Don’t forget the vote-by-mail scandal

The results and negotiations should not hide the worldwide shame of the undignified obstacles put in the way of Catalans living abroad who wanted to vote and were not able to. More shocking still is the complicit silence of the media and alleged democrats throughout Spain who have not opened their mouths. It’s as if Catalans must have done something bad, so they won’t let them vote.

There are those who lament that the independence movement wants to claim democracy as its own, but events like these show that there is little respect for democracy in unionism. Nobody knows what the votes would have been from these 200,000 citizens who suffered ridicule at consulates and embassies, the vexation of being deprived of an essential right. Why is the independence movement the only voice claiming this right? Why is there no widespread outrage at the fact that the Spanish embassy in Rome had the ballots sent to an inexistent address?

For a while now I have looked with affection at the group Drets (Rights), created by lawyers who stand up against catalanophobia, which denounced the president of Catalan Civil Society (a unionist group in Catalonia) and forced him to resign because of threats that he made anonymously on Facebook, which called for the withdrawal of an indecent campaign to terrorize the elderly with fears about their pensions. It deserves full support, and it will be essential. Alongside the ANC, it is now pressing charges of fraud for leaving Catalans abroad without ballots.

Its manifesto says: "We say enough is enough. Give us our rights". And that is what we must do in the face of a State that resorts to practices that are simply not right. It is necessary so that next time everyone will be guaranteed the right to vote, and to seek tribunals that will punish those who have committed this shameful attack on the foundations of democracy.