While members of the Catalan socialist party (PSC) refuse to wear yellow ribbons in solidarity with Catalonia's political prisoners, two hundred kilometres to the north, there are socialists who do not hesitate to use yellow to take a stand on human rights. In Catalonia North, just across the border in France, president of the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales department Hermeline Malherbe, who is a member of France's Parti Socialiste, wore a yellow bow on her lapel when giving her speech for the Night of Sant Jordi, in Perpignan. The image of the French socialist has been shared on social media by Perpignan writer Joan-Lluís Lluís, remarking that not all socialists are like PSC leader Miquel Iceta or former French prime minister Manuel Valls.
At the annual Night of Sant Jordi event - a literary and linguistic celebration organised by the Òmnium Cultural group, held on Friday - the Northern Catalonia politician defended the Catalan language and culture as "an invisible thread that connects the two territories": Catalonia North, on the French side of the border, and Catalonia South, part of the Spanish state.
The yellow bow of Hermeline Malherbe, the socialist president of the "Conseil Départemental des Pyrénées-Orientales", that is of Catalunya Nord. The socialists are not all of them like Iceta or Valls.
— Joan-Lluís Lluís (@Joanlluislluis) 27 of April 2018
He|She|It does not speak Catalan, it|he|she is not secessionist, it|he|she is democrat. pic.twitter.com/gIVKjCXZPC
Malherbe does not support the independence of Catalonia but she has spoken out against the deterioration of democracy in the Spanish state and has demanded the release of the Catalan political prisoners.