Read in Catalan

She had been working all over the world for over a year, and wearing a yellow ribbon wherever she went, to show solidarity with the Catalan political prisoners. But when classical musician Marta Santamaria travelled to Madrid and went out to dinner with a friend, she was verbally abused for the yellow bow pinned to her t-shirt.

"From the moment we sat down in the restaurant, the man at the table opposite would not stop looking at us with contempt," she commented on social media. "His companion offered us a 'Long live Spain!' When they were leaving, they came over to us and, shouting and being quite aggressive, called us every sort of name." Santamaría says: "We didn't respond to their provocations, but nobody stood up for us. On the contrary: people stared at us for the entire dinner, to the point that when some women from another table left, one came over and 'What you are doing is a fucking provocation."

"A ribbon is a provocation, but a public verbal aggression isn't?" reflected the Catalan musician. "When we got to our hotel, we realized that the couple in question was staying there too. We saw them in the lobby. I went to bed but my friend went with members of the orchestra to have a drink at the bar".

"When the man from the restaurant saw my friend, he came over. He shouted insults at my friend and didn't respect a minimum of personal distance. My friend asked the hotel staff to intervene. They made the man move away, but they ended up asking my colleagues for their room numbers, not him!" she explains, surprised.

"Today, they'll believe they've 'won'.I won't be wearing my yellow ribbon, not to the concert or anywhere, but tomorrow I'll go back to the world with my ribbon and, when they ask me what it means and why I'm wearing it, I'll explain the Catalan cause even more strongly than ever and the democratic disgrace that is Spain. Sickening!" Santamaria concludes.