Dear Herr Frankenberger (Frankfurter Allgemeine):
I
am deeply dismayed by the impression that the readers of your newspaper
will have obtained after reading the contents of the article, which to
me seems to have been written by the propaganda department of the
Spanish government. The bias is total, all opinions are one-sided, the
information is partial. The reference to the financial situation of the
pension system makes me laugh. And the superficial treatment of the
future position of Catalonia inside Europe ignores the enormous pressure on Spain to sit down and negotiate in good faith.
This pressure comes, of course, mainly from the Spanish governbment's
vast sovereign debt, very little if any of which is attributable to
public overspending in Catalonia.
Those
who are planning Catalonia's passage to a fully sovereign state which
can take its own political decisions and invest in its own future have
designed the transition to the last detail. Only a small proportion of
Catalonia's trade with Spain is in the form of consumer products that
might be subjected to a boycott in some Spanish nationalist circles. No
Catalan wants Catalonia to be anything other than Spain's best
neighbour. Many of the statements quoted in Herr Wieland's article
formed part of the campaign of fear organised by Madrid. Not a single
response is mentioned. Not a single reason is given to explain the
reason for the extraordinary fact: virtually half the population wants
to leave a country which is fully respected in international circles.
I honestly believe your readers deserve a balanced picture of the news in Catalonia.
I humbly apologize for not being able to write this letter in your language.