Speeches

Mr President, the historical mission of the EU is to accomplish the unity and peace of European peoples without one ruling over others, because we had unity and even some peace before in the form of empires, and we had some self-government in the form of this unity and war. It is our responsibility to make sure that both unity and diversity, both peace and liberty, prevail (the speaker used an unofficial language), as we say in Catalan. You may be tired to hear of the Catalans’ demands, but we are the touchstone of this project. Either Europe protects the right of Catalans to be free and stops Spain from erasing us, or else this Parliament and this Commission are simply a new make-up for the old-time quarrel of dominion, subjugation and uniformity.

Mr President, this Union has yet to prove that our commitment to the rule of law and separation of powers is robust enough to allow Member States to use AI-powered biometric surveillance. Maybe not society will ever be advanced enough to be trusted with such power. All the exceptions introduced by the Council open the door to hard-core authoritarianism. Maybe it takes a Catalan to realise, but you have seen a Member State – Spain – spy on us with a much weaker technology – Pegasus – with the indifference of the institutions of the EU. How can we believe that these exceptions are included in good faith? Populism and authoritarianism are on the rise. Western democracies are experiencing an unprecedented regression on human rights. And instead of fighting this malign wave with all our might, the European institutions get ready to allow the world’s police state nightmare to become law. This is how democracy dies.

Mr President, the teaching profession is in crisis because we are failing to attain and retain enough talented and motivated professionals. In my country, in the 80s, we set up a language immersion model to normalise Scotland after the years of persecution under Franco’s dictatorship. This very ambitious project attracted thousands of bright young graduates, especially women, that were the bedrock of our schools for three decades. This internationally recognised model is now in crisis, not least because of the vicious attack of the Spanish nationalists, and our education system is deteriorating even more than in comparable countries. Those great teachers, the founding mothers of Catalan schools, have retired and now, when the job is the most challenging, the new generation does not have the qualifications or the incentives to become, as their predecessors, the backbone of our society. My prescription to governments everywhere is to tackle the education crisis with the same for the Catalan government: be ambitious, be courageous, demand more of your teachers, train them properly. Give them more in return: more pay, more respect – people will follow.

Madam President, the problem with Orbán’s routine blackmail of the EU institutions for his political agenda is not only that he delays and waters down much-needed policies, such as the Ukraine Facility, and it’s not only that the citizens of Hungary see their rights violated. The main problem with the cowardice of the Council when it comes to applying Article 7 once and for all in the face of blatant violations of human rights is that it gives incentives to other Member States to violate rights within their borders. They know nothing will happen to them. Why would it, if Orbán can blackmail us with no consequence? Spain is the case in point. For years all of you have looked the other way before the violations of our rights as Catalans. If Orbán sets the bar of what is acceptable, you are degrading all of our institutions to the level of his blackmail.

Madam President, any hate speech legislation risks criminalising those minorities or dissidents that it seeks to protect, and so it risks becoming a tool to protect the dominant groups of society. The elaboration of this report, I’m afraid, is a prime example of this. Renew has entrusted Ciudadanos to prepare this report. It’s the party that was born to suppress Catalan identity and language, a xenophobic party that shamefully was admitted into the Liberals in exchange for a handful of votes. They specialise in dehumanising opponents, including me and my colleagues. They specialise in ‘lawfare’. It’s a party that will soon die, suffocated in its own hate. Look at who they consulted to write this report, for example Impulso Ciudadano, a satellite proto-fascist organisation responsible for the removal of the Catalan President for exhibiting a banner in support of human rights. How can we hope that this report will help to strike a fair balance between protection of vulnerable groups and freedom of expression? Well, in the present conditions, we cannot.

Madam President, I have many things to say about today’s debate, and in fact I had prepared a very nice one-minute speech in Catalan. But again, I cannot speak in Catalan in this Chamber. (The speaker spoke in a non-official language) It turns out that Spain had promised that the official status of Catalan was going to be bolstered at the General Affairs Council of yesterday. But hey, Spain broke its promise. No surprise really. We’re used to Spain’s promises. And we’re used to the hypocrisy of the other Member States. This Union wants Catalans in silence. But forget it! We will not shut up! (The speaker concluded in a non-official language)

Mr President, the mass surveillance of a democratic movement should make the government behind it fall. But not in Spain, where the government refused to clarify its role in the Pegasus, and they targeted 65 Catalan elected officials, activists, lawyers, journalists and their families, that we know of. But not only has Pedro Sánchez not shown any willingness to hold those responsible accountable, yesterday, he reappointed the two ministers responsible for the espionage to their posts as defence and interior ministers. And believe me, Mr Sánchez was making a statement. He was telling us, ‘we will continue to use Pegasus or whatever we need to keep anyone threatening the sacred unity of Spain on a short leash’. How can we expect any kind of real investigation, as this Parliament demanded? How can we trust that we will not be targeted again? We simply cannot. And the indulgence of this Commission to such abuses is an intolerable invitation to authoritarianism.

Mr President, our Treaties proclaim that this Union is founded on the respect for human rights. But what do these grand statements mean at the end of the day, if citizens cannot uphold their rights as European citizens before the states that breach them? They are – as we say in Catalan, the language that is still forbidden in this Parliament – (Phrase in Catalan), that is they mean nothing. Colleagues, these proposals lack ambition and a clear idea of what is at stake, because any reform of the Treaties must first and foremost include a direct mechanism to enforce the rights of the citizens equally. In Hungary, yes, but also in Spain. This mechanism has to be shielded from political opportunity and the interests of certain states of protecting their allies. Any reform that does not address this is a step towards more empty words and more authoritarian backsliding.

Mr President, this Parliament’s recommendations to Spain were crystal clear: conduct a full, fair and effective investigation into all spyware cases. These include spying on Catalan MEPs and our teams and many other Catalan politicians and activists. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recently urged similar demands to Spain. To date, no one, no one in the Spanish Government has been held accountable for the Catalan Gate and no one has even given a reasonable explanation for it, because there is none, aside from the authoritarian control of political rivals. Spain cannot get away with this violation of the rights of Catalans, especially not with the Union’s acquiescence. It is therefore paramount that serious accountability measures and sanctions are immediately put in place. Or are you normalising authoritarianism in the EU?

Mr President, loopholes in Russian sanctions are yet another by-product of the EU’s double standards and lack of spine. Just three examples: the illegal issuance of golden visas to Russian investors continues in Spain. Exemptions to Hungary are granted as a response to Orbán’s blackmail, and sanctions with close ties to Russia have given Azerbaijan the resources for an ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, while the world is not even looking. Double standards may seem a tempting shortcut to further EU interests, but they reveal weakness, decadence and corruption. Double standards undermine our credibility and influence as international actors. No wonder that Mr Borrell needs to pathetically beg for recognition from the international community when there is a major crisis. If Europe seeks to lead a rules-based international order and a humane and prosperous way of life, our strength lies in our principles. I hope it’s not too late to remember that.

Mr President, representation is the core virtue of parliamentary democracy. But how can anyone take this Parliament’s duty to represent all European citizens seriously when so many European languages, so many millions of citizens, have their language still banned? Well, now it seems that for contingent political necessities in Spain, the EU institutions will at last start discussing making Catalan, the language of 10 million and my constituency, perhaps an official language. However, immediately we hear voices that say, ‘Oh no, it’s too expensive’. Apparently a taxpayer in Barcelona must subsidise the translation of my speech into French or Swedish, but taxpayers in Paris or Stockholm should not pay to translate to Catalan. Are there taxpayers with different rights in different places? Well, that is certainly not the argument, because the reason that has kept my language banned is not money, as every MEP who will be taking a chauffeur to go to a restaurant today knows. The reason that our languages are banned is to deny our voice and our rights. (The speaker concluded in a non-official language)

Mr President, if you’re worried about our borders, you need to pay more attention to Morocco and Spain. Last week, two Spanish lawyers from the International Commission of Jurists were prevented by Moroccan authorities to enter Western Sahara to assess the human rights situation in that occupied territory. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs had no problem with it. No wonder – this is only one more Moroccan human rights violation with the Spanish seal of approval. Moroccan spying on Spanish politicians by means of Pegasus has been widely reported, and it seems effective. Since Pedro Sánchez – this beacon of progressive policies, soon to be the President of the Council – took office, we have seen minors mistreated at the borders, forced returns, people assassinated in cold blood for trying to escape to Melilla, and, in a surprising historical reverse, Spain yielding to Morocco’s illegal claims over the Sahara. Is this all the result of blackmail from Morocco, thanks to information obtained through Pegasus? Who knows? What we know is that all of this is inconsistent by a mile with anything pertaining to our European values and laws.

Madam President, it would be good to make progress towards European election rules that are cleaner, more equal and promote a more continent-wide political debate. But beware of attempts to use this reform to take the power of representation even further away from the peoples of Europe, especially from us, the peoples forced to live as minorities in our Member States. We are not represented in the institutions of the Union and our voice is limited to the extreme that we cannot even speak our language in this Chamber – as if our language was worse than others, as if we were second class. If this law becomes another tool for Member States and Europe’s bureaucrats to impose uniformity, then it will not strengthen the Union but undermine it, because the peoples of Europe have proved time and again their resilience against all attempts to erase diversity. In the past, European peoples have successfully resisted imperial, authoritarian and totalitarian projects that wanted to erase them. So if the EU does not live up to its founding promise to be the Union of the peoples, it will go down in history as yet another of those failed imperialistic attempts.

Mr President, it is certainly a problem that the EU Presidency is occupied by a government that is democratic only in name – a country that puts dissidents in jail, spies and represses political opponents, prosecutes its minorities and savagely violates immigrants’ human rights. Such a country should never preside the Council. Beyond Hungary, this applies to Spain. It would be a shame to have Pedro Sánchez presiding the Union starting in July. It is also true that the Council has long neglected its obligations to protect the rule of law in Hungary, and the situation is only getting worse. Thus, we wholeheartedly support this Parliament’s call for action in the matter.

Madam President, efforts to improve our anti-corruption framework are welcome, of course, but when will we tackle the political misuse of anti-corruption laws turned into lawfare to repress dissidents? Spain has a widespread problem of corruption that starts right at the top at the head of the state. And yet, instead of actually combating it, they use the pretence of fight against corruption to prosecute Catalans. My colleagues in this Parliament remain in exile because they are absurdly accused of misappropriation of funds for organising a referendum. Dozens of Catalan officials face criminal prosecution. They could face prison sentences of more than 10 years and millions in fines for doing their duty and obeying the Catalan Parliament. This is lawfare. This is corruption, and everybody in this Parliament knows it.

Madam President, we’ll hear a lot of fearmongering today, but the EU should take responsibility for the violations of human rights that take place on its borders day after day, and for its partnerships with third countries. The Melilla massacre resulted in disappearances and deaths. You want to talk about pushbacks? Well, Moroccan police entered Spanish land, dragged lifeless bodies out of the Spanish control area, and migrants were pushed back to Morocco. The Spanish police acted in complacency with the Moroccan police. Is this what we call cooperation? No one has been held accountable so far. A smart migration policy is one that can demand complex measures to third parties because one is responsible for one’s own duties. This starts by holding Member States accountable instead of looking the other way.

Mr President, when we talk about China and human rights, we talk about individual and collective freedoms. We talk about repression of minorities, as in the case of the Uyghurs, and the right to self-determination, as in Taiwan. But Europe will not get respect until we first do our own homework. Europe has a choice. It can act like a big Switzerland or be a bad copy of China. We can be a Union grounded on communities based on self-determination, where prosperity is fueled by diversity, ingenuity and freedom, or by looking the other way when nations, peoples and political rights are vexed, we will become a degraded version of an authoritarian regime. Europe has a lot of homework and Catalonia is a test to check progress. So far, we’re failing.

Madam President, when we say that the European Union is a club of states instead of a true union and that it has democratic deficiencies because of that, we refer to the use of the European Council – that is absent right now – as the shield to protect Member States’ shameful actions from the scrutiny that they merit. Despite the EU institutions’ grandstanding on fundamental rights and democratic values, only yesterday I was arrested in Barcelona in apparent breach of my immunity as a Member of this Chamber and of European law. Neither the Council nor the Commission nor the Presidency of this Parliament has so much commented on it, let alone called for my release, as the occasion required. The interests of Member States that infringe the fundamental rights of their citizens, such as Spain, always come before the rights of the citizens of this Union. We will not stop our fight until our right to self-determination, and through that our political rights, are respected and the Union lives up to its promise of democracy.

Madam President, I would like to raise a point of order on the basis of Rules 7 and 8. Specifically, I would like to draw your attention to President Metsola’s failure to comply with the President’s obligations to assert my immunity and protect the independence of this Chamber. Yesterday, I was illegally arrested in Barcelona, and I requested President Metsola to defend my immunities. I have received no answer to my request and, to my knowledge, she has taken no action whatsoever except, as she has recently informed, passing on the case bureaucratically to the JURI Committee. I have to wonder about this lack of compliance of the defence of immunities in front of an illegal arrest of a Member of the European Parliament, which has not happened before in the history of this Parliament. Is this a policy of the Presidency or is this just an attitude that you reserve for us Catalans?

Madam President, Madam Commissioner, whether the interest—rate hikes are helping to control inflation is open to discussion. What is certain is that the ECB is giving a huge subsidy to banks. As Spanish banks reach historical profits, I think it is timely to remember the bailout of 2012. Your Vice-President, Luis de Guindos, was then the Spanish Economy Minister. He promised that the bailout would be paid by the banks themselves. It never happened. Fifty-eight billion were pumped into banks, and only 10% have been recovered up to date. What’s more, Spain borrowed 43 billion from the European Stability Mechanism, and more than half are to be repaid. The burden falls entirely on the citizens. Disposable income is down by 7.85 – the worst figure in the OECD. It does not matter whether Rajoy or Sánchez are in charge: in Spain, the cronies always get their way with taxpayers’ money from the Union. When a country has systemic deficiencies, it shows everywhere.

Madam President, the spyware scandal has shown of how little importance our fundamental rights are for some governments – in Hungary, Poland, Cyprus, Greece and Spain. They have not only violated the right to privacy, but also the right to freedom of thought. Pegasus, Predator and whatever spyware comes next are used by democratic governments to treat political dissidents like dangerous terrorists. Should journalists be treated like terrorists in a democratic state? Should attorneys be spied on while defending political dissidents? Should families and friends of politicians be on the secret services’ radar? No, of course not. I wish I didn’t have to state this in this parliament. We have the right to our freedom of thought. In Greece, at least, this is under investigation – but not in Spain, where Catalangate has just been covered up. The Commission has an obligation to put a stop to this.

Madam President, nobody really cares about the rule of law in Spain. No matter how much you fuss about it, the Partido Popular certainly don’t care. They have forced this debate to score political points at home, even though they themselves shamelessly instrumentalise Spain’s institutions over and over again. Under their watch there have been illegal police operations, friendly judges that look the other way and relentless political persecution. The Socialists don’t care either. Their government has taken over the repression of a peaceful political movement through any means necessary, including political espionage. And this Parliament? Well it has never expressed serious concern about the serious systematic violations of the rule of law in Spain. And now it bills itself to be used as a pawn in this petty ridiculous political fight. Do you want to debate impunity in Spain? Then start by looking at how Socialists and Populists both cover up the scandalous corruption of the Spanish crown!

Madam President, I just want to reply to lies that we have heard a few minutes ago. They referred to my status and they referred to the supposed persecution of Spanish in Catalan schools. Both are lies. I participated in a government that organised a referendum and that doesn’t please the Spanish authorities. I have always defended myself in the courts of law that have asked me to defend myself. And I’m not a fugitive. I was just part of a democratic government that organised a referendum. A referendum is a situation where people put pieces of paper in boxes. If that is a crime, we should revise the status of Spain as a Member of the Union. And if you have a hesitation about the status of Spanish in Catalan schools, just go and walk on the streets of Barcelona and try to find the child that does not speak Spanish. And then you try to find the child that speaks good Catalan and that’s going to be a lot more difficult.

Yes, my words cannot be translated because they were in Catalan. Millions of European citizens are being treated, even in this Parliament, as second-class European citizens – we’re second class, yes. And in the meantime, Spanish MEPs come to this microphone and speak about diversity and how languages unite. No, this is cynicism and it’s intolerable. The truth is that the European Union underpins the position of national majorities in each Member State and works against, not in favour, of regionalised minority groups. Until we get self-determination in the European Union, our rights will not be respected.