Barcelona city takes down banner supporting political prisoners
Partido Popular and Ciudadanos ask for prohibition to be extended to yellow lights in public fountains
BarcelonaBarcelona’s Plaça de Sant Jaume woke up on Monday to find that the banner which had been up since November 2, when half the Catalan government was sent to prison, was gone. The banner demanded freedom for the political prisoners, but on Sunday Barcelona’s Electoral Board ordered the Barcelona council to remove it from the city hall’s façade, together with any similar slogans and posters hanging on municipal buildings and facilities. However, the ban does not affect —so far— the idea of lighting up public fountains and buildings in yellow to protest the arrests of the political prisoners, even though on Monday the PP asked the Electoral Board to ban those, too. Ciudadanos have expressed their intention to follow suit. It was precisely Ciudadanos who filed a complaint against the banner.
On Sunday local council sources had already explained that the city would comply with the ban, even though it didn’t agree with its arguments. They stated that the city would continue to demand the immediate release of the Catalan ministers and the presidents of Òmnium and the ANC, and that the true “anomaly” in the upcoming elections “are not the banners or the statements against the judicialisation of politics, but the fact that several candidates have been remanded in custody”. By Monday morning the banner was gone from the balcony of the city hall.
Following an appeal filed by Ciudadanos, the electoral authority for the Barcelona constituency reminded the council that there are several political parties running in the December 21 elections whose candidates are currently in jail and whose release is part of their election manifesto. Therefore, the Electoral Board believes that the banner and any such symbol contravene the “institutional neutrality” that must prevail during the process.
The Ciudadanos leader in the Barcelona city council, Carina Mejías, argued that her group had already asked Mayor Ada Colau to remove the banner and now the Electoral Board had granted their demand. According to Mejías, Colau “cannot use the council as an instrument of political propaganda to side with secessionists. We want a neutral council”, she claimed.
In contrast, PDECat spokesman Jaume Ciurana stated that the Electoral Board should actually determine “if it is neutral to have candidates in prison or exiled, unable to take part in the campaign. They might force us to clear our balconies, but our job is to fill the ballots boxes with freedom, democracy and dignity on December 21”, he remarked, after asking Colau to appeal against the Board’s order. In a message on Twitter, the ERC leader in Barcelona city, Alfred Bosch, made it clear on Sunday that “the façade and the balcony of the city hall belong to the city”. The PP, however, wishes to go one step further: they have asked the Electoral Board to order the city to get rid of the yellow lighting in fountains and public buildings to ensure that neutrality is maintained ahead of the polls. The yellow lights were a proposal put forward by the PDECat that was seconded by the local government, ERC and the one Demòcrates councillor and it was put into practice last Friday. The banner was agreed to by the councillors of ERC, the CUP and Demòcrates, after half the government was sent to jail. In fact, the CUP had already put up the same banner when [grassroots leaders] Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart were jailed.
