<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - freedom of expression]]> 10 <![CDATA[The Collective hosts an event on freedom of expression for women in Afghanistan]]>

Afghan journalist and writer Zainab Saberi will be at the cultural space La Colectiva in Palma as part of the event on freedom of expression for women in Afghanistan organized by Catalan PEN.

]]> <![CDATA[The sea will boil]]> The unbearable lightness of knowing what we think. The days leading up to Manacor have been intense. The sea has boiled, like a casserole in the oven, in the apocalyptic Ausiès-Marché style. The local cultural organization has canceled a conference on Chuetas and antisemitism because the speaker was to be the historian, and also self-proclaimed Zionist (that's how she describes herself, the label isn't mine), Laura Miró. The episode is incredibly complex, and nothing I say about it will escape accusations of being a Zionist or a Palestinian terrorist from supporters of both sides. I'm not aiming for neutrality. I want a free and sovereign Palestinian state. I'm disgusted by the genocide that the Israeli state is perpetrating against what some still cynically call "Holy Land." I don't want Israeli colonization of that territory, just as I don't want Spanish colonization of ours. Between the state and the oppressed people, my choice is clear. Cancellation is another matter entirely. It drives me crazy that we don't let someone speak, especially when we've already invited them to share their perspective (wasn't this the initial mistake?). If we've reached the point where we can't listen to each other, where we can't speak frankly, with all the nuances, all the complexities, and all the controversies in the world, then we've lost our way in this whole mess.

]]> <![CDATA[Victim of content]]> The rise of the so-called true crime, or the reports and podcasts that deal with more or less terrible crimes, raise a whole series of questions and challenges, which are painful to address from the culture of spectacle and inexhaustible entertainment. All these crimes—often sexual, sexist, always morbid, bloody, serial—have become another branch of the narrative tree, a literary and cinematic genre that doesn't draw on fiction. If a story amazes and excites us, it can do so even more when we know that 'it's true,' that what we're being told really happened, and that the characters shown to us as dead died irrevocably, and that the culprits are real people, etc. It's even more frightening, it fuels the morbid fascination even more.

]]> <![CDATA[Franco's final blow to freedom of expression]]>

It was the final blow to Franco's censorship—the dictator died only a few months later—although it continued during the Transition and until the consolidation of democracy. Fifty years ago, in August 1975, the Mallorcan magazine Court It was seized under a law—the Fraga Law of 1966, named after its author, then-Minister Manuel Fraga—that supposedly granted greater freedom to the media. However, it also provided for repression if they published anything the regime disliked. It was the only case of a Mallorcan publication seized by the dictatorship, and the incident resonated throughout Spain.

]]>