BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) — Hundreds of Spanish intellectuals and two famed South American writers Wednesday rallied round a Uruguayan novelist who was fired from a Barcelona radio show because she not speak Catalan.
Cristina Peri Rossi, who has lived in Barcelona for 30 years where she heads a publishing company that defends Catalan culture, was fired from a daily panel show on Catalunya Radio because she spoke Spanish on air instead of Catalan.
Uruguayan poet and novelist Mario Benedetti, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa and Basque philosopher Fernando Savater and several hundred Catalan intellectuals released a joint statement denouncing the "discrimination."
"We who understand the struggle for democracy ... want to express our disapproval at this dismissal and our solidarity with the person and the writer faced with discrimination," the statement said.
Rossi told AFP: "I speak Spanish because I can express my ideas better" than in Catalan, adding she was "mortified" by her sacking.
The controversy comes as the question of regional autonomy and the demands of Catalan and Basque nationalists are becoming major campaign themes ahead of March 2008 legislative elections.
A sizeable minority of Catalans would like to see the prosperous northeastern region, home to seven million of Spain's 44 million inhabitants and which already enjoys considerable autonomy, achieve independence from Spain.
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