I’ve read that in Hong Kong a man was arrested for waving a separatist flag. If the headline aimed to prove that Spain is not as bad as China, they could have spared themselves the trouble: we already knew that. Spain is not China. Yet Spain is the country where a home rule charter that was approved in a referendum was later watered down behind closed doors; a country where 2.3 million peaceful people found themselves at the receiving end of the state’s crackdown; a country where dozens of police officers, having been coached by the prosecution, lied in a court of law as smug judges looked on and proceeded to convict nine political leaders for crimes they hadn’t actually committed, according to specialists.
All that abuse, which they have got away with so far, means that Spain is closer to China than to the UK, the country that Hong Kong used to belong to. Josep Borrell claims that the EU must learn to be a stronger power. Well, you would hope that, when it comes to human rights, the European Union should be able see the the log in its eye as much as the sawdust in its neighbour's.
