Presidents, Prisoners and Potholes
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before the contested referendum on independence, Carme Forcadell was the speaker of the Catalan parliament but since March she has been awaiting trial in a Spanish jail accused of rebellion. Niall O'Gallagher meets the ever defiant separatist politician.
Kate Adie introduces this and other stories from around the world.
Sarah Rainsford is surprised at the warm welcome she receives in the frozen Siberian city of Irkutsk - where, unlike in Moscow, people seem willing to criticise their President and are happy to speak to a Western journalist.
Alastair Leithead discovers the vast size of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - as well as its dense forests, potholes, bureaucracy and corruption – make it a difficult place to get around as well as to govern.
Rayhan Demytrie finds that the inauguration of Georgia’s first female President may not mean much for gender equality in the country.
And Lucy Ash discovers that DIY DNA testing kits that help your trace your ancestors are revealing far more than some Americans bargain for.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.2 | Hello, today our correspondent in Russia gets a nice surprise. |
| 0:10.0 | She heads far away from Moscow and meets people who seem to be genuinely pleased to see a Western journalist. |
| 0:17.0 | A rather more difficult task for our man in Congo, where potholes, forests, bureaucracy and corruption all conspire to confound any travel. |
| 0:27.0 | We're in Georgia ahead of tomorrow's inauguration of its first female president, and in the US, where DIY genetic testing kits can seem harmless fun to find the ancestors, |
| 0:39.0 | but can instead cause family mayhem. |
| 0:44.8 | Dreams of an independent Catalonia are somewhat deflated these days. |
| 0:50.1 | It's just over a year since the Spanish government in Madrid tried to stop the disputed referendum |
| 0:55.6 | by sending in riot police with buttons, converting more Catalans to the separatist |
| 1:00.7 | cause. |
| 1:02.3 | That popular party government ultimately fell and now the socialists |
| 1:06.2 | are narrowly in charge and are somewhat more conciliatory. There are still dedicated |
| 1:12.2 | separatists, though they there fewer and the general momentum has waned. |
| 1:17.0 | But one thing that could breathe new life into the movement might be the harsh treatment of the jailed separatists, the architects of the referendum who didn't flee the country after the vote. |
| 1:28.0 | They include a woman who Nial O'Gala'Galaher has been to visit. |
| 1:33.6 | As a police helicopter circled overhead, a great crowd of flag-waving independent |
| 1:38.5 | tistas lined the boulevard that leads to the Parliament of Catalonia. I waited with them in the heat to hear what |
| 1:45.1 | those inside would do. That was on the 27th of October 2017, just a few weeks after more |
| 1:51.8 | than 2 million Catalans had backed independence in a contested referendum, |
| 1:56.0 | and Karme Forcadel was in the Speaker's chair. |
| 2:00.0 | It fell to her to read the result of a vote establishing a new Catalan Republic without Spanish |
| 2:06.0 | consent held by secret ballot after anti-independence politicians had abandoned the chamber |
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