Free Republic

BARCELONA, Spain -- Lawmakers in Catalonia outlawed bullfighting Wednesday, making it Spain's first major region to ban the deadly, centuries-old ballet between matador and beast after heated debate that pitted animal rights against a pillar of traditional culture. Cheers broke out in the local 135-seat legislature after the speaker announced the ban had passed 68-to-55 with nine abstentions. The ban will take effect in 2012 in the northeastern coastal region whose capital is Barcelona. Catalonia is a powerful, wealthy area with its own language and culture and a large degree of self-rule. Many in Spain have seen the pressure here...

In Madrid, the central government of Mariano Rajoy has pledged to fight any move towards independence. There are fears that fellow separatists in the Basque region and even Galicia will follow suit, provoking a constitutional crisis. One association of retired and active members of the military even warned that war should be declared on Catalonia if the region broke away and others have suggested Mas [ Artur Mas, the incumbent regional president and leader of the centre-Right Convergence and Union Party (CIU)] should be tried for treason. Something is missing at the top of the flagpole outside the town hall...

BARCELONA, Spain - Voters in Spain's Catalonia region began voting Sunday in an election whose outcome is likely to test Spanish unity at a time of deep economic crisis. Opinion polls show two-thirds of voters in this region on the French border will cast ballots for parties, both rightist and leftist, that want Catalan independence from Spain. Catalan President Artur Mas will likely win re-election since his conservative Convergence and Union party is forecast to take a majority, some 62 to 64 seats, in the 135-seat regional assembly, or Parliament. Frustration over high unemployment and a deep recession have fueled...

Catalonia regional parliament has approved a declaration proclaiming the Catalan people a “sovereign political and legal entity”. The motion also calls for a referendum to be held to allow Catalans their say on independence. The motion was passed by 85 votes to 41. The ruling Convergencia I Union coalition was backed by its parliamentary partner Esquerra Republicana (ERC), and the communist green coalition ICV. The Partido Popular, most of the Catalan socialists (PSC) Party, and Ciutadans, a non-separatist platform, voted against. The growing separatist movement in wealthy Catalonia - which has its own language - presents a major challenge for...

Despite a thousand years of history, the nation-states of Europe contain within them ethnic groups and nationalities who yearn for their own country. In some cases, the national and ethnic character of these minorities have been deliberately stifled. There has also been organized movements that have sprung up to fight for the national aspirations of the minorities. Next year, votes for independence will occur in Scotland and Spain's rich Catalonia region. Some analysts believe that success in either case may lead to other minorities to seek their own path to independence. From Reuters: __________________________ Some suspect the two campaigns will...

One of the main pro-independence parties in Spain’s northerly Catalonia region has fueled the country’s growing row with Britain over Gibraltar after expressing sympathy with “bullied” residents in the British territory. The separatist Esquerra Republicana party (ERC), a junior coalition partner in the Catalan regional government, wrote to Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo deploring the “improper” behavior of Spain’s central government. Tensions over the disputed British outpost on Spain’s southern tip rose in late July amid a spat over fishing rights and border controls and are now at their highest level in years. While Catalan support for Gibraltar’s position is...

A jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda has threatened to carry out terrorist attacks in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain that is home to the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe. The threats were issued by a group called "Africamuslima" in response to efforts by Catalonian lawmakers to increase surveillance of radical Salafists seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law in Spain and other parts of Europe. Catalonia -- a region of 7.5 million people centered on the Mediterranean city of Barcelona -- is home to the largest Muslim population in Spain. Most of the estimated 450,000 Muslims...

Spain’s prime minister has rejected a request by the leader of Catalonia to approve a referendum that would allow the northeastern region to decide whether to secede from the rest of the country. … Polls indicate about half of Catalonia’s 7.5 million inhabitants favor independence. …

Catalonia’s bid for independence from Spain hit another obstacle after the European Commission said any breakaway territory would not be part of the EU. “If one part of a territory of a member state decides to separate, the separated part isn’t a member of the European Union,” the European Commission’s Spanish vice-president, Joaquin Almunia, said on Monday (16 September) at a conference in Barcelona, reports the Wall Street Journal. …

In a Tuesday ruling, Spanish judges found Catalonia’s planned independence referendum to be unconstitutional, but secessionists in the Spanish autonomous region (called a “community” in Spain) have vowed to proceed regardless. Although stifled under the yoke of the Franco dictatorship, Catalonia has long felt cultural and linguistic disctinction from the rest of Spain. In recent years, it developed into a powerhouse of the nation’s economy. However, amid the country’s financial crisis, Madrid has been urging national unity.

With Scotland moving ever closer, Crimea having chosen their own path, and Venice overwhelmingly voting for secession from Italy, the Spanish government has put its foot down on the Catalonia's planned independence referendum. As Time reports, In a Tuesday ruling, Spanish judges found Catalonia’s planned independence referendum to be unconstitutional. Of course, just as in Crimea, this is being ignored by the Catalan government - a region seen as the powerhouse of the Italian economy - who exclaimed "this will have no effect on the process." Via Time, ... In a Tuesday ruling, Spanish judges found Catalonia’s planned independence referendum to...

Venetians have voted overwhelmingly for their own sovereign state in a ‘referendum’ on independence from Italy. Inspired by Scotland’s separatist ambitions, 89 per cent of the residents of the lagoon city and its surrounding area, opted to break away from Italy in an unofficial ballot. The proposed ‘Repubblica Veneta’ would include the five million inhabitants of the Veneto region and could later expand to include parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The floating city has only been part of Italy for 150 years. The 1000 year–old democratic Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia, was quashed by Napoleon and was subsumed into...

Inés del Río Prada, of the Basque separatist group Eta, was a member of a unit that killed 24 people, including 12 in a car bombing in the centre of Madrid. Her release earlier this week at the command of the European court of human rights (ECHR), prompted a wave of outrage. The Spanish courts had little choice but to let Del Río go free. She had been sentenced in 1989 to 3,828 years in total, but because of a peculiarity of Spanish law dating back to 1973, she could serve a maximum of only 30. Given time off for...

The ax is significant because it predates the documented arrival of European explorers in the region by a century or more. It likely was brought to America by Basque whalers or fishermen who traded it to some coastal-dwelling Indian for animal furs. It then must have been passed from one tribe to another until it was eventually acquired by a resident of the Mantle site. European artifacts also have been found at the late prehistoric Madisonville site in Hamilton County in southwestern Ohio. Although large by Ohio standards, it wouldn't have compared to the Mantle site. Archaeologist Penelope Drooker estimated...

Myths of British ancestry October 2006Stephen Oppenheimer Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh,...

THE REGION TO BE INVESTIGATED FOR TAX REIMBURSEMENTS Navarra in €1.7bn tax inquiry The Spanish tax authorities are stunned, and they have every reason to be so. A discovery of a tax maneuver involving Volkswagen’s car production in the small region of Navarra in northern Spain, has disclosed that the region is indirectly funded by the central government in Madrid through tax returns that add up to 10 percent of the region’s yearly budget.

AFP - Armed Basque separatist group ETA declared Thursday "the definitive cease of its armed activity" after four decades of bombing and shooting for a homeland independent of Spain. "ETA has decided the definitive cease of its armed activity," the group said in a statement issued in Basque, Spanish, French and English on the website of Basque newspaper Gara. "ETA calls upon the Spanish and French goverments to open a process of a direct dialogue with the aim of addressing the resolution of the consequences of the conflict and, thus, to overcome the armed confrontation," it said. "Through this historical...

A car bomb has exploded in Spain after a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA. The blast happened outside a police station in the northern town of Calahorra. The bomb went off in an area that had been filled with people attending a Good Friday religious procession. The Civil Guard station targeted in the attack and surrounding buildings were evacuated before the blast in the Rioja region. One officer suffered a mild injury in the neck. The phone call was made at 12.20pm (GMT) and the blast happened about 40 minutes later. ETA had issued a warning stating the...

5 January 2008 The Basque separatist group ETA will base its calls for independence on the example set by Kosovo, says local daily Gara. ETA, which the EU considers a terrorist organization, stresses that its fight “is not utopia” and cites the examples of Kosovo and Scotland, it is written on the daily’s website, which has announced interviews with some of the organization’s members. It was not possible to get any details of the interview from the paper’s editors, nor were the names of any of the group’s members mentioned. ETA uses Gara, among other papers, to send messages or...

Basques were fishermen more than 8,000 years ago 06/13/2006 The Basques that settled 8,300 years ago in the Jaizkibel Mountain near the Basque coast were skillful enough to go fishing two kilometres out to sea. The human beings that lived in the Basque Country in the Mesolithic, more than 8,000 years ago, set sail out to sea fishing, something which meant 50 percent of their diet, Aranzadi society of sciences reported Tuesday after examining archaeological remains found in Gipuzkoa. They did not hunt whales, as their descendants many years after, neither tuna nor anchovy as the current Basque fishermen but...