On imperialism even in death, and a French newspaper's refusal to publish an obituary
Yesterday, I saw the sad news that KƔroly Morvay has died. Born in Hungary, he was a philologist and university professor who studied the Catalan language. He moved to Northern Catalonia (the part of Catalonia under French control), where he got married to Daniela Grau (Northern Catalan activist and organizer in grassroots movements for Catalan people's language and culture rights and opposition to French colonialism everywhere) and lived there for the rest of his life, participating in the movement.
For dignity and coherence with KĆ”roly and his family's life-long struggle, they decided not to publish the obituary if doing so meant bowing to the imperialism that has oppressed them all their lives, not allowing to live in their land in their language ānow not allowing to them to die in their language either.
As the journalist and activist Vicent Partal has said: "Here's another shameful story, one more in the daily life of our country: not even after death will you be left alone by the gendarmes of language uniformity, the policemen āin this case dressed up as journalistsā of the extremist and cruel imperialism."
Partal's editorial also reminded us of Carme Junyent, a Catalan activist in favour of Catalan and indigenous language rights, who died three years ago and left an article to be published after her death where she reflected on not being allowed to die speaking your language, since the healthcare system very often forces people to use only Spanish and not the language of our country. Back then, I made a post about it where I summarised the article:
š¬ 0Ā Ā š 132Ā Ā ā¤ļø 290Ā Ā·Ā Morir-se en catalĆ Ā Ā·Ā Yesterday, the linguist and activist Carme Junyent died. It saddens me deeply to write this post,
We all know about the inability to access healthcare, sadly we all have to deal with to some extent. Same goes with daily microaggressions, bigoted comments, and other forms of discrimination and exclusion that we all go through. But refusing an obituary to a widow and a child who has just lost her father is yet another reminder of how cruel language imperialism is.
This is what we as Catalan people āand other occupied countriesā are still dealing with in 2026.