Respect our people!

This blog post in English (by Miquel Marzabal Galano) summarizes why last Saturday more than 1 million people demonstrated on the streets of Barcelona. Want it or not, Spain is giving us more and more reasons not to be with them.

• Following is the beginning of a letter I really liked:

"Letter to my friends in Spain 

Dear friends, 

I would like to share with you a feeling, though I'm sure you are already familiar: in Catalonia are sad, deeply disappointed and, of course, also outraged.

I know you are many and many of us want to Catalan, which I like to come to Catalonia that you feel well treated here and, even, I like to talk in Catalan may understand but not always. I know you are many and many who respetáis our national feeling, but not what you share.

To all of you to say that the Constitutional Court ruling is an unprecedented turning point and determine a before and after our relationship with the entire Spanish State. It is sad and should never have happened. The statute was drafted and voted in the Parliament of Catalonia, then refined in the Congress of Deputies (which hurt us deeply in Catalonia), and finally was ratified overwhelmingly by referendum, even if for many represented a lesser evil.

[...]" 

(Original text in Spanish, click on "In English" to read in that language)

• This article about the demonstration on Saturday starts:

"A human tide of more than a million people has swept the streets of Barcelona.

Led by the present and two previous presidents of the region of Catalonia, the huge crowd came to express its anger at a Spanish Constitutional Court ruling trimming Catalan self-rule." (Includes video)

I'm proud of my people. I'm glad that people from different colors and ideologies in Catalunya are now bonding together, realizing that what we have in Spain is not a pure democracy. Glad they are speaking up.