Dear Sir/Madam, As you might be well aware, last Tuesday, 27th of November, at a conference held at Madrid's Complutense University, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell declared that the United States “was born independent with practically no history, the only thing that they had ever done was to kill a couple Indians, but apart from that it was all very easy.” Borrell was trying to compare the lack of political integration within the European Union to the unity of the Americans.
The Spanish Foreign Minister also claimed that America has a higher level of political integration because "they all have the same language" and because of its "short history”.
These words demonstrate, in my view, heartlessness and insensitivity towards the genocide of the American natives. At the same time, they betray a deep ignorance of American history— precolonial, postcolonial, and revolutionary—by overlooking the existence of indigenous Nations, and that the United States became the world’s first secular republic, outlawed nobility, and founded a society on the idea of religious tolerance and equality. From the Government of Catalonia we want to disassociate ourselves from these unfortunate and uninformed declarations. We strongly support the indigenous community, the acknowledgement of its history, pursuit of reparations and right to representation. Sincerely,
Alfred Bosch i Pascual Barcelona, 29th of November 2018
C. de la Pietat, 2 08002 Barcelona Tel. 93 887 62 00 Fax 93 554 51 07