Spain's national parliament in Madrid allowed the use of three minority languages on Tuesday after a concession to Catalan separatists from Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Madrid has also called for the languages — Catalan, Basque, and Galician — to become official EU languages, meeting with objections from some other member states.
Voters in northern Spain wore face masks and used hand sanitizer gel before entering polling stations on Sunday as Galicia and the Basque Country held regional elections while fighting localized outbreaks of COVID-19.
Following the success of the previous editions, the Government of Thailand and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in collaboration with the Basque Culinary Center, are organizing the 4th UNWTO World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism, to take place from 30 May to 1 June 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand.
An international symposium looking at the historical backdrop underpinning the concepts of self-determination, devolution, and independence on self-determination will take place next Thursday and Friday in Gibraltar. The aim of this conference is to look at these concepts and to explore them across a number of different examples.
In Europe's eastern half, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia created many new countries. In Western Europe, however, borders of the old nation states seemed to be carved in stone and although there have been secessionist tendencies, some of them militant, they never seemed to have a shot in reality, according to a Deutsche Welle report from Berlin.
Spain's government rejected an offer of talks from armed Basque separatists ETA and demanded the group dissolve itself without conditions, after ETA called for negotiations on prisoners and a weapons handover.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy conservative Popular Party on Sunday retained power in his home region of Galicia despite recession and biting austerity measures, official results showed.
The Basque separatist group ETA says it has called a definitive cessation to its campaign of bombings and shootings. In a statement provided to the BBC, Eta called on the Spanish and French governments to respond with a process of direct dialogue.
The citizens of the Spanish city of Barcelona voted on Sunday by more than 90% in favor of independence for the province of Catalonia from the central government in Madrid.