Touring Catalonian Parliament

Catalonian Parliament was very much what I expected to be when we toured it. It had grand halls with decorations and lots of people working. Many stories and reports about the coronavirus outbreak were on the TVs.

Here is one hallway in that we walked through, as well as a ceiling that took my breath away.

We got to learn about how the media does reporting, where they stand in certain halls and meeting rooms, and even see some production facilities. It was very interesting to learn that the Parliament has two journalists to assist journalists from different media agencies. They help them out a lot, especially when it comes to explaining the parliamentary process to the media. (Wilson & Barriga-Ubed, 2020). When it comes to the reporting in the media, Aguilar-Paredes et al. (2016) observed that “Our results show that there is a general tendency to positively represent all pares and to positively over-represent those parties that are not in the governing majority.” Additionally, Parliament sends their broadcast signal for the public to see what is happening live so anyone can tune into events taking place in the building. It also has ve media rooms for different networks to watch meetings such as press conferences and different votes - without taking up space and making those meeting rooms crowded. (Wilson & Barriga-Ubed, 2020).

One of the production studios.

The Catalonian Parliament is organized very similarly to political bodies in the United States. Citizens with the status of Catalan who are over 18 years of age can vote. There is also a representative system, consisting of 135 representatives. These are elected by the four areas: Lleida, Tarragona, Girona and Barcelona. There is also a presiding board consisting of the president, two vice presidents and four secretaries. That then leads to the Board of Spokespersons, which contains a secretary, the president and the group’s spokespersons. There are different groups for different political parties and one mixed group. (Parlament de Catalunya, 2016).

Here are some shots of the main meeting room for Catalonia’s Parliament.

Sources

Aguilar-Paredes, C., Gómez-Domínguez, P., Villanueva-Baselga, S., y Sánchez-Gómez, L. (2016). Propuesta de un índice de calidad democrática para los servicios informativos de las televisiones autonómicas en España. El Profesional de la Información, 25(1), 75-87. http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/69180/1/654626.pdf

Wilson, A., Barriga-Ubed, E. (2020, March 10). University of Barcelona lecture. Retrieved April 26, 2020, from lecture notes.

Parlament de Catalunya (2016). El Parlamento de todos, guía práctica para saber más. Departament de Relacions Institucionals. Aula Parlament. Disponible a: https://goo.gl/cvUvVr