A Girona school boycotts the Crown and annuls an act after pressure for independence

The Catalan independence movement revives its offensive against the Crown. The Princess of Girona Foundation awards ceremony, convened for next July, is the perfect excuse to force one of the most recurring fronts of sovereignty in its lowest hours of mobilization and tension in the streets. The promoter is now the anti-monarchy coordinator of the Girona Regions, linked to the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), which has orchestrated a massive boycott against an act of the entity at the Vedruna school in the city. The management of the center itself was even combative against the King at the gates of the event.

An incident began to heat the atmosphere last week. The anti-monarchy coordinator called a demonstration in the famous Plaza del Vi “against the Princess of Girona Foundation awards”. His motto, present in photos where photos of King Felipe VI are burned, is that “in Girona we have neither a king nor a princess and we will not accept that any Bourbon use the name of our city and regions as a symbol of their occupation”. Quim Tell, spokesperson for the coordinator, tried to hang a banner at the foundation's headquarters, but it fell to the ground and was immobilized and detained by the Mossos, accused of attacking law enforcement officers. After a few hours at police headquarters, he was released. The episode gave wings to the most radical independence movement in its particular crusade.

The Princess of Girona Foundation had planned an event at the Vedruna school this Monday, which sparked an intense pro-independence campaign. A statement from the anti-monarchist coordinator explains that its activists contacted the parents of the school and orchestrated a boycott of classes that day.. The management itself joined the attack. “The school, during the decision-making process for this act, was not aware of its direct relationship with the Princess of Girona Foundation, since there is another entity linked: Art House Academy of Miami. The awareness of the role of the Princess of Girona Foundation in this event has meant that the Vedruna school did not continue with the celebration of this activity, which was only intended to be a musical show for young talents”. The school institution recalls that “it does not host any activities of the Princess of Girona Foundation”.

The coordinator, created a year ago, is controlled by the ANC and Òmnium Cultural, although it also welcomes entities such as the radical group La Forja, the bookstore Les Voltes (of the Matamala family, one of the main supporters of Carles Puigdemont), the Casal El Forn, the Students' Union of the Catalan Countries (SEPC), the defense committee of the Republic (CDR) of Girona, for the Girona Vota platform, for ADAC and for Ateneu 24 de Juny..

The ANC criticized in a statement the “unjustified violence” of the Mossos during the aforementioned episode. “Once reduced to the ground, he received a knee blow to the back from a mosso and sustained knee pressure on the neck from another,” he says.. More theatrical is a video edited by the former leader of Podemos in Catalonia and today an independence activist Albano-Dante Fachín, who began distributing a seven-minute video that is a harsh plea against the monarchy. Her partner, former deputy Marta Sibina, recounts in the same reproduction that “the person who was going to hang her lost her balance, fell and four mossos jumped on her and put a knee on her neck, a very dangerous practice, which is the one that killed George Floyd in the United States”.

🔴The OCTUVE video about the Princesa de Girona Foundation has had:
▶️126,000 views in 36 hours!
Their propaganda must be destroyed!
If you haven't seen it yet, share it: https://t.co/F7eC0FvvxX
Good morning!

— Albano-Dante Fachín (@AlbanoDante76) June 13, 2023

Independentist circles also explain that the Unigirona women's league basketball club also demanded the withdrawal of its logo from the sponsorship of Semana del Talento, which was held between June 8 and 13, because it was unaware that after those days the institution monarchical. Actually, the Foundation is one more of the sponsors.

It is a week of presentations, debates, workshops, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and shows led and directed by young people.. Its sponsors also include the La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona Mobile, Harbor Space University, the Sabadell Foundation, Samsung, Imagine, Pimec, Art House Academy or the Telefónica Foundation, among others.. The presence of the Princess of Girona Foundation does not stand out from the others, since this is not an event controlled by the Royal Household. Consulted by El Confidencial, the Unigirona club did not give its version of the decision.

These types of episodes are not new.. In 2018, after the illegal referendum, the Girona City Council, in the hands of Marta Madrenas (the successor to Carles Puigdemont at the head of the consistory), denied permission to leave the City Auditorium to the Foundation, citing works. The mayor approved a motion to deny that scenario in the coming years. “The reason is the King's speech on October 3, 2017 and the fact that the Girona City Council agreed by a large municipal majority on October 24 to declare King Felipe VI persona non grata”, according to an official spokesperson told El Confidential at the time

The anti-monarchy campaign feeds on the contributions of anti-monarchist activists. The aforementioned Fachín video is meant to be a document that supposedly exposes the companies that support the Bourbons in Catalonia, although it is still a Manichean, superficial and manipulated story that makes good the maxim that, “when you don't have arguments to mess with someone, mess with their ancestors”. This is how he brings up names of companies that are on the Board of Trustees of the Princess of Girona Foundation, targeting those with less economic weight and expanding on their history. De Celler del Pescador, for example, explains that he organizes the Perelada Festival every year “in the Castell de Perelada, where Franco used to stop when he came to Catalonia”.

The document makes clear that this castle has always belonged to Artur Suqué and Carmen Mateu. The first was Jordi Pujol's desk partner and, curiously, the man who had all the casino concessions in Catalonia granted by the Generalitat; the second is from the saga of the Mateu, Catalan great men very close to the dictator who held important positions in the Franco regime, from the French embassy to the Barcelona Mayor's Office through the presidency of the Caja de Pensiones, the EFE news agency or the employers' association Promotion of National Work.

The Suqué-Puig ended up being the classic example of the Catalan bourgeoisie converted to nationalism in the Transition, to the point that the first scandal for illegal financing of CiU was with the company Casinos de Catalunya in the 90s. Convergència was sentenced, but it was not applied because the crime had prescribed, after dancing between courts for more than a decade. The video, apart from telling the story that interests it and hiding interesting facts, tiptoes over the most substantial firms, which it only mentions in passing: the Dalí Foundation, the Damm Foundation, Godó (sic), Vichy Catalán or Fritz Ravich , For example. There is no story behind them in the video.

Fachín, on the other hand, is baited with the president of the Foundation, Francisco Belil. But in his family saga he found nothing, so the alleged complaint puts his sights on the Bertelsmann Foundation, in which Belil is also vice president. There it does point out that its founder was one of the promoters of the Nazi SS. It also highlights that one of his grandchildren is a “personal friend of Juan Carlos I for many years”, to conclude by concluding that, in 1998, the Bertelsmann Foundation received the Communication Award from the Prince of Asturias Foundation.. “This is how the Prince of Asturias award was used to hide the company's Nazi past,” says Sibina in the video. Another who is in the spotlight is José Felipe Bertrán de Caralt, a member of the Catalan aristocracy arrested in the 1990s by the corrupt judge Lluís Pasqual Estevill and who was sentenced to six years in prison for tax offenses.. The video gives a good account of the charges held by his ancestors.

Attack against Aragones

He does not miss the opportunity to put his finger in ERC's eye: “In 2018, President Quim Torra signed the resignation of being honorary vice president of the Princess of Girona Foundation, a position normally associated with the position of president of the Generalitat. Today, however, if we look at the Foundation's website, we see that the honorary vice-president is once again, after Leonor and Felipe, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès”. Actually, the name of Aragonès does not appear in the organization chart, although the position of president of the Generalitat is there for a matter of protocol.

The video ends by recalling that, “on October 3, 2017, Felipe de Borbón stood in front of the 'go for them' and endorsed and applauded the violence against the Catalans. Since then, the Bourbons have been working hard to regain symbolic control of Catalonia.. The Princess of Girona Foundation is one of their main propaganda weapons and that is why they react violently against anyone who tries to denounce the corruption of the Bourbons and their connections to fascism (…) In July, the Princess of Girona awards are presented.. The Royal House takes advantage of the event to whiten its image and to remove Leonor by pronouncing a few words in Catalan. We believe that it is necessary to spoil their propaganda and make everyone know who are the Catalan people and companies that give explicit support to the Bourbons who applauded the violence against the Catalans on 1-O”.