The English Betrayal on September 11th

Every year, on 11^th of September, Catalans commemorate their defeat and the loss of their independence, may they never forget what was taken from them in 1714, in the context of the War of Spanish Succession, a European-wide war for the control of the Spanish Monarchy, in which Catalonia and England were allies.

The Treaty of Utrech

At some point, though, England lost interest in the war and negotiated, together with other European countries, the Peace of Utrech. One of the hot topics in these discussions was the so-called Catalan case. Catalonia didn’t enter the war to defend the interests of one dynasty over the other, but to defend its rights, liberties and freedom, which the dynasty of the Bourbons was planning to destroy. At the end, England, as well as the rest of the countries from both sides, ignored the situation of the Catalans and condemned them to an extinction, currently unrealized only thanks to their own will and resistance over the last 300 years.

In schools all over the world, children are taught that Spain conquered the Iberian Peninsula back from the Muslimns, or that Spain conquered America in 1492, which is the Spanish version of history, but the truth is that Spain wasn’t more than a geographical term until the XVIII century. Only in 1714, when Catalonia was conquered after they fought alone against their deadly enemy, we can find a single political unit in the territory of today’s Spain in the Iberian Peninsula, under the rule of an absolute king.

As soon as he conquered Catalonia, the king proceeded to ban the use of the Catalan language, and to plan how to exterminate it and how to make Catalans forget about their rights as a nation. His own court stated in 1715 that “Weak and less effective means are not to be chosen. Rather, the most robust and safe to delete from the memory the Catalans anything that might remind them of their abolished constitutions, usages, and customs”, just as an example.

Rather than quoting kings and presidents of Spain as they first plan to conquer, then do conquer and destroy, then plan to culturally annihilate, then negate the national condition of the Catalans, then negate that any of this ever happened while calling the Catalans “extremists” because they say that they are Catalans, we’ll just quote the English House of Lords as they recognized, in 1715, their betrayal to Catalonia, and blamed Robert Earl of Oxford—and not the Queen, who made the final decisions—for “being an Enemy to the common Liberty of Europe, and having traiterously entered into Conspiracies for subjecting the whole Spanish Monarchy to to the House of Bourbon, and designing most maliciously the utter Ruin and Destruction of the ancient Rights, Liberties, and Privileges, of the Catalans, who had made so glorious a Stand for the Preservation of them”, “for abandoning the Catalans to the Fury and Revenge of the Duke of Anjou and his Adherents”, and “for the final Extirpation of all their Rights, Liberties, and Privileges”.

House of Lords, England

According to the House of Lords, this man should “have prevented the Conclusion of the Treaty of Peace with Spain, till just and honourable Conditions were secured for the Catalans; but did, falsely, maliciously, and treacherously, advise Her Majesty to conclude a Peace with the King of Spain, without any Security for the ancient and just Rights, Liberties, and Privileges, of that brave, but unhappy, Nation”.

Robert Harley

By his “most vile and detestable Counsels”—was further explained to the Lords—“Her Sacred Majesty, contrary to Her most pious Intentions, the Faith of Nations, and the Duties of Religion and Humanity itself, and contrary to Her solemn and repeated Assurances, was prevailed on to abandon a distressed People, drawn in and engaged by Her own Invitation into an open War with the Duke of Anjou, for the Preservation of the Liberties of Europe, and the Commerce of Great Britain; and the Persons, Estates, Dignities, Rights, Liberties, and Privileges, of the Catalans, were given up, as a Sacrifice to the implacable Resentment of their enraged and powerful Enemy; and the Honour of the British Nation, always renowned for the Love of Liberty, and for giving Protection to the Assertors of it, was most basely prostituted; and a free and generous People, the faithful and useful Allies of this Kingdom, were betrayed, in the most unparalleled Manner, into irrevocable Slavery; and in Consequence of which most dishonourable and perfidious Counsels, the most execrable Hostilities, Burnings, and Plunderings, were committed upon them throughout their whole Province, without sparing the Effusion of innocent Blood, and without the Distinction of Age or Sex; and that unfortunate People were afterwards forced to undergo the utmost Miseries of a Siege, in their Capital City of Barcelona; during which, great Multitudes of them perished by Famine and the Sword, many of them have since been executed; and great Numbers of the Nobility of Catalonia, who, for their Constancy and Bravery in Defence of their Liberties, and for their Services in Conjunction with Her Majesty and Her Allies, had, in all Honour, Justice, and Conscience, the highest Claim to Her Majesty's Protection, are now dispersed in Dungeons throughout the Spanish Dominions; and not only the Catalan Liberties extirpated, but, by those wicked Counsels of him the said Robert Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, Catalonia itself is almost become desolate”.

This is just one portion of the history of the Catalans, a nation that has not given up in 300 years, a nation that every 11^th of September remembers the day it lost its freedom, as they peacefully fight for the opportunity to exercise their human right of self-determination, and be one more in the concert of free nations and peoples of the world.