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The Oxford Union Society invites Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, to speak on 28 May
Puigdemont is introduced as the “head of the Catalan Resistance”
Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, has been invited to speak at the prestigious Oxford Union, which introduced him as the “head of the Catalan Resistance”, much to the irritation of Spanish unionism. Spain’s distracted mainstream media is so far feigning indifference.
Head of the Catalonian Resistance
Puigdemont was the President of the Government of Catalonia from January 2016 to October 2017, until his removal from office by the Spanish Government following the unilateral declaration of independence of Catalonia sparked uproar and unrest across the region. Puigdemont began his career as a journalist and was the Editor-in-Chief of El Punt. He was later the Director of the Catalan News Agency, as well as the Director of Girona’s cultural centre Casa de Cultura, before being elected Mayor of Girona. Chair of the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) and leader of the Junts per Catalunya (JuntsxCat) electoral alliance, he is now residing in Belgium, living in exile
Controversy, of course, was always the Oxford Union’s aim. Oxford University’s debating society has a long history of inviting controversial figures to speak in its debating chamber. Most Catalan independentists would baulk at calling President Carles Puigdemont the “head of the Catalonian Resistance“, but that is precisely how they decided to describe him in their advertising. As intended, it has tickled fancies and ruffled feathers, and garnered some free publicity in the process.
President Puigdemont will address the Oxford Union as part of its impressive programme of events during the Trinity term (that is the “summer term” in common parlance), including panels on Feminism, Tiananmen and Centrism; debates on Trump, Shamima Begum and billionaires; as well as speeches, a quiz, a comedy night a cocktail night and fashion show.
As a speaker, Puigdemont will be in stellar company. The Union’s catholic guest list in May/June includes an influential inventor, the Supreme Court Chief Justice of Kenya, an English Conservative statesman, an American senator, a supermodel entrepreneur, the CEO of Coca Cola, a former South African cricket captain, Barack Obama’s speech writer, a successful lawyer-cum-writer, North Korean defectors, a couple of ambassadors, and a host of well-known actors, as well as the president-in-exile of Catalonia, the nation that the international mainstream media insists on calling “the prosperous north-eastern region of Spain”.
Guests of the Oxford Union
The Oxford Union has been addressed by a staggering range of public figures, from world leaders to a puppet, and many could be considered controversial in one way or another. Historic figures such as US Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, British PMs Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Theresa May, Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Malaysian PM Mahathir bin Mohamad, diplomats Henry Kissinger and Robert Kennedy, PLO leader Yasser Arafat, former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, far-right leaders Marine le Pen and Tommy Robinson, the “alt-right” strategist and propagandist, Stephen Bannon (“titillation dressed up as free speech”, Fred Dimbleby in The Guardian), legendary activists Malcolm X, the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, as well as icons from the world of entertainment including Sir Elton John, Michael Jackson, Morgan Freeman, A$AP Rocky, Pamela Anderson, and Kermit the Frog, sports legends OJ Simpson, Diego Maradona and Manny Pacquiao, and and several porn stars-cum-entrepreneurs.
All speakers appear for free and the cachet of addressing the future ruling class in one of Britain’s bastions of privilege.
Timetable of events at the Oxford Union, May/June, 2019
President Puigdemont will appear on 28 May, two days after Spain’s council and European elections in which the Catalan leader is expected to win a seat in the European Parliament. This weekend, the Spanish politico-media complex has been almost entirely given over to the untimely death of Spanish statesman, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. However, there is still a fortnight for Spanish unionism to get itself into a lather.
President Torra’s Coordinator of International Presidency Policies , Josep Lluís Alay, announced the invitation:
President Carles Puigdemont @KRLS, head of the Catalan Resistance, has been invited by @OxfordUnion to give a conference at Oxford University on May 28th to explain and discuss the Catalan conflict
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They are well aware of the exposure that the event will give to President Puigdemont, and if they make too much noise they will merely publicise the event further and surround it with the fuss that will make it newsworthy.
Oxford alumnus and the only Partido Popular candidate in Catalonia to win a seat in last month’s Spanish general election, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo y Peralta-Ramos, XIII Marchioness of Casa Fuerte, described the Oxford Union as “pathetically ignorant oxonians”. She obtained a real post-graduate degree and doctorate from New College, in contrast to her party leader’s Harvardian qualification.
Spanish unionism’s Catalan court jester and professional victim of independentism, Albert Boadella, was overwrought at the news:
By the mother that bore the perfidious Albion of Oxford! They invite a fugitive from a coup d’état as the representative of “the Catalan resistance”. The only resistance that exists in Catalonia is what we do when we confront this gang of heartless Lazis*”
*”Lazi” is an offensive epithet used by Spanish nationalists to insult those who show solidarity with Catalan political prisoners by wearing, placing or painting a yellow bow in public places. It is a portmanteau word that combines the Spanish word for “bow”, lazo, and Nazi.
Most aerated in its reaction has been the obscure collective of unionist teachers and professors, Foro de Profesores, which describes itself as “an informal association of 240 University professors and other professionals committed to the defence of liberal democracy in Spain”. The vast majority of the signatories teach in Spanish institutions, the vast majority of the signatories working in non-Spanish institutions are Spanish citizens, and only a handful of them are based in the United Kingdom.
Its president, Alfonso Valero, describes himself as “a solicitor and abogado (not practicing), Founder and Coordinator of the Foro de Profesores (‘Forum of Academics’)”. Despite getting more than its fair share of exposure in the Spanish unionist press, his platform has had little impact. His letters and contributions to Spanish nationalist blogs are on the whole hyberbolic. In one recent entry he accused a raft of British Universities of being in the pay of the Generalitat de Catalunya, though the numbers he quotes, without giving a source, are peanuts.
He also wonders why no Spanish party or institution defends the Fatherland on foreign soil, completely ignoring the cost and efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the diplomatic service, Global Spain and Marca España before it, and their enormous influence with mainstream international media. Mr Valero is a fervent campaigner against the Catalan school and the rector of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Autonomous University of Barcelona – UAB), a supporter of right-wing Spanish unionist platform, Societat Civil Catalana (SCC), and ally of the provocative and unpopular Spanish nationalist astroturf platforms active in Catalan universities. What Mr Valero should be asking himself is why Spanish nationalism is so unpalatable outside Spain and attracts so little popular support.
In its 5-page open letter of complaint to the Oxford Union (the letter contains the details of all its signatories), Valero complains that the Profesores “deeply regret that the Oxford Union seems to invite only nationalist Catalan leaders: Mr Artur Mas in 2017 and now Mr Puigdemont”. He seems not to remember that, until Pedro Sánchez, no Spanish premier has been able to speak English.
Most people would love to have heard former Spanish PM, Mariano Rajoy, address students at Oxford University. The last time that he was asked a question in English he refused to respond.
And what would the former president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, have spoken about? Her legacy? The 105 million euros of public money wasted on a City of Justice in Madrid that never opened?
The only criterion that seems to apply in the Union’s selection of speakers is for them to have done something interesting or have something interesting to say, the more controversial the better. Former Spanish PM, José María Aznar, was forced to suspend his conference at the Oxford Union in 2004 for “security reasons” due to a protest against the Iraq war by students and members of the Stop the War coalition.
I would recommend that the Oxford Union invite Spanish-Argentine far-right leader, Javier Ortega Smith-Molina, with his partially English surname, but the man who doubles as private prosecutor in the Catalan Trial has an outstanding UK arrest warrant for invading and claiming Gibraltar for Spain in 2016, before running off and swimming back to the mainland.
In the letter, President Puigdemont is inaccurately described as a “fugitive from justice” as is usual in Spanish unionist argot. It also states that he is accused of the “employment of violence in the declaration of the independence of a Spanish region against the Spanish Constitution”, which is, one supposes, the Profesores‘ long-winded way of saying that he is accused of “rebellion”. The author then irrelevantly, and in surprisingly poor English, points out the size of the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra: “You may not be aware that the regional police force of Catalonia counts with 18,000 members”.
The letter then asserts that, in view of the Spanish election results attained by Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia – ERC) and Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia- JxCat), Oriol Junqueras would be a better choice as head of the Catalonian Resistance “if there is such a thing”. The missive goes on to offer the association’s “expertise” in “law, economy, sociology, history, philosophy, education, modern languages, and all other aspects of Catalonia” in future events, completely missing the point of the Oxford Union Society. It ends with the whine that Catalan independentism “is very well funded”, while “Profesores is a civil association with no funding whatsoever”, the same line that Spain’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, Josep Borrell, has been hawking that line round the world for the past year, much to everyone’s amusement and incredulity.
The article published on The Oxford Student web page regarding the letter from the Profesores claimed that Genevieve Athis, President of the Union, had told the student newspaper that “the Oxford Union has changed the description that accompanies Mr Puigdemont’s event on the Oxford Union app and website from ‘Head of the Catalonian Resistance’ to ‘Former President of the Government of Catalonia'”. This morning, however, it remains unchanged.
The letter is, of course, is very similar to that which it sent to the Cambridge Union only two months ago with regard to the appearances of Aamer Anwar (rector of Saint Andrew’s University and legal counsel to Clara Ponsatí, economist and Puigdemont’s exiled Education Minister), and current Catalan President, Quim Torra.
Due to the Spanish judiciary’s failure to have exiled Catalan leaders extradited to Spain on rebellion or sedition charges, it has fallen to Spain’s nationalist politico-media complex, its Foreign Affairs office and substantial diplomatic service, with help from and official and non-official platforms, to boycott acts involving Catalan leaders now resident beyond Spain’s borders. These efforts show how desperate they still are to silence Puigdemont and the other exiles, so much so that they invite themselves to any event where the Catalan independentist leaders might be speaking. As at home, Spanish unionism does not accept beliefs or opinions that diverge from its own. It does not court debate, preferring instead propaganda and imposition. It cannot just express its position as well as it can, and leave it up to people to make up their own minds.
Carles Puigdemont is far from being the publicity-hungry Oxford Union’s most objectionable guest, which makes any Spanish unionist hyperventilation all the more comical. Hamfisted attempts to impose its narrow narrative on the world, and its constant tantrums when it does not get its own way, make it look petty and undemocratic. They are also very amusing. As ever, Spain comes across as a country where freedom of expression is not respected.
Expect an embarrassing Spanish boycott of some description.
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