BARCELONA – The government of Catalonia is moving forward with a resolution “on the reparation and restitution of the memory of those accused of witchcraft.” The proposal will be debated in the autonomous regional parliament next week and has majority support from far-left parties and the pro-independence movement as a means to “repair the historical memory” of women who were “unjustly condemned, executed and repressed” for practicing witchcraft.
The move echoes the Scottish movement for witch trial reparations and is particularly noteworthy because both nations have notable independence movements.
The announcement came from the Catalonian president, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, directly in a presentation of a documentary by Sapiens called, “Witches, the big lie: a historical thriller with elements of true crime.” He noted that the persecution of women for witchcraft is the product of pervasive misogyny and the execution of women for practicing witchcraft amounts to “institutionalized femicide.”
Last year, a cultural reckoning of sorts was spearheaded by 150 history professors who signed a petition titled #NoErenBruixes [They were not witches]. They noted the women were tortured and murdered only because they were different.
Those persecuted were not Witches as in modern NeoPaganism and Wicca.
“They could be poor, lonely, strong, independent, protesting women with mental health problems or unconventional lives. Or even that, in many cases. Thousands of women accused and tried for witchcraft in rural Catalonia were hanged or burned to death after manipulated trials and terrible torture,” the video says.
The video repeats over and over “No eren bruixes: eren dones” : “They were not witches: they were women.” One person wrote responding to the video, “They were, we are, and we continue!”
Witch trials occurred throughout Europe and North America during the 15th to the 18th Century, most famously in North America the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century.
The resolution says that Catalonia “is one of the places in Europe where most women were accused of witchcraft.” The proposal further noted that “the names of more than seven hundred women who between the XV and XVIII centuries were prosecuted, tortured and executed by hanging have recently been recovered.”
Indeed, the Spanish Inquisition originally focused more on the crime of heresy than witchcraft and also focused on repentance rather than death as a penalty for practicing witchcraft. But secular courts were not deterred and conducted their own witchcraft trials.
In Basque Spain, some 7,000 people were accused of witchcraft. Between 1618–1622 witchcraft persecutions in Catalonia resulted in about one hundred executions with clear documentation for fourteen women who were hanged.
María Tausiet, a historian, said that there “really was persecution was in the small towns where representatives of the people went against any neighbor or outsider in order to blame them for their ills: infertility, bad harvests, impotence, the death of a child.” She added that the common folk were worse on witches than the Inquisition.
Alejandro Romero Reche, a sociologist, explained that the forces in power during that time exploited the community by co-opting individuals to turn in their neighbors. He noted that distractions, distrust, and paranoia were useful tools to support the systems in power. In this way, whole families were accused of witchcraft.
President Pere Aragonès i Garcia at the presentation [via Twitter]
The resolution urges local municipalities in Catalonia to “review their nomenclature to include the names of women condemned for witchcraft in their municipality as an exercise of historical reparation and feminization of street names.”
Antonia Rosquellas, a 17th-century resident of the village of Viladrau, north of Barcelona would be one such candidate for having a street named in her honor. She was accused of practicing witchcraft and suspended above the ground with weights attached to her feet. Then left there until she confessed to being a member of a coven.
On the same day that the reparation proposal was presented for future parliamentary debate, President Aragonès also announced that the American philosopher, Dr. Judith Butler, had been awarded the Catalonia International Prize for their influential work in gender philosophy and ethics.
At a press conference, President Aragonès said that the award was given because of “the revolution and transformation their work has had on feminist philosophy, their activism for lesbian and gay rights, and their support for the queer community.”
The president tweeted, “Judith Butler is an example of the struggle to build a better, fairer and more egalitarian world. A feminist leader, of LGTBI rights and committed to combating violence against the most vulnerable, it is an honor to award the #PremiInternacionalCatalunya!”
Dr. Judith Butler is one of the most important theorists in feminine and queer studies, particularly for their groundbreaking work on gender performativity. Their book, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” and “Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex ” are considered canon in queer theory. In the texts, Butler explains the improvisational nature the performance of gender has. Dr. Butler’s work explores how gender roles are social constructions, not natural concepts. The prize includes the sum of €80,000.
Last year, four women who battled against the Covid-19 pandemic were awarded the prize: Drs. Dania El Mazloum and Anzhela Gradeci, the head nurse at Igualada hospital, Tijana Postic, and BioNTech co-founder Özlem Türeci who helped pioneer the Pfizer vaccine. Among other awardees have been philosopher Dr. Karl Popper, oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, politician Václav Havel, activist Malala Yousafzai and Archbishop Desmond Tutu who recently passed away.
The Catalonian government has steadily shifted to a liberal ideology and the reparation proposal and the subsequent award drew immediate ire from conservative members of the Catalonian Government.
Antonio Gallego, a member of the right-wing Vox Catalan party, tweeted: “Separatists and communists are promoting in the next plenary session of the Catalan parliament a proposal for the ‘reparation and restitution of the memory of those accused of witchcraft. I am speechless. I am sorry.”
President Aragonés tweeted the documentary and the reparation are “dignifying the memory of thousands of women who were unjustly executed is a historic debt.” He added that for his country, the “feminist transformation marks the future and repairs the past.”
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.