Editorial
From Planet 229
by Emily Trahair
In Autumn 2017, two referenda on national independence took place within six days of each other. One in Catalonia and the other in Iraqi Kurdistan. Both were brutally repressed. In both cases the human rights abuses have been met with apathy from the so-called ‘international community’, and the latter, months later, has now almost faded from public consciousness altogether. We therefore felt it was important to feature articles on both referenda alongside each other. While the Catalan referendum may have garnered more inches of social media newsfeed than the Kurdish referendum, discussion in the Welsh public sphere about the Catalan referendum revealed troubling preconceptions, not only about Catalonia, but of Europe, and the modern nation-state itself.
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