In recent days, the president of the Spanish region of Catalonia, Quim Torra, plays the game of misleading the government of Spain and the electoral board, which have pointed on several occasions that public spaces must be kept free of political symbology, and very especially during the electoral period.

In a display of demagogy, the regional president, following the instructions of the ex-president escaped to Waterloo, has first removed the poster in which he qualify the politicians judged by the coup d'état of "political prisoners" and has placed in its place another poster in which it replaces the yellow tie with a white one. After a second warning, it has withdrawn this second poster, but hours later it has hung in its place a third banner in which it claims "freedom of expression" and makes reference to article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights. At the same time he encourages all his faithful to hang as many posters and banners of his ideology as possible.

This raises several interesting thoughts:

1º The constant, forced and abusive occupation of public space by a single ideology, which also removes any other symbology and monitors that no one touches their symbols, already has a name. Totalitarianism.

2º Freedom of expression is exercised by people freely and voluntarily. And this freedom, like all freedoms, ends where the neighbor freedom begins. The entire public space can not be invaded with a single symbology from institutions that belong to everyone and that systematically removes (as do the censorial brigades of the Mayor of Barcelona) any different symbology. Any European citizen can understand this concept. The only way to not understand it is not wanting to understand it.

3º Finally, and like all the messages of Catalan nationalism, these posters are expressed in two languages: Catalan and English. It's curious how the most spoken language of Catalonia, Spanish, (which in Barcelona is spoken by 75% of the inhabitants) is always excluded from the messages of nationalism, and instead English is used for international dissemination. In fact, there hasn't been printed a single poster of "freedom political prisoners" in the most spoken language of the Catalans because, as a nationalist politician recently said "is the language of the enemy".

It's convenient not to fall into these manipulations of concept, so loved by nationalism.

- Totalitarianism is NOT freedom of expression.

- Politicians judged for the coup d'état are NOT political prisoners.

- And the Catalan republic does NOT exist.

These are easy things to understand, if you ever want to understand.