APPEC, ACPV, Òmnium and Plataforma per la Llengua condemn the withdrawal of magazines in Catalan

APPEC magazine and digital editors, Òmnium Cultural and Plataforma per la Llengua have denounced the censorship of Catalan-language magazines promoted by the Borriana City Council, which has ordered the removal from the municipal library of the publications in Catalan Enderrock, El Temps, Cavall Fort, Léngua Nacional and Camacuc accuse of promoting separatism. The press conference that was held in the meeting room of the College of Journalists of Barcelona was attended by the President of the Parliament, Anna Erra, the Counselor of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, the Secretary of Media and Dissemination, Oriol Duran, the General Director of Libraries, Josep Vives, and editors of magazines and digital in Catalan.

The president of APPEC, Germà Capdevila, has affirmed that the association will stand up and do everything in its power to "respond to each aggression and to launch in a coordinated manner with institutions and entities new measures of positive discrimination, 'impulse and consolidation of our magazines'.

And the president of Plataforma per la Llengua, Óscar Escuder, has stated "This is an attack on the language. The Spanish state has never respected us. If you don't do it in Spanish, you're stupid".

In the same vein, Xavier Antich, representing the Llull Federation, which includes Òmnium Cultural, Obra Cultural Balear and Cultural Action of the Valencian Country: "We are facing a new flagrant attack by the right and the extreme right against our language and our culture In Borriana we have seen an example of what is happening in the Catalan Countries: the extreme right has used democratic institutions to spread its campaign of hatred against a language and a culture. In other words, censorship in 2023. They kidnap Cavall Fort and Camacuc because they want to kidnap maturity; they hijack El Temps and National Language because they want to crumble the country; they hijack Enderrock because they want regionalism. Pure fascism."

Publishers of the affected newspapers also participated in the press conference.

Eliseu Climent, editor of El Temps: "Faced with the attacks, what we have to do is an organized social reaction because these people are going for everyone, for all the Catalan Countries. There is only the path of resistance and we must take advantage of the situation to move forward".

Màriam Serrà, from Llengua Nacional: "our magazine publishes articles in all variants of the Catalan language. With Llengua Nacional we are first-class Borrians".

Mònica Estruch, director of Cavall Fort: "as Joaquim Carbó, one of the founders of the magazine, has said, throughout the history of Cavall Fort we have seen them in all colors. But they had never said that Cavall Fort was a separatist magazine".

Lluís Gendrau, director of the Enderrock group: "There are people who do not want Catalan to be spoken, read and sung. The impact can go much further."

Germà Capdevila explained that the association of magazine and digital editors will respond to the events of Borriana through a series of legal, institutional and citizen mobilization measures.

Through the judicial process, it will put a legal team at the disposal of the magazines affected so that they can take legal actions at the state and European level, for violation of article 3.3 of the Spanish Constitution and articles 11 and 12 of the European Charter of Minority Languages, ratified and valid in the State since 2001. It will also process a complaint before the European Office of Minority Languages and will present a formal complaint to the Ombudsman of the Valencian Country.

Through the institutional route, APPEC asks to meet with the President of the Parliament, the presidents of the parliamentary groups and the Ministries of Culture and the Presidency to explain to them and agree on the measures to promote and protect magazines in Catalan. Germà Capdevila emphasized that "there are many sides to cover and more positive discrimination and more courage is needed to eliminate unsustainable situations such as the fact that more money is allocated to buy magazines in Spanish than in Catalan in the libraries of Catalonia". The association will also meet in the coming days with cultural and language defense organizations in the Valencian Country, to coordinate the planned actions with them. And it plans to do it also in the Balearic Islands and Northern Catalonia.

Through citizen mobilization, the association will facilitate subscription to magazines in their own language to cultural, associative and neighborhood organizations in all the towns of the Catalan Countries where censorship occurs. And it will promote a massive subscription campaign to encourage everyone who loves this country, this culture and this language to be able to access one of the more than 200 magazines on all subjects that are published in the Catalan Countries. In the words of the president of APPEC "It will be an effort and a huge task that will only become reality if we all add effort and enthusiasm. We will need all possible collaboration and we will need the involvement of all of society."