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The facts

Turnout on the European elections is being remarkably surprising in my country.

Catalonia has claimed its European identity for decades but in each European election turnout is falling down. Is there any explanation?

Of course there is: we feel so far from the current Union because we have an abnormal place on it.

As EU has been conceived by states, only the state thinking applies. For us --the Catalan people-- this means that we are represented in the Union as the Spanish and the French states think we deserve.

On June 7th 2009 Catalan turnout on the european elections has been only 42% (37% in Catalonia, 53% in Valencian Country and 36% in Balearic Islands). Average turnout in the whole Union has been similar (43%).

European politicians have the obligation to keep voters interested on EU. Obviously they failed: turnout has dropped down without exception since first elections on 1979.

This is not why the EU was conceived for 50 years ago.
This is not what our democracy expects.

Increasing turnout will not be easy, but it is sure that it must be increased zone by zone. There are two factors that will increase turnout in the Catalan Countries:

• 1st. Language. More than 10 million people speak Catalan.
  It makes no sense to consider such a language as regional or minority language. We want Catalan be the next official language of the EU.
• 2nd. Constituencies. Catalan Countries' population is more than 13 million but we are represented only by 13 MEPs on the Union. This is less than 1 MEP per million people, so far from the European ratio: 1 MEP per 627,000 people. We want to reach a fair representation on the EP.

Claim #1: The language

There is not any discussion about the need to receive the message from the democratic institutions in the language of who has voted.

The importance of languages in our Union is out of doubt, if it was not so important, the FIRST regulation on the EU (dated from 1958) would not be relative to the multilingualism regime. So it is.

As for its number of speakers, Catalan is the 9th language in the EU among 24.
More than 10 million people speak Catalan in the EU.

Why catalan is neither present on any EU website, nor on any EU paper nor law?
Why catalan is forbidden on the EU?

False answer: because it is unnecessary and no one supports it.

Right answer: because the ones who can made the petition are not interested on it.

But forget the answers, make the real question: if there are 10 million people speaking a language in the EU, how to get them invisible?

That is because there is not political willing.

Catalan is mainly spoken in what now is Spain. There is no doubt that one of the priorities of the Spanish government since the year of accession (1986) is not to allow citizens' access to EU in their own language if theirs is not Spanish --what represents more than 40% the computed as Spanish population--.

Nevertheless the Spanish government will accept an even lower turnout before allowing non-Spanish speakers to access the EU as probably you do: in the own language.

Do you want an evidence? Spain's government pressed me aiming to close www.europarl.cat, the Catalan clone of the EP site I launched on January 1st 2008 (1, 2).

Their justification was simple: as being considered a regional or minority language, Catalan has not the right to have a website of the European Parliament.

Catalan is neither a regional nor a minority language, or better said: Catalan would neither be a regional nor a minority considered language if real parameters --the ones applied now over 23 European languages-- were applied over it.

But real parameters are only applied over real countries. In the 21st century's countries that means having its own state.

As there is not any Catalan state inside the EU, now 10 million people are relegated into an European minority group. The status that our culture has now in the EU is not what a 10 million people culture deserves.

I am Catalan and this is the first reason because I do not feel comfortable on that EU. This is the first reason because I want EU changes.

Claim #2: Constituencies

Setting up constituencies inside states has been what either high populated or multilingual Members of the Union adopted to make MEPs closer to the voters. I refer to Belgium, Ireland, Poland, UK, France and Italy. Germany too.

In spite of having near 50 million people and 4 main languages, Spain will never allow that. Being Spain a unique constituency Catalonia (7,5M inhabitants) has only 8 MEPs on the EP, Valencian Country (5M) has 4 MEPs and the Balearic Islands (1,1M) have 1 MEP (1).

Spain has not yet accepted constituencies because the main feature of Spainish nationalism is its capacity to encourage alternative nationalisms.

Splitting Spain into different constituencies will project a "wrong" image of what Spain tries to be.

Being catalan, these are two causes of disaffection

on a project that is absolutely necessary for our nation: the union of all the European countries.

Foreign politicians try to discourage us. They are either ignoring what Catalan reality is or are being hypocrites not recognizing what they know about us.

Discouraging Catalans has been a Spanish behaviour for a long time. For decades they did with a thought-to-be-proved-effective element: the army. They failed.

Once inside the EU they try with a few representation and being opposed to a normal communication to the Catalans.

Again, they failed.

History teach us that there is nothing that can discourage a people that knows what they want. Nothing but themselves. 23 years after our accession, we keep standing up for our rights.

European turnout will increase when local turnout increase

That applies in any European nation and for 10 milion people speaking Catalan that means, as did one day for the 23 official languages' speakers, their language being official and people being well represented.