On Friday, the Civil Guard turned up at the editorial offices of El Nacional, following the instructions of the judge Mercedes Armas, to notify the director and the publishing company of the order of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that it "is required to abstain from including in its media propaganda or advertising relating to the referendum of 1st October, in any way", warning that “doing so could incur criminal responsibilities”.
Unable to find precedents in forty years of democracy in Spain, the same operation took place at the editorial offices of four other privately owned media: El Punt Avui, Vilaweb, Racó Català and Nació Digital. It is a sinister irony that it took place precisely on the International Day of Democracy, instituted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, when a judge, following the orders of the TSJC, decided to send armed military-style police, the Civil Guard, to several media, to inform us of a judicial notification regarding what information we can't publish, without the risk of criminal charges.
Given the seriousness of the situation, which we regard as an anomaly in a rule of law and in a democratic system, we consider oursleves obliged to make the following considerations, and to share them with our readers and citizens:
The Catalan Parliament, legitimately constituted and in compliance with the rights granted by the Statute of Catalonia, according to which “Parliament represents the people of Catalonia” (art. 55), approved with absolute majority, on 6th September, the Law of the Referendum. In compliance with its executive function (art. 68), the Catalan government, legitimately constituted, signed, in full and with all its ministers, the Decree of call for the Referendum of 1st October and the Decree of complementary measures required to unfold it. And, in agreement with all this, in face of a referendum decreed by the government in full and in exercise of its duties (and without having been suspended), protected under the law of a Parliament in full and in exercise of its duties (and without having been suspended), the government has launched the usual institutional campaign to publish advertisements, in public and private media, so that the citizens of Catalonia would be informed about the celebration of the referendum.
El Nacional, without evaluating, because it does not correspond to it, the bottom line of the matter, has obviously decided to publish this institutional advertisement of the government of Catalonia. The media, in democratic systems, exercise the role, as is known, of critical mediators between the government institutions and the citizenship: on the one hand, they have a duty to inform truthfully about the legislative, executive initiatives and judicial authorities of the different institutions of the Spanish state, and, on the other hand, they have the obligation to carry out, on behalf of the citizens to whom they owe it to, the necessary critical vigilance of those governing and their institutions, in the face of any breach of their functions and of any abuse of power. Moreover, in defence of the legitimate aspirations of the government of Catalonia to communicate directly and without mediations, through advertising, its events, El Nacional has decided, with full awareness of its civic responsibility, to publish the institutional advertisement of the referendum on the part of the government.
And that is why, in the face of this judicial notification, we consider it absolutely unacceptable the judicial intrusion in the exercise of the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press at El Nacional and at the other media warned, and, of course, we also consider it absolutely unacceptable, as an improper threat in a democracy, the warning, in its threatening tone, of the criminal responsibilities that are communicated to us for the exercise of this same freedom of speech and of the press.
We consider it absolutely unacceptable the judicial intrusion in the exercise of the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the warning in its threatening tone of the criminal responsibilities communicated to us.
The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, the first modern democracy instituted in the world, consecrates, since 1791, the inviolable character and without restrictions of any kind, even by Congress, of the freedom of speech and of the press. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the General Assembly of United Nations in 1948, establishes, in article 19, that “every person has the right to the freedom of opinion and expression” and that “this right includes that of not being disturbed because of their own opinions, and the search, receiving and disseminating of information and ideas by any means and without border limits”.
Consequently, and in line with what is established, in these foundational texts, with respect to the fundamental rights of the freedom of opinion, expression, information and of the press, at El Nacional we believe there is no political or judicial application that can take any initiative that intends to restrict these freedoms and these inviolable rights. Without freedom of opinion and expression, without freedom of information and of the press, the fundamental conditions that are necessary, elementary and basic, to describe a democratic system, do not occur.
For this reason, in the exercise of the universal inviolability of the freedom of information and of the press, and in the exercise of the civic responsibility that we believe defines the role of the media in a democratic system, we assume that there cannot be any political or judicial application that can prescribe to any media, nor, of course, to El Nacional, as to what should and must not be published. We also denounce in this way the police coercion that the courts intend to use to intimidate the media and force us to give up our inalienable responsibility in the exercise of the right and the freedom of information and of the press.