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Staff from the National Archive of Catalonia have protested against the decision by Spain's Central Electoral Commission to order the removal from public buildings of yellow ribbons and banners supporting the Catalan political prisoners and exiles during the run-up to Spain's second general election in a year.

Employees gathered today in front of the archive with yellow tape over their mouths to protest what they see as the "censor[ship ...] of the defence of fundamental rights". They also displayed a banner from Tsunami Democràtic reading "let's go back to the streets".

The group posted a video of their protest on Twitter alongside a message reading: "The Electoral-Inquisitorial Commission is from today censoring the defence of fundamental rights from the façades of the Catalan institutions. Workers from the National Archive will not yield in the face of the authoritarian state."

Removing the ribbons

The Commission's deadline to president Torra to remove such symbols from public buildings was 3pm this Friday, saying they violate a requirement to political neutrality from public institutions during the period of elections. There had already been a controversy around the issue before April's election: president Torra will face trial on 18th November on charges of disobedience for his resistance at that time.

Most of the Catalan government's departments have decided to comply with the new order, even though Torra has reportedly "not given any instruction to remove anything". Instead, they "forwarded the order to the different departments for them to act as they see fit", as happened in March. Indeed, many of the ministries had removed all such symbols then and not put them back up again after election day.