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Acting Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez's government is worried about the potential impact of the imminent verdicts in the trial of civil and political Catalan pro-independence leaders. Days before the Supreme Court is expected to announce its decisions, government agency Global Spain has launched an international campaign involving 215 Spanish embassies to shed light on what they see as Spain's democratic values. The campaign is called "Our democracy in motion".

Global Spain, headed by Irene Lozano, is especially concerned with countering the work done by the Catalan government's diplomatic initiatives. For that reason, Spain's embassies in Europe are already organising video screenings and talks for the coming week.

The campaign's objective is to improve Spain's international reputation and to highlight what Global Spain sources say are the country's democratic values, like freedom of expression, feminism and diversity.

The first video of the series has been released, entitled "Spain has its say". In it, El Mundo journalist Lucía Méndez and writer Gabriela Ybarra, whose grandfather was killed by ETA, discusses freedom of speech in Spain. Global Spain says: "It demonstrates just how strong the Spanish democracy is, that we can freely express opinions that others would like to silence."

Ybarra is quoted saying, as translated in the subtitles, "if they want to be nationalists, there are democratic ways to fight for it", referring to ETA. Méndez, for her part, says that "democracy and the laws protect everyone; not just those who respect the laws, but also those who don't respect them" and that "you may want to destroy this democracy, but it won't put you in prison for that".

 

This video, like the other three to come, have been subtitled in English, French and Italian. Debates based on these videos have been held already in Tallinn and Stockholm; next week others will take place in Luxembourg, London, Dublin and Rome.