I decline an invitation

I have not accepted an invitation to an important international conference. Click here if need be to find out why.

Dear Mr XXXX,

I apologize for not having answered your kind invitation to this important event. This is an area I researched in for years, as I think Mr. XXX knows.

The fact is that my country is in the process of its national emancipation in the face of the vicious opposition of Spain.  Over a thousand politicians and citizens face trials, and in the Supreme Court twelve politicial leaders are being tried, for simply holding a self-determination referendum. Three of them are or have been chairs of perfectly democratic and peaceful organisations that I belong to, and that Spain would be only too happy to outlaw. They face up to 25 years in prison for extremely serious, trumped-up offences that courts in Germany and Belgium have failed to find any evidence for.

Moreover, the Spanish general election campaign reveals the will of at least three parties to reverse Catalonia’s current level of self-goverment, in itself cut back by a court in 2010 despite having been negotiated and ratified in a referèndum in 2006. Among other things, they want to shatter Catalonia’s acclaimed language-in-education model; and in the meantime they irresponsably disseminate an endless stream of lies about it.

I am therefore devoting all my energies to use channels (both digital and face-to-face, and mainly at my own cost) to offer information on the Catalan conflict, in the hope that sooner or later the International community will force Spain to acknowledge our decision to become an independent republic and thus contribute to the progress of this troubled world, as well as being the best of neighbours in the Iberian península.

Best wishes, and thank you again for the invitation.

M.S.

p.s. In this context here are links to the six papers on Catalonia in the latest issue of IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies, including one by myself, "The Whys and Wherefores of Spain’s Current Political Crisis: Catalonia... Again"":  https://estudiscatalans.blogspot.com/2019/04/iaforjournal.html