The growth of Catalan and Basque parties is an important aspect of the April 28 Spanish Parliament election, in which the Spanish socialists won a relative majority and will thus need to seek support from other parties to form a majority. As regards stateless peoples, the vote left some other important news, such as the failure of Spanish right-wing parties in Catalonia and Euskadi, a relative recovery of the Galician Nationalist Bloc, or the persistence of votes to the parties of the Canary Islands. Keep reading

The Public Office of the Catalan Language (Oficina Pública de la Llengua Catalana, OPLC) should be given birth in 2019 after the French central authorities have belatedly unlocked 100,000 euros to launch it. The move has been announced by Occitania region President Carole Delga and Northern Catalan department of Pyrénées-Orientales President Hermeline Malherbe. The OPLC is expected to act as a catalyst for a more ambitious linguistic policy for the Catalan language in Northern Catalonia. Nevertheless, doubts and challenges remain, Association for the Teaching of Catalan (Associació per a l’Ensenyament del Català, APLEC) President Alà Baylac-Ferrer says. Keep reading

In 1997, Joenia Wapichana became the first indigenous woman in Brazil to obtain a law degree. Eleven years later, she was the first indigenous person ever to defend a case in the Supreme Court. And in October 2018 Joenia earned yet another distinction, becoming the first indigenous woman elected to the National Congress. Her 8,491 votes elected her to one of the eight seats destined to her home state, Roraima. The only time Brazil had an indigenous congressman was in 1986 — Mario Juruna, of Xavante ethnicity, was elected in 1983. Keep reading

It’s impossible to get lost. Once in Syria’s north-eastern corner, and after accessing the area from Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey’s presence becomes overwhelming to our right side for the rest of the trip. That set of military watchtowers on the tip where the borders of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq collide may look imposing at the beginning, but one easily forgets them after our sight is completely blocked by a massive concrete wall. It’s a 764 km long barrier along the boundary of two entities, Turkish and Kurdish, that have been at loggerheads for too long. We’re driving across the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), a de facto political entity which may be on the eve of an unprecedented bloodshed. Trump’s announcement last December to pull out his troops from this region led to a threat by Turkey’s president Erdogan to invade the territory, something which still resonates on this side of the border. Those excavators we have spotted along the route were once used to improve the deteriorated infrastructure. Today, digging tunnels is seemingly a much more pressing need. Keep reading