northern confines of the Peninsula without meeting any serious opposition except for the courageous resistance of the people of Mérida.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The feature common to all the previous invasions was then repeated, but this time there was something more, which had a telling effect on the making of modern Spain. The population of the Peninsula behaved in the following ways.
I. The Mediterranean people of the Tarraconensis emigrated en masse to the north of Septimania as far as the region of central France called Limousin. The easy crossing of the mountains now became a source of deep terror.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
After the Mohammedans had swamped without a fight almost the whole of the Iberian peninsula, the old imperial town of Tarraco, proud of her ancient prestige, tried to resist the invaders. After a bloody struggle it was taken, levelled to the ground, and its inhabitants massacred. The same fate befell Manresa, Casserres, Cardona, Ausona and probably the Greek Empuries further north.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
This seems to have been more than the rest of that part of the Peninsula could stand.
Barcelona and Girona were occupied without a blow, and the towns and villages were abandoned by a great proportion of the Christian population, who fled to Gaul.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Only a few people, probably almost all of them Jews, remained in Barcelona; they were the population which the Christians found when they recovered the city ninety years later. We have some knowledge of what these people felt when their city was reconquered by the Christians: it seems they received the newcomers as enemies rather than as brothers, which suggest that very few if any Christians were among them.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
2. The Basque people behaved as they had always done: they retired to their closed valleys in the mountains and continued the fight, supported from behind the protecting barrier by the Basques living on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. They were never conquered, and thus they viewed the Moors from a distance, but with the same vigilance with which, in centuries gone by, they had viewed the Celts and the Romans.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
3. Near the Cantabric coast there runs a long range of high mountains which orographically are a continuation of the Pyrenees; and there, people from the south and centre of Spain, especially aristocratic families, found refuge from the Moors.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
With their backs to the sea—an impassable barrier to a people who were not sailors— they continued the struggle in the mountains, and at length they began to recover their lost lands in a slow, southward movement known in Spanish history as the 'Reconquista'. This was completed almost eight centuries later, when the Moorish kingdom of Granada fell in 1492.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
4. The people of the Atlantic coast, it seems, either stayed where they were or retreated to the north-west corner of the Peninsula.
They were mostly of Celtic origin and at the time of the Teutonic invasions of the Peninsula they had been conquered by the Sueve tribes. This region was called Galicia, and from its people on their southward march there arose, well within the twelfth century, the Portuguese nation.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Even nowadays, Galicians and Portuguese speak two derivative forms of the old Gallego language. The affinity of the Portuguese and the Spaniards has been recognized from early5 times.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The diverse behaviour of these Peninsular peoples at the time of the Moorish invasion lies at the root of their ensuing diversity, which has persisted almost unchanged throughout the vicissitudes of history. The people sheltering in the Cantabric mountains—Castilians or Spaniards —and those compressed by the Saracens into the northwest corner of the Peninsula—Galicians and Portuguese —moved in two parallel lines until they reached the southern limits of the Peninsula.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Thus the central and western parts were recovered by their original populations or at least by people of the same stock as the pre-Mohammedan inhabitants. The central people spoke the rapidly evolving variety of Romance now known as Castilian or Spanish; the people of the Atlantic lands spoke their Galico- Portuguese language, as they do now.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The Basques descended to the plains where they had previously lived since prehistoric times, and stayed there. They had recovered the country where their ancestors lay buried, and there they have remained, in almost exactly the same places, to the present day.
The reconquest of the lands deserted by the Christians of the Mediterranean coast was undertaken by the people of Southern Gaul.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Once across the Pyrenees, the Moors had continued northwards and taken Narbonne; their advance was at last arrested when the Frankish Charles Martel, duke of Austrasia, defeated them. The decisive battle was fought between Poitiers and Tours in 732.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
From that day two simultaneous successions of attacks compelled the Saracens to go back whence they came. One of these was a movement of the Peninsular peoples only (Portuguese and Castilian); the other had a Continental origin: Gallic, Frankish, Gascon (see map on p. 7).
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
This movement liberated Narbonne in 759, and then, under the supreme command of Louis 'le Debonnaire', King of Aquitaine, and with soldiers from Aquitaine, Gascony, Septimania, Burgundy and Provence,6 the Christian army crossed the Pyrenees, and liberated Girona in 785—or shortly before—and Barcelona in 801.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Louis 'le Debonnaire' brought with him to the newly liberated regions soldiers of the same origin and language, customs and feelings, being united by a common purpose of a religious and—if this may be said referring to people of the eighth century—a patriotic nature. The newly-recovered parts were placed under a common administration, and lands were given to the soldiers, at first in a fief for life—benefici, and later in perpetuity—aprisió.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Families from the northern side of the Pyrenees settled on the southern slopes and in the valleys, and with them they brought the ties which connected these lands more than ever before, this linking again the populations from Nice and Limoges to Barcelona.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The newly-regained country was more than an expansion of Southern Gaul; it was the melting-pot in which the regional differences between the peoples of Southern Gaul were fused into a national type. The language they spoke was closely akin to the various dialects of Southern Gaul—all of them of a common origin, and known as Languedoc, Provençal, or Limousin (see map above); it had the advantage of preserving the most vivid expressions from the various dialectal forms.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The people of Southern Gaul had, under the Romans and probably also under the Goths, succeeded in preserving self-government, their own laws and their own magistrature; Northern Gaul—the parts later to be occupied by the Franks—did not obtain these rights before the twelfth century.8
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
In the eleventh century the citizens of the towns in which Langue d'Oc was spoken— in the area commonly called Provence, although it is very much larger than the Provence of today— constituted a separate social class distinct from the nobility, from the clergy, and from the serfs. They were called bourgeois, a term which occurs in the Catalan law Usatges in 1060, in Carcassonne in 1107, in Montpellier in 1113, and in Béziers in 1121; the towns nominated consuls for their own government.9
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Soon the bourgeois of the villages formed militias to assist the armies of the nobility in their wars; this institution, although modified by centuries, still exists in Catalonia under the name of sometent. Narbonne was made the religious centre, and Barcelona became the political pole around which the national consciousness was forming. Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier and Toulouse were the complementary focus from which light was shed over science, art, and politics.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Thus it may be said without exaggeration that by the twelfth century a new civilization had emerged in Europe, for the first time after the collapse of Roman society. It had taken more than six hundred years, but this laborious process of gestation was now completed, and humanity began to move upwards again.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
All conditions for a prosperous life were at hand: among them a fertile land favoured by one of the mildest and most equable climates in Europe; a geographical situation which made the country between the Ebro and the Loire the link joining the North with the South and the Mediterranean with the Atlantic;
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
numerous wealthy cities, in which society increasingly resembled the ancient Roman pattern; good communications; Mohammedan civilization developing in the neighbouring Spanish State;10 a refined aristocracy which protected the Arts, and a rich and energetic middle class composed of merchants and sailors, which provided the sources of the nation's wealth.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Commemorating the Gothic domination on both sides of the Pyrenees, a large part of that region in which the Langue d'Oc was later spoken was called Gothia or land of the Goths, and according to some authorities it was from this that the word Gothalaunia originated.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
An alternative view is that it was derived from a settlement of people from the Gallic Champs Cathalaunis. As early as the beginning of the twelfth century, the name was used in its modern form, Catalonia, though then applied almost exclusively to the southern side of the Pyrenees. Thus Catalonia may be said to be the region where all the various characteristics of the Provençals became concentrated and, in many spheres, intensified.11
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Unfortunately, the seeds of disintegration were also to be found in this early Provençal society.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Among them was corruption in the monastic orders and religious hierarchies, which many were allowed to join not for their conduct, piety or wisdom, but merely as followers of a profession in which the poor could find subsistence and the rich a source of power.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Another danger for this young society was the fact that many of the aristocrats soon neglected the arts of war, preferring patronage of poets and singers to the exercise of their military prowess against the Mohammedans. This criticism however does not apply to the people who were more directly under the rule of the counts of Barcelona—the Catalans; they had to fight continually in order to drive back the Saracens from the lands they had conquered at the beginning of the eighth century.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The preponderance of Troubadour poetry in the northern part of the country over its southern part, that is, of Provence over Catalonia, is probably due to the fighting kept up by the Catalans.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
From the time of the reoccupation by the Christians of the country from Narbonne to Barcelona, the feudal authority was held by the kings of the Carolingian dynasty. But in the course of time their authority dwindled to hardly more than a nominal fief, from which
the earls of Barcelona were freed at the end of the ninth century, 'from Narbonne to Spain', as the Gesta Comitum put it.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Some stigmata of the former dependency still remained in the names of the coins and the dates of the official documents, which were inscribed and dated according to the reign of the kings of France. In 1112, the Count of Barcelona became Duke of Provence by his marriage with Dolça the heiress of that dukedom.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
This new authority of the House of Barcelona, extending from Nice almost to the Ebro, marked a further step in the growth of national consciousness among the people of the Langue d'Oc (see map on p. 11).
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
In books by Provençal writers on this period, we find definite expressions of gratitude to the House of Barcelona for the high development of Provence under its rule.12
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The authority of the House of Barcelona over Southern Gaul took a more definite shape when, in 1137, the Catalan counts became kings of Aragon by the marriage of Count Ramon Berenguer IV with Petronella, heiress to the throne of Aragon.13
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
From that time onwards, Provençal was a language not only suited for poetry but generally spoken at a king's court as well. Toulouse, the great city of the river Garonne and the only centre resisting the hegemony of Barcelona, more and more came under its influence; at the beginning of the thirteenth century its dependency was complete, when the country was ruthlessly attacked by the Northern Frenchmen, the descendants of the Franks who had conquered Northern Gaul in the sixth century.14
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The terrible struggle between the people of Northern and of Southern Gaul marked the end of Provençal nationality and cut asunder for ever the destiny of a people hitherto joined as one unit: from that time on, the Pyrenees have remained a frontier.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The superiority in wealth, culture and refinement of the people of Southern Gaul roused the envy of the warlike and primitive French of that time;15 but this alone would hardly have sufficed to disrupt so large a country, without the causes of disintegration already mentioned.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
I have stressed that the most powerful of all was the state of the Church; but the type of remedy the people tried to apply to it was even worse. Among an intelligent and hard-working people of deep religious feeling, the spectacle of degenerate priests who practised simony and other irregularities produced a demand for reformation of these abuses.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Rome was unable or unwilling to meet this claim, with the result that heresy sprang from the criticism and depreciation of the monks and priests, and also from the economic development of the communities.16 It was a merchant from Lyons named Valdo who principally carried the propagation of the heretical doctrine.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
His preaching was not in many points in conflict with the Catholic dogma; but among other striking doctrines he preached that poverty was essential in order to carry the Christian Apostolate in accordance with the will of our Saviour;
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
he and his followers also spread the belief that taking an oath was forbidden by God and that, in consequence, no man was entitled to swear an oath to another man. It will easily be realized that the acceptance of this doctrine would have brought about a collapse of feudal society, which was founded on the fief of obligation; and that it would probably have caused very real harm to a society not as yet sufficiently developed to be supported by the communities only.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
The Roman Church fought the heresy with all her might, and Valdo and his followers were excommunicated. One of the excommunicated Valdenses called Duran—H. C. Lea, an authority on that period, calls him the Catalan Duran of Huesca17 —having repented of his heresy and returned to the fold of the Roman Church, asked Pope Innocent III for authorization to organize a new monastic order whose exemplary poverty, morality, and piety would serve as a model of Catholic life.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Duran's idea was not brought to a practical realization when, in 1207 he first approached the Roman authorities, but it was accepted and fully developed some years later when the Order of St. Francis was founded. It was probably considered out of place at a moment when religious war was ravaging the lands of Southern Gaul; the reformation of monastic abuses may have been considered more proper when complete victory had been won by the army of the French Crusaders.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
(...)
font: 10anys. vilaweb. com/trueta/pdf/chapter1. pdf
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
divendres, 30 de gener de 2009
10.000
l'apunt
XEVI XIRGO.
El president de la Generalitat, José Montilla, va reclamar dimecres des de Brussel·les que l'any vinent, quan Espanya tingui la presidència de torn de la UE, l'Estat aprofiti per impulsar l'ús del català al Parlament Europeu.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Dit així, és clar, queda molt bé. Si no fos perquè Montilla és del PSC, partit que no té grup parlamentari a Madrid, on forma part del PSOE, que és el partit que, fins ara, ens ha negat tots els drets i no només els lingüístics com a catalans.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
No s'enganyin. Vénen eleccions europees i ara tots els partits es convertiran en els defensors dels nostres drets a Europa. I en aquest camp, si algú no hi pot dir ni piu, és el PSC.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Si Montilla defensa de veritat això que diu, en pot fer un altre, de gest, a banda de fer grans declaracions. El 7 de març se'n pot anar a Brussel·les i ser un més dels deu mil (w w w . deumil. cat) que hi volen anar per defensar un estat propi. Que això sí que ens asseguraria els drets lingüístics.
font: w w w . vilaweb. cat/w w w /elpunt/noticia?p_idcmp=3449765
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
M'ha agradat molt el video..molt original!
Boncopdefals 3 years ago
El cas Pöttering
Gener 28, 2009 jsort
La visita del president del Parlament Europeu, lalemany Hans-Gert Pöttering, sha convertit en un lamentable espectacle datac a Catalunya i al català. Lindividu ja venia amb la lliçó apresa. I per si la memòria li fallava, el seu vice-president, linefable Vidal-Quadras no perdia ocasió per refrescar-lhi.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Amb les seves declaracions, Pöttering sha afegit a la llista de catalanòfobs europeus que ja comença a ser massa llarga. Recordo també, el 2004, la no menys patètica actuació del Taoiseach (primer ministre irlandès) Bertie Ahern, llavors president de torn de la Unió Europea, quan va fer tot el possible per excloure el català com a llengua oficial, quan es negociava la Constitució Europea, si no vaig errat.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
I caldria afegir-hi també, com no podia ser altrament, la corresponent quota francesa, en la figura, per exemple, del senador Gérard Longuet, que no es va estar també, faltaria plus, de menysprear el català.
Aquests tres casos de catalanofòbia made in Europe, i daltres com els dAir Berlin i el més recent de Swiss Air, ens haurien de fer veure que Europa no serà un oasi on ens reconeixeran els drets que ens neguen a Ecspanya. Ben al contrari.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Els espanyols són conscients que han de jugar la carta europea com a punta de llança per deslegitimar lindependentisme català. I no tingueu cap dubte que la juguen. (A tall anecdòtic, no poques vegades he pensat que la victòria de la Roja a lEurocopa, no va ser cap casualitat, sobretot veient com de malament van jugar els alemanys!).
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
De fet, els europeus, pel que fa a la independència de Catalunya o de qualsevol altra nació, interpreten un paper força conegut, i que ha estat estudiat amb una certa profunditat des del Quebec, pel que fa al seu cas.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Aquest paper és el següent: davant la reivindicació independentista dun poble, els estats existents, per realisme polític -i sempre i quan es mantinguin les formes- sempre es posicionaran oficialment a favor de la integritat territorial de lestat del qual aquell poble es vol separar.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
És un guió que mai falla. La raó és ben simple, un pragmatisme foramida que impedeix que un govern es jugui lenemistat dun altre govern en benefici dun futurible (laccessió a la independència del poble en qüestió). Sempre ha estat així i sempre ho estarà. Jo diria que és la lògica de les relacions diplomàtiques. Per dir-ho més planerament, dos socis dun club mai es discutiran per un tercer que no és soci del club (Llops amb llops, no es mosseguen).
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Ara bé, aquest mateix pragmatisme també pot tenir efectes positius. En primer lloc, lexistència, la simple existència, dun moviment secessionista dins dun estat, és, per ella sola, una font de deslegitimitat daquest de cara al conjunt de la comunitat internacional. Fins al punt, que afebleix significativament el pes específic daquest estat en el conjunt de la comunitat internacional, i el converteix en un pària.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Lexistència dun moviment secessionista, efectivament, és un punt feble que pot fer que altres estats, en determinades conjuntures, se sentin temptats de jugar la carta, per tal dafeblir lestat implicat. Això es tradueix en el fet que si bé oficialment hi ha un suport tancat a lestat existent, per darrera no es fan fàstics als contactes o intercanvis amb els dirigents o enviats dels moviments secessionistes.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Daquesta manera, sempre tenen una carta guardada a la màniga, per si calgués treure-la, en el moment oportú -negociacions comercials, tractats internacionals, etc.
En segon lloc, aquest pragmatisme es pot acabar esquerdant, si lestat existent recorre a mesures dràstiques o ras i curt, viola els drets humans i les llibertats civils i polítiques.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Quan en la seva desesperació per a mantenir la integritat territorial, se superen les línies roges, llavors la legitimitat sen ressenteix i sobre la porta a la denúncia internacional i al progressiu aïllament diplomàtic, econòmic, militar i polític.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
En certa mesura, això està començant a passar amb lestat espanyol, pel que fa a la seva escandalosa violació dels drets civils i polítics dun significativa minoria del poble basc.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Lestratègia dexclusió sistemàtica de lesquerra patriòtica basca, sota lexcusa, totalment manufacturada, de la seva pertanyença o dependència orgància duna titllada com a organització terrorista, pràcticament no té paral.lel a Europa, i de fet recorda més a les polítiques repressives practicades per Israel, Turquia o Algèria envers els seus moviments opositors.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago
Penso que els catalans hauríem de conèixer molt de prop la repressió espanyola actual al moviment independentista basc, perquè, ja anuncia certes polítiques que, no tinc cap mena de dubte, acabaran també daplicar-se al cas català.
5ilviaMC 3 years ago