Some so-called GDR (Groups of Defence and Resistance) have in recent hours called various rallies, many of them nocturnal, with the aim of removing yellow loops from different areas of Barcelona and other towns in a serious of actions explained by the organisers as "cleaning" the cities in question. At the time of writing, no remarkable incidents and just a few moments of tension have taken place, which doesn't reduce the importance of an action which directly seeks confrontation with those who legitimately wear yellow loops or hang them up in public spaces. A Madrid newspaper even published that supporters of the action would travel from Valencia and from the Spanish capital.
The yellow loop has become a symbol against the police repression of the independence movement and of permanent condemnation that there are nine political prisoners in the prisons of Estremera, Soto del Real and Alcalá Meco. Also that there are, in Germany, Belgium, Scotland and Switzerland, members of the fired government and political leaders in forced exile. The yellow loop is a symbol of liberty, it doesn't offend anyone and more than two million Catalans identify with it. It is, as such, as respectable the action of those who wear it as an identifying symbol as that by those who don't wear it. From here we defend the right to hang them up in public spaces in Catalan cities and towns and we denounce those who want to repress their presence through coercion.
Freedom of expression means that, as a last resort, anyone can protest with their own ideas and defending their own symbols. But that's not the case we're considering. It would be, for example, if those who are against the yellow loop decided to hang up loops of another colour. What's happening is that they're removing the symbols of one part of society, something they do with a certain impunity, something which, on the other hand, is starting to become a regular occurrence in the Catalonia of article 155. There is only one option for the best response: assemble again and put them back as many times as proves necessary. With the certainty that the release of the political prisoners and the return of the exiles is a sufficiently strong and shared cause to not lose heart in the face of those who want to make a new Catalonia based on silence, repression and authoritarianism.
That Catalonia argues without blushing that article 155 has been a return to normality in Catalonia instead of a kidnapping of Catalan autonomy and a regression without comparison of the democratic values of a western society. For that reason Spanish justice is being seriously questioned in different European countries. And for that reason, Spain is today under the magnifying glass of its European partners and international public opinion.