Twitterer Called to Testify in Spain for Gramsci Quotes · Global Voices
Chris Moya

This article is part of our special news coverage Europe in Crisis.
*All links lead to texts in Spanish unless otherwise noted.
A Twitter user and activist with the 15M “indignant” movement, @almu_en_lucha, has been called to testify before the Spanish police's Technology Crime Squad regarding the content of some of her Tweets. She made the announcement shortly before being called in to testify:
Two hours later, as she was leaving, she wrote:
As almu, a well-known activist, explained in this Tweet, the police charged her with using the network to send violent messages, when some of those Tweets were quotes by notable early twentieth century Italian philosopher, journalist and Marxist theorist [en] Antonio Gramsci.
In 2010, Joaquín Estefanía, a journalist and director of the School of Journalism at Madrid's Autonomous University, wrote an article about the Italian philosopher:
Antonio Gramsci
En el prólogo de las Cartas desde la cárcel, Fernández Buey remata: “Pero se le puede leer como a un clásico. Y las cartas que escribió desde la cárcel, como un documento histórico de la tragedia del comunismo del siglo XX, como el testimonio de una resistencia que durante décadas hizo a muchos mejores. Como una página del libro blanco de un ideal”.
In the foreword to Gramsci's Letters From Prison, Fernández Buey concludes: “But it can be read as a classic. And the letters that he wrote from prison, as a historical document of the tragedy of twentieth century communism, as the testimony of a resistance that over decades made a difference for many. As a page in the blank book of an ideal.”
Moments later, the awesome effect of the Internet, the Streisand effect [en], turned the accusation on its head. The police threats against freedom of expression and their attempts to intimidate activists were denounced. The hashtag #Gramsci became a trending topic worldwide. It is not the first time that this has happened to Spanish law enforcement: the day that they appeared in the media announcing that they had seized the leaders of Anonymous España, the situation became just as comical:
@ElCheDisparaba: En España hoy es violento citar a #Gramsci.
@ElCheDisparaba: In Spain today it is violent to quote #Gramsci.
This article is part of our special news coverage Europe in Crisis.