I am a member of Tlaxcala, a multilingual network of translators whose function is to give voice to writers and activists who are voiceless within the chaotic realm of communication, primarily for not having access to mainstream media of the sort of EL PA�S, LIB�RATION, IL CORRIERE DELLA SERA and the like, but also because they write in languages other than English.

Nowadays English is the main imperial weapon of mass destruction, so deadly that, with total impunity, it throws its ideological garbage over the peripheral countries and this garbage is almost immediately translated into the vast majority of the global languages.

By the same token, neither the mainstream media nor the activist websites of the English-speaking world take many pains to translate what we, the Others, think and write.

Language, therefore, is Tlaxcala�s instrument to defuse this weapon.

Tlaxcala values diversity and equality among all languages and cultures and it is here to fight against the neo-liberal Unique Thought. We already translate into more than twelve languages, including English, and rely on many websites to spread minority thinking, which swims against the political tide.

Thanks to Tlaxcala, for instance, the reader of this EL PA�S column will be able to have it in English today if she/he clicks on the important and linguistically aware American-based site http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_20859.shtml, where it is already posted and gives due credit to EL PA�S.

After this long explanatory preamble, within this context I want to address this column�s second topic, the Catalan language, the historical language that the Community of Valencia shares with the communities of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands within the Spanish State.

I beg pardon to the readers of EL PA�S if I am now explaining things they know very well, but they have to consider that this text is mainly addressed to the world, not to them. It is my wish that readers of other languages and cultures take conscience through Tlaxcala of the linguistic and cultural vicious attacks the Spanish Partido Popular is carrying out against the Catalan language.

The Partido Popular � former President Aznar's party � is the direct heir of Franco�s regime and locally governs the Community of Valencia. Let me explain how they proceed. Taking advantage of the fact that at the street level people call �Valencian� the peculiarly accented Catalan spoken in the Community of Valencia (just the same as in the United States they might call �Texan� the characteristically accented English of this American state), the Partido Popular is fighting from the office a linguistic war of secession, something as stupid as if George W. Bush claimed legally now that he speaks �Texan�, not English.

Certainly, if the Partido Popular does this it is not for linguistic reasons, totally non-existent from an academic standpoint, but merely to harass its political foe the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), by any means, as it defends the unity of Catalan with the support of all intellectuals and grammarians from Academia.

The Spanish Partido Popular, the same party that fervently applauded the genocidal war of Iraq; the same party that in 2004 lied to the population after the Atocha station�s attack and publicly blamed the armed Basque group ETA instead of the Islamic jihad in order to win the general elections on a platform of tough law and order (they lost); the same party that is destroying the Spanish coastal habitat with a totally filthy real-estate speculation, is also a party that dismembers languages for electoral motives. Right-wingers never stop being right-wingers.

This article appeared originally in the Spanish newspaper EL PA�S on January 31, 2006 (http://www.elpais.es/articulo/elpepiautval/20060131elpval_5/Tes/Comunidad/Valenciana/Tlaxcala/catalan).

English translation by the author, revised by Mary Rizzo. Both are members of Tlaxcala (transtlaxcala@yahoo.com), the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation is on Copyleft.

Manuel Talens is a Spanish writer, translator and columnist (www.manueltalens.com)